WHERE HERRICK LIES 73 



good men go to their rest ; and the life of the hamlet 

 its sorrows and joys, hopes of harvest and of heaven 

 unfold in one story, whose chapters are the seasons, 

 whose sentences are records of human prosperity or 

 failure in the lap of Nature, whose periods are the 

 graves. Here blind Time, feeling for the mounds 

 beneath the yew trees, can measure his own progress. 



The thought of death moved Herrick much, and 

 never a man wrote with greater love and faith of those 

 who passed before him. Yet for himself he craved no 

 stone, and it may be that when his aged dust was 

 lowered into the red earth here, the many who 

 mourned him complied with some special desire in this 

 sort, and lifted no memorial. 



It matters little enough to-day. To those who 

 esteem him precious every leaf whispers his name, 

 every flower writes it on the grasses, every bird sings 

 it from the whitethorn. 



" Laid out for dead, let thy last kindnesse be 

 With leaves and mosse-work for to cover me ; 

 And while the Wood-nimphs my cold corps inter, 

 Sing thou my Dirge, sweet- warbling Chorister ! 

 For Epitaph, in Foliage, next write this, 

 Here, here the Tomb of Robin Herrick />." 



Forget this and that; set aside without prudery and 

 head-shaking the matters not necessary to remember. 

 Men make no ado when they eject the bitter stone of 

 a muscat. The grape's the thing. Remember that 

 our Herrick wrote "Corinna's going a Maying," "To 

 Violets," "His Poetrie his Pillar," "To Musique," 



