Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
    When June is past, the fading rose,
    For in your beauty’s orient deep
    These flowers, as in their causes, sleep. 
    Ask me no more where those stars light
    That downwards fall in dead of night,
    For in your eyes they sit, and there
    Fixed become as in their sphere. 
    Ask me no more if east or west
    The phoenix builds her spicy nest,
    For unto you at last she flies,
    And in your fragrant bosom dies.

ROBERT HERRICK (1591-1674).  Herrick is the true Cavalier, gay, devil-may-care in disposition, but by some freak of fate a clergyman of Dean Prior, in South Devon, a county made famous by him and Blackmore.  Here, in a country parish, he lived discontentedly, longing for the joys of London and the Mermaid Tavern, his bachelor establishment consisting of an old housekeeper, a cat, a dog, a goose, a tame lamb, one hen,—­for which he thanked God in poetry because she laid an egg every day,—­and a pet pig that drank beer with Herrick out of a tankard.  With admirable good nature, Herrick made the best of these uncongenial surroundings.  He watched with sympathy the country life about him and caught its spirit in many lyrics, a few of which, like “Corinna’s Maying,” “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” and “To Daffodils,” are among the best known in our language.  His poems cover a wide range, from trivial love songs, pagan in spirit, to hymns of deep religious feeling.  Only the best of his poems should be read; and these are remarkable for their exquisite sentiment and their graceful, melodious expression.  The rest, since they reflect something of the coarseness of his audience, may be passed over in silence.

Late in life Herrick published his one book, Hesperides and Noble Numbers (1648).  The latter half contains his religious poems, and one has only to read there the remarkable “Litany” to see how the religious terror that finds expression in Bunyan’s Grace Abounding could master even the most careless of Cavalier singers.

SUCKLING AND LOVELACE.  Sir John Suckling (1609-1642) was one of the most brilliant wits of the court of Charles I, who wrote poetry as he exercised a horse or fought a duel, because it was considered a gentleman’s accomplishment in those days.  His poems, “struck from his wild life like sparks from his rapier,” are utterly trivial, and, even in his best known “Ballad Upon a Wedding,” rarely rise above mere doggerel.  It is only the romance of his life—­his rich, brilliant, careless youth, and his poverty and suicide in Paris, whither he fled because of his devotion to the Stuarts—­that keeps his name alive in our literature.

In his life and poetry Sir Richard Lovelace (1618-1658) offers a remarkable parallel to Suckling, and the two are often classed together as perfect representatives of the followers of King Charles.  Lovelace’s Lucasta, a volume of love lyrics, is generally on a higher plane than Suckling’s work; and a few of the poems like “To Lucasta,” and “To Althea, from Prison,” deserve the secure place they have won.  In the latter occur the oft-quoted lines: