About Robert Herrick
Robert Herrick (born 24 August 1591 in London - buried 15 October 1674 in Dean Prior, Devon) was an English poet. One of his most famous poems is To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time. This poem plays a key role in the film Dead Poets Society by introducing the film's motto of 'carpe diem'. He is also well known for his Hesperides, a collection of lyric poetry, and Noble Numbers, a collection of spiritual works, published jointly in 1648. He is noted for his bawdy style and his many allusions to the act of love. and the female body.Herrick attended Cambridge University from 1613 to 1617. He then stayed in London as a poet of the group Sons of Ben, a follower of the well-known playwright Ben Jonson. He associated with writers and frequented the taverns to circulate his poems in manuscript among like-minded people. In 1623 he was ordained in the church, regardless of his previous lifestyle. After accompanying the Duke of Buckingham as chaplain to assist the Huguenots in the siege of La Rochelle in 1627, Herrick became vicar of the Dean Prior in Devonshire in 1629. He lost these benefices as a Royalist under the rule of the Puritans, but after the Restoration in 1660 he regained his parish in Devonshire and kept it there until his death. After losing his position as vicar, Herrick returned temporarily to London and in 1648 published his few sacred verses, the Noble Numbers, and his many secular poems, entitled Hesperides. The title of the collection of poems refers to the Hesperides and, from Herrick's point of view as a Christian Epicurean, describes an island of the blessed, which the poet already in his day declared to be his area of ??wise enjoyment of life.
In his poetry, Herrick not only shows the splendor and sensual temptations of earthly happiness and enjoyment of life, but also proves to be a moralist. Thus, in poems such as To the Virgins or To Daffodils, the carpe diem theme is unfolded against the dark background of a heightened awareness of earthly transience; the cheerful art that Herrick designed as a counter-world to the gloomy epoch of the civil war has a thoroughly melancholy tinge. As a follower of Ben Jonson, his work also reflects an aristocratic social order that was threatened with decline at the time.
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