Similarly, it’s possible that the reference to “rains” indicates a kingly pun, which isn’t to say Herrick disdains the primary meaning of flower-friendly cloudbursts. “To the King, Upon his Coming with his Army to the West” imagines “the west” transformed from drooping widowhood so that she “looks like a bride now, or a bed of flowers / newly refreshed both by the sun and showers”. For instance, there’s a metaphorical bride later in the collection. And yet Herrick is not always the delightfully simple literalist he first seems. There’s the sense of an almost boyish appetite when the bridal cakes appear in the next line: the term offers a handy rhyme, of course, but it’s the sort of detail that brings a poem sharply alive. My Everyman selection by Douglas Brooks-Davies (also the source of the current text) notes that a wake can also be a fair. “Wakes” are not necessarily funereal vigils, but can be held for various celebratory purposes, such as the dedication of a church. “Hock-carts” are the decorated carts that bring home the harvest, “wassails” the toasts especially associated with Christmas and the new year. Then he moves us on to the larger celebrations in the rural and Christian year. It’s a playful, pretty string of nouns, and might seem somewhat random, so in the second line Herrick begins to build his calendar and show his pastoral credentials, separating the seasons and specifying July flowers as if to notice the different flora produced by the changing months. The alliteration fairly bubbles along in the opening line. There is harmony as well as contrast, and a satisfying arc is formed from line one’s spring blossoms to the final hope of Heaven’s largesse. Herrick’s art here lies in the trimness of his selection (there were 1,400 poems, after all, in the original collection) and in its ordering, allowing various configurations of the list-as-narrative. In a fine essay on the Poetry Foundation website, the author observes that “Hesperides is the only major collection of poetry in English to open with a versified table of contents.” I wonder if this is still the case, and would be interested to hear of any contemporary contenders setting out their poetic wares in this way, with or without rhyme and metre. Argument signifies “theme” or “contents” and is not a defence. It’s the opening poem of Herrick’s only collection, Hesperides, and summarises some of its topics. This week, that “Argument” takes the starring role as Poem of the Week, a little hock-cart of sunlit harvest to set us up for the autumn days.
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