Love itself cannot inflame his morning worshippers: they walk through the early streets to the woods of May, courting one another exquisitely with all the forms of a ceremonial which Horace might have sung or Watteau painted. Here, in one bright season, are daffodils and violets, primroses and gilliflowers, Millions of Lillies mixt with Roses, tulips, pansies, marigolds, daisies, the cherry and the oak, laurels and cypresses, grapes and strawberries, spring standing side by side with purple harvest and cozy winter. Here are all exquisite scents, new rain on turf and tree, the smoke of quaint poetical sacrifices; The smell of mornings milk, and cream; Butter of Cowslips mixt with them; Of rosted warden, or bak’d peare; “the flowre of blooming Clove,” “Essences of Jessimine,” honey just brought in by bees, spiced wines, incomparable possets; the perfumes of youth and love and joy. Here, too, are delicate forms and precious colours, smooth narratives of a hundred rural customs chosen because they fit fine verses, and whimsical pious little odes and graces before meat and thanksgivings and creeds and prayers such as no other poet ever uttered. Nowhere else has adoration better lent itself to union with politeness than in this counsel to children: Honour thy Parents; but good manners call Thee to adore thy God, the first of all. Surely something ran in Herrick’s veins which was calmer than the hot blood of his kind in general. He laughs at Julia, Sapho, Anthea, Electra, Myrha, Corinna, Perilla, and at himself for having had and lost them; he tricks out his raptures of devotion with the blithest figures of speech: Lord, I am like to Misletoe, Which has no root, and cannot grow, Or prosper, but by that same tree It clings about; so I by Thee; he takes his ease in his country Zion as if it would last eternally and yet amuses himself with cheerful epitaphs for himself and with advice to his pretty mourners. He could be passionate enough about his calling; but he saw his world as images of marble, as pictures of gold set in silver, as charming ancient stories come to life again yet still with the dignity of remembered perfectness about them. It is a defence against August to remember the happy commentary upon Herrick which Dryden wrote when he imitated the lines to Perilla— Then shall my Ghost not walk about, but keep Still in the coole, and silent shades of sleep— in that admirable invitation to another cool world: When, tired with following nature, you think fit To seek repose in the cool shades of wit. LAKE AND BIRD