"Though Clock, To tell how night draws hence, I've none, A Cock I have, to sing how day draws on. I have A maid (my Prue) by good luck sent, To save That little, Fates me gave or lent. A Hen I keep, which, creeking* day by day, Tells when She goes her long white egg to lay. A Goose I have, which, with a jealous ear, Lets loose Her tongue, to tell what danger's near. A Lamb I keep, tame, with my morsels fed, Whose Dam An orphan left him, lately dead. A Cat I keep, that plays about my house, Grown fat With eating many a miching** mouse. To these A Tracy*** I do keep, whereby I please The more my rural privacy, Which are But toys to give my heart some ease; Where care None is, slight things do lightly please." *Clucking. **Thieving. ***His spaniel. But Herrick did not love his country home and parish or his people. We are told that the gentry round about loved him "for his florid and witty discourses." But his people do not seem to have loved these same discourses, for we are also told that one day in anger he threw his sermon from the pulpit at them because they did not listen attentively. He says:-- "More discontents I never had, Since I was born, than here, Where I have been, and still am sad, In this dull Devonshire." Yet though Herrick hated Devonshire, or at least said so, it was this same wild country that called forth some of his finest poems. He himself knew that, for in the next lines he goes on to say:-- "Yet justly, too, I must confess I ne'er invented such Ennobled numbers for the press, Than where I loathed so much." Yet it is not the ruggedness of the Devon land we feel in Herrick's poems. We feel rather the beauty of flowers, the warmth of sun, the softness of spring winds, and see the greening trees, the morning dews, the soft rains. It is as if he had not let his eyes wander over the wild Devonshire moorlands, but had confined them to his own lovely garden and orchard meadow, for he speaks of the "dew-bespangled herb and tree," the "damasked meadows," the "silver shedding brooks." Hardly any English poet has written so tenderly of flowers as Herrick. One of the best known of these flower poems is To Daffodils. "Fair Daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon; As yet the early-rising sun Has not attain'd his noon. Stay, stay, Until the hasting day Has run But to the Even-song; And, having pray'd together, we Will go with you along.