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To The Reverend Shade Of His Religious Father.
By Robert Herrick
That for seven lusters I did never come
To do the rites to thy religious tomb;
That neither hair was cut, or true tears shed
By me, o'er thee, as justments to the dead,
Forgive, forgive me; since I did not know
Whether thy bones had here their rest or no,
But now 'tis known, behold! behold, I bring
Unto thy ghost th' effused offering:
And look what smallage, night-shade, cypress, yew,
Unto the shades have been, or now are due,
Here I devote; and something more than so;
I come to pay a debt of birth I owe.
Thou gav'st me life, but mortal; for that one
Favour I'll make full satisfaction;
For my life mortal rise from out thy hearse.
And take a life immortal from my verse.
Extra Info:
Seven lusters, five and thirty years.
Hair was cut, according to the Greek custom.
Justments, dues.
Smallage, water parsley.
That for seven lusters I did never come. The fall of Herrick's father from a window, fifteen months after the poet's birth, was imputed at the time to suicide; and it has been reasonably conjectured that some mystery may have attached to the place of his burial. If "seven lusters" can be taken literally for thirty-five years, this poem was written in 1627.
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