Robert Herrick

To Live Merrily, and to Trust to Good Verses

Now is the time for mirth,
        Nor cheek or tongue be dumb;
For with the flow’ry earth
        The golden pomp is come.
 
The golden pomp is come;
        For now each tree does wear,
Made of her pap and gum,
        Rich beads of amber here.
 
Now reigns the rose, and now
        Th’ Arabian dew besmears
My uncontrolled brow
        And my retorted hairs.
 
Homer, this health to thee,
        In sack of such a kind
That it would make thee see
        Though thou wert ne’er so blind.
 
Next, Virgil I’ll call forth
        To pledge this second health
In wine, whose each cup’s worth
        An Indian commonwealth.
 
A goblet next I’ll drink
        To Ovid, and suppose,
Made he the pledge, he’d think
        The world had all one nose.
 
Then this immensive cup
        Of aromatic wine,
Catullus, I quaff up
        To that terse muse of thine.
 
Wild I am now with heat;
        O Bacchus! cool thy rays!
Or frantic, I shall eat
        Thy thyrse, and bite the bays.
 
Round, round the roof does run;
        And being ravish’d thus,
Come, I will drink a tun
        To my Propertius.
 
Now, to Tibullus, next,
        This flood I drink to thee;
But stay, I see a text
        That this presents to me.
 
Behold, Tibullus lies
        Here burnt, whose small return
Of ashes scarce suffice
        To fill a little urn.
 
Trust to good verses then;
        They only will aspire,
When pyramids, as men,
        Are lost i’ th’ funeral fire.
 
And when all bodies meet,
        In Lethe to be drown’d,
Then only numbers sweet
        With endless life are crown’d.
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