Poem of the Day: ‘To Daffodils’

Robert Herrick (1591–1674) has what may seem a wonderfully bifurcated poetic output. His carpe-diem poems include such commonly anthologized Cavalier poetry as “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” and “Corinna’s Going A-Maying.” And then his religious poetry contains such work as “To Keep a True Lent” and “To Find God,” both of which have been Poems of the Day over the past year here in The New York Sun.

Perhaps it’s time we offered a Herrick poem that might bridge the gap. “To Daffodils” appears in Herrick’s only book of poetry, the 1648 volume whose title warns of his work’s two sides: “Hesperides: Or, The Works Both Humane & Divine.” It’s two stanzas match each other’s meter: four lines of ballad meter (a four-foot line followed by a three-foot line), and then a curious four lines of monometer and trimeter (one-foot lines followed by three-foot lines), ending with another two lines of ballad meter — so the stanzas both have the shape 4/3/4/3/1/3/1/3/4/3.

Quite what the poet intended with that metrical showmanship is hard to say, but the result is a poem that urges the daffodils to make much of time. The day is fleeting for both flowers and people, for “the hasting day” will run “But to the even-song” — “And, having pray’d together, we / Will go with you along.”