Past Master
Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
Could this wonderfully sensual sonnet be concealing quite a political point? The musical lines with their alternating masculine and feminine rhymes, the personification of the clothes and adjectives such as ‘tempestuous’ give an exuberance to the poem; clothes are wanton and able to distract with their fluid actions, always trying to break away from their fetters – even a ‘tie’ has ‘a wild civility’. It is only the strict control of the art-form that keeps them from uncensored freedom.
Robert Herrick was a Royalist, and like other Cavalier poets, not a favourite of the times. Hidden, perhaps, in this poem is the aesthetic that ‘precise’ control is not attractive. ‘Precise’ was a word denoting the Puritans, and Herrick’s love of country-life, Pagan rituals and Christian ceremony was seen by Puritans as idolatory. The poem is a witty subverting of restrictions that are too punctilious.
This is a jewel of a poem, creating Art from Nature, another way of
seizing the moment, holding off inevitable decay and creating something that will outlive life. But it also has as its subtext the radical poet who opposed being censored or controlled.
Delight in Disorder
A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction:
An erring lace which here and there
Enthralls the crimson stomacher:
A cuff neglectful, and therby
Ribands to flow confusedly:
A winning wave (deserving note)
In the tempestuous petticoat:
A careful shoestring, in whose tie
I see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.
Page(s) 2
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The