<p>ROBERT HERRICK</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>UPON JULIA&rsquo;S BREASTS: LOVE POEMS</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Edited by M.K. Pace</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>ROBERT HERRICK (1591-1674) was one of the Cavalier poets (other Cavalier poets included Suckling, Carew and Lovelace). He was&nbsp;born in London and lived much of his life in the rough&nbsp;remoteness of a parish in Devonshire. He studied at Cambridge&nbsp;(St John&#39;s College and Trinity Hall). His law studies were&nbsp;dropped in 1623, and he was ordained as a deacon and priest in&nbsp;1624.&nbsp;</p><p>There are many poems in Robert Herrick&#39;s work of love - about love desired, lost and mourned. Herrick is very definitely a &#39;Muse poet&#39;, to use Robert Graves&#39;s term. There are many poems about several mistresses, &#39;my dearest Beauties&#39; he calls them in &#39;To My Lovely Mistresses&#39; (Anthea, Perilla, Electra, Blanch, Judith, Silvia, and the most beloved of all, Julia).&nbsp;</p><p>There are many poems to&nbsp;certain &#39;muses&#39; or &#39;maidens&#39;. The sheer number (and quality) of&nbsp;Robert Herrick&#39;s poems to Julia attests to his deep passion for &nbsp;the friendship and strength of women: &#39;To Julia&#39;, &#39;To Roses in Julia&#39;s Bosom&#39;, &#39;To Julia, Her Dawn, or Daybreak&#39;, &#39;The Parliament of Roses to Julia&#39;, &#39;Upon Julia&#39;s Recovery&#39;, &#39;On&nbsp;Julia&#39;s Fall&#39;, &#39;His Sailing From Julia&#39;,&nbsp;&#39;Her Legs&#39;, &#39;Her Bed&#39;, &#39;On Julia&#39;s Picture&#39;, &#39;The Bracelet to Julia&#39;, &#39;To Julia in the Temple&#39; and so on.&nbsp;</p><p>Apart from poems addressed &#39;To His Book&#39;, there are more poems in Robert Herrick&#39;s output &#39;To Julia&#39; than to anything else. Julia is &#39;the prime of Paradise&#39; (&#39;To Julia, in Her Dawn, or &nbsp;Day-breake&#39;). She is utterly adored, often erotically. There are poems which eulogize her breasts and nipples, for instance: &#39;Display thy breasts.../ Between whose glories, there my lips I&#39;ll&nbsp;lay,/ Ravisht&#39;, he writes (in &#39;Upon Julia&#39;s Breasts&#39;); other paeans to&nbsp;Julia&#39;s breasts include &#39;Upon the Roses in Julia&#39;s Bosom&#39;, and &#39;Upon the Nipples of Julia&#39;s Breast&#39;. Her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her blush, her legs, her voice, her clothes, her perfume, her teeth &ndash; even her sweat.&nbsp;</p><p>Robert Herrick&#39;s major work, Hesperides or The Works Both Humane&nbsp;and Divine of Robert Herrick Esq., was published in 1648. There are some 1130 poems in the first, secular part, Hesperides, and&nbsp;272 in Noble Numbers, the religious pieces. Most of the poems in Hesperides have printed on a page of their own.&nbsp;</p><p>Robert Herrick&#39;s poetry (his Hesperides) followed the plan outlined the poem &#39;The&nbsp;Argument of His Book&#39;, with its lyrical evocation of the natural world. Herrick was particularly well situated,&nbsp;geographically, to write nature poetry. Like Coleridge,&nbsp;Wordsworth and Bront&euml;, Herrick lived in the midst of the countryside, in the relative isolation of Dean Prior, on the edge of Dartmoor in&nbsp;Devon.&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Includes illustrations, an introduction to Robert Herrick, and bibliography.&nbsp;</p><p>148 pages. www.crmoon.com</p><p>&nbsp;</p>