Painting Sometimes Permitted.

If Nature do deny
Colours, let Art supply.

Robert Herrick

Robert Herrick was a 17th-century English lyric poet and cleric. He is known for his book of poems, "Hesperides," which includes the carpe diem poem "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time." His works are noted for their clarity, simplicity, and musical quality. Herrick was also a vicar of Dean Prior in Devon, despite being ejected during the English Civil War and later reinstated.

Robert Herrick

To M. Henry Lawes, The Excellent Composer Of His Lyrics.

Robert Herrick, Simple Poetry

To The Most Accomplished Gentleman, M. Michael Oulsworth.

Robert Herrick, Simple Poetry

A Pastoral Sung To The King: Montano, Silvio, And Mirtillo, Shepherds.

Robert Herrick, Simple Poetry

Thanksgiving To God, For His House

Robert Herrick, Simple Poetry

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Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Upon A Painted Gentlewoman

Men say you're fair; and fair ye are, 'tis true;
But, hark! we praise the painter now, not you.

Robert Herrick

Art Above Nature: To Julia

When I behold a forest spread
With silken trees upon thy head;
And when I see that other dress
Of flowers set in comeliness;
When I behold another grace
In the ascent of curious lace,
Which, like a pinnacle, doth shew
The top, and the top-gallant too;
Then, when I see thy tresses bound
Into an oval, square, or round,
And knit in knots far more than I.
Can tell by tongue, or True-love tie;
Next, when those lawny films I see
Play with a wild civility;
And all those airy silks to flow,
Alluring me, and tempting so,
I must confess, mine eye and heart
Dotes less on nature than on art.

Robert Herrick

To The Painter, To Draw Him A Picture.

Come, skilful Lupo, now, and take
Thy bice, thy umber, pink, and lake;
And let it be thy pencil's strife,
To paint a Bridgeman to the life:
Draw him as like too, as you can,
An old, poor, lying, flattering man:
His cheeks bepimpled, red and blue;
His nose and lips of mulberry hue.
Then, for an easy fancy, place
A burling iron for his face:
Next, make his cheeks with breath to swell,
And for to speak, if possible:
But do not so, for fear lest he
Should by his breathing, poison thee.

Robert Herrick

His Protestation To Perilla.

Noonday and midnight shall at once be seen:
Trees, at one time, shall be both sere and green:
Fire and water shall together lie
In one self-sweet-conspiring sympathy:
Summer and winter shall at one time show
Ripe ears of corn, and up to th' ears in snow:
Seas shall be sandless; fields devoid of grass;
Shapeless the world, as when all chaos was,
Before, my dear Perilla, I will be
False to my vow, or fall away from thee.

Robert Herrick

Consistency

Should painter attach to a fair human head
The thick, turgid neck of a stallion,
Or depict a spruce lass with the tail of a bass,
I am sure you would guy the rapscallion.

Believe me, dear Pisos, that just such a freak
Is the crude and preposterous poem
Which merely abounds in a torrent of sounds,
With no depth of reason below 'em.

'T is all very well to give license to art,--
The wisdom of license defend I;
But the line should be drawn at the fripperish spawn
Of a mere cacoethes scribendi.

It is too much the fashion to strain at effects,--
Yes, that's what's the matter with Hannah!
Our popular taste, by the tyros debased,
Paints each barnyard a grove of Diana!

Should a patron require you to paint a marine,
Would you work in ...

Eugene Field

To A Painter

All praise the Likeness by thy skill portrayed;
But 'tis a fruitless task to paint for me,
Who, yielding not to changes Time has made,
By the habitual light of memory see
Eyes unbedimmed, see bloom that cannot fade,
And smiles that from their birth-place ne'er shall flee
Into the land where ghosts and phantoms be;
And, seeing this, own nothing in its stead.
Couldst thou go back into far-distant years,
Or share with me, fond thought! that inward eye,
Then, and then only, Painter! could thy Art
The visual powers of Nature satisfy,
Which hold, whate'er to common sight appears,
Their sovereign empire in a faithful heart.

William Wordsworth