Sometimes authors were so famous that we know almost too much about them. Nobody can ever not find enough information writers like Shakespeare and Chaucer. Then there are others that there is almost nothing about them. However, historians have managed to find a happy medium for Robert Herrick, author of To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time, to write a biography long enough to satisfy anyone, or at least long enough to fill two pages.
Robert Herrick was born in London on August 24, 1591 to a goldsmith named Nicholas. Soon after Nicholas death, Herrick was apprenticed to his uncle, William Herrick, who was a jeweler. In 1614, when he decided to leave his apprenticeship, Robert Herrick journeyed to Cambridge University to study and became a Bachelor of Arts in 1617. In 1620, Herrick became a Master of Arts at St. John s, Cambridge University.
While at Cambridge, Robert Herrick became the eldest member of the poets group Sons of Ben. Sons of Ben was a group that studied and idolized Ben Johnson, a poet and playwright born in the late 15th Century. Herrick is regarded by many as someone who revived the spirit of the ancient classic lyric.
After receiving his M.A. from Cambridge, Robert Herrick devoted his life to his religious beliefs. On April 24, 1623 he was ordained an Episcopal minister and acted as the chaplain in Buckingham. Although he was now married to God, Herrick never stopped writing. In fact, his best works were written during this time period.
The Essay on Comparing 3 Robert Frost Poems
Comparing Frosts Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Birches, and The Road Not taken Robert Frost was an American poet that first became known after publishing a book in England. He soon came to be one of the best-known and loved American poets ever. He often wrote of the outdoors and the three poems that I will compare are of that outdoorsy type. There are several likenesses and differences in ...
After returning from a military expedition with the Duke of Buckingham, Robert Herrick was presented with the living of Dean Prior in 1929. It was in Devon where he lived in seclusion which gave him a lot of time to write. In 1947, he was expelled from his post as Vicar of Dean Prior by the Cromwellians until the Restoration in 1660. After years of writing, Herrick published his first and only book, Hesperides.
Hesperides was a collection of over 1400 poems written by Herrick that were not previously published. Among these poems was a collection entitled His Noble Numbers, which was a group of poems on religious subjects. Oddly, His Noble Number adorned its own title page and was dated 1647, but was not published until a year later with Hesperides.
After Hesperides, the world would see no more collections or major works from Robert Herrick. All of his works after that appeared by themselves, in miscellanies or songbooks. Henry Lawes, a famous 17th-Century English composer even set some of these songs.
One of the most admirable things about Robert Herrick is that he never set himself on writing in one kind of style. He wrote elegies, satires and epigrams. Herrick even wrote love poems to people he made up. One poem Herrick wrote was addressed to his wife. However, it has never been found documented that Robert Herrick got married, and, by being an ordained minister, marriage wouldn t have been allowed.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. That is perhaps Robert Herrick s most memorable line out of any of his poems. This phrase showed how Herrick lived his life. He never sat around doing nothing. After his father died in 1592, he went to work as an apprentice to his uncle and never looked back. Herrick received both a Bachelor s and a Master s degree of the Arts, was ordained a minister and went on a military expedition with the Duke of Buckingham. In addition to all of these accomplishments, inspired and influenced by Ben Johnson as well as other English writers, Robert Herrick still found time to be an important and heralded English author.
