While Herrick lived his quiet, dull life and wrote poetry in the depths of Devonshire, the country was being torn asunder and tossed from horror to horror by the great Civil War. Men took sides and fought for Parliament or for King. Year by year the quarrel grew. What was begun at Edgehill ended at Naseby where the King's cause was utterly lost. Then, although Herrick took no part in the fighting, he suffered with the vanquished, for he was a Royalist at heart. He was turned out of his living to make room for a Parliament man. He left this parish without regret. "Deanbourne, farewell; I never look to see Deane, or thy warty incivility. Thy rocky bottom, that doth tear thy streams, And makes them frantic, ev'n to all extremes; To my content, I never should behold, Were thy streams silver, or thy rocks all gold. Rocky thou art, and rocky we discover Thy men: and rocky are thy ways all over. O men, O manners, now and ever known To be a rocky generation: A people currish; churlish as the seas; And rude, almost, as rudest savages: With whom I did, and may re-sojourn when Rocks turn to rivers, rivers turn to men." Hastening to London, he threw off his sober priest's robe, and once more putting on the gay dress worn by the gentlemen of his day he forgot the troubles and the duties of a country parson. Rejoicing in his freedom he cried:-- "London my home is: though by hard fate sent Into a long and irksome banishment; Yet since called back; henceforward let me be, O native country, repossess'd by thee." He had no money, but he had many wealthy friends, so he lived, we may believe, merrily enough for the next fifteen years. It was during these years that the Hesperides was first published, although for a long time before many people had known his poems, for they had been handed about among his friends in manuscript. So the years passed for Herrick we hardly know how. In the great world Cromwell died and Charles II returned to England to claim the throne of his fathers. Then it would seem that Herrick had not found all the joy he had hoped for in London, for two years later, although rocks had not turned to rivers, nor rivers to men, he went back to his "loathed Devonshire." After that, all that we know of him is that at Dean Prior "Robert Herrick vicker was buried ye 15th day of October 1674." Thus in twilight ends the life of the greatest lyric poet of the seventeenth century. All the lyric poets of whom I have told you were Royalists, but the Puritans too had their poets, and before ending this chapter I would like to tell you a little of Andrew Marvell, a Parliamentary poet. If Herrick was a lover of flowers, Marvell was a lover of gardens, woods and meadows. The garden poet he has been called. He felt himself in touch with Nature:-- "Thus I, easy philosopher, Among the birds and trees confer,