ENG LYRIC POETRY.pdf - STIBA Malang

CAROLINE AMUSEMENTS
William Dell, that Herrick was living in London as the father of an illegitimate
child, possibly in 1640, 47 we ought still to observe that the vicar of Dean Prior
was never a conscientious apologist for the church like his more visible
ecclesiastical contemporary Richard Corbett, the eventual Bishop of Norwich
and the author of a number of anti-Puritan poems like “The Faeries Farewell”:
Lament, lament, old Abbies,
The Faries lost Command:
They did but change Priests Babies,
But some have changd your land;
And all your children sprung from thence
Are now growne Puritanes:
Who live as Changelings ever since
For love of your Demaines. 48
With witty attacks like this, it is possible to see why Corbett found preferment
under Laud. As the stanza indicates, Corbett saw the connection between
religious magic and social control in precise sociological terms: with the
dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, the disappearance of (in
Corbett’s view) the festive sport of changing babies, is causally related to a
more malevolent threat involving a shift in land ownership. His “Lament,
lament” toys with a more politically charged form of lamentation, that of
Jeremiah. But in Herrick, the historical (and polemical) perspective is missing;
so, too, is the causal connection that might link the economic with the festive
in a consistent, ideological manner. Although acutely aware of “Times transshifting,”
Herrick nonetheless proceeds to celebrate ceremony and customs as
if they were fully vital forces, as if the disjunction of which Corbett speaks has
yet to occur:
When I verse shall make,
Know I have praid thee,
For old Religions sake,
Saint Ben to aide me.
Make the way smooth for me,
When I, thy Herrick,
Honouring thee, on my knee
Offer my Lyrick.
Candles Ile give to thee,
And a new Altar;
And thou Saint Ben, shalt be
Writ in my Psalter.
121
(“His Prayer to Ben Johnson”)