Robert Herrick: The Bad Season Makes the Poet Sad.

THE BAD SEASON MAKES THE POET SAD.
by Robert Herrick

DULL to myself, and almost dead to these
My many fresh and fragrant mistresses ;
Lost to all music now, since everything
Puts on the semblance here of sorrowing.
Sick is the land to the heart, and doth endure
More dangerous faintings by her desp'rate cure.
But if that golden age would come again,
And Charles here rule, as he before did reign ;
If smooth and unperplexed the seasons were,
As when the sweet Maria lived here :
I should delight to have my curls half drown'd
In Tyrian dews, and head with roses crown'd ;
And once more yet, ere I am laid out dead,
Knock at a star with my exalted head.

Knock at a star (sublimi feriam sidera vertice. Horace Ode, i. I.

Source:
Herrick, Robert. Works of Robert Herrick. vol II.
Alfred Pollard, ed.
London, Lawrence & Bullen, 1891. 13-14.

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