while idleness and joy still gild the passing day.
"Then while time serves, and we are but decaying,
Come, my Corinna, come, let's goe a Maying,"
is the gay doctrine preached by this unclerical clergyman. Even when he remembers perforce that he is a clergyman, and turns his heart to prayer, this is the thanksgiving that rises sweetly to his lips:—
"'T is Thou that crown'st my glittering hearth
With guiltless mirth,
And giv'st me wassail-howls to drink,
Spiced to the brink."
Had the patronage of the Church never been extended to Herrick, and had he lived on in London, the friend of Jonson, and Selden, and Fletcher, and kind, witty Bishop Corbet, we should have lost the most charming pastoral vignettes ever flung like scattered May-blossoms into literature; but we should have gained drinking-songs such as the world has never known,—songs whose reckless music would lure us even now from our watchful propriety as easily as great Bacchus lured that wise beast Cerberus, who gave his doggish
