Robert Herrick

Robert Herrick
1591-1674
(source: Poetry Club)
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almost forgotten in the eighteenth century, alternately applauded and condemned in the nineteenth century (applauded for his poetry’s lyricism and condemned for its “obscenities”), finally (in the latter half of the twentieth century) becoming recognized as one of the most accomplished nondramatic poets of his age (Poetry Foundation); strongly influenced by Ben Jonson (while living in an epoch which tastes were going rather to John Donne and the others ejusdem farinae - let's say a late Elizabethan in the times of Metaphysical poetry: some kind of Darwin's missing link), best known for his book of poems Hesperides (where you'll find the carpe diem poem To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time, with the first line "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may") (wiki); Swinburne described him as "the greatest song writer ever born of English race" (Mohit K. Ray, The Atlantic companion to literature in English, New Delhi Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, 2007 p. 245); I discovered him through John Carey.

• Herrick's Monometers: Upon His Departure Hence
• The Coming of Good Luck

(A Life in Books)