Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Tuesday, March 19th, 2004. Today we have two poems from Robert Herrick, the 17th century poet and clergyman. It has been said that poems in their highest or most rarefied forms sometimes resemble prayers.

And that's probably more commonly true for poets who also share a religious vocation.

Herrick was not alone in that dual vocation.

In fact, one of the other well-known poet priests was his contemporary, John Dunn.

And like Dunn, Herrick started his life a little rougher and rowdier than he finished it, living a bit of a

colorful youth before seemingly coming to a more pious seriousness as he grew older and embraced his ministerial vocation.

And so the first of our two poems, which are also prayers implicitly and explicitly, is a prayer that Herrick addresses to God on the subject of the verse he wrote

before he reformed.

The second poem is a prayer of a more innocent nature, and we'll discuss them as they come.

The first is called His Prayer for Absolution.

For those my unbaptized rhymes writ in my wild unhallowed times, For every sentence,

Clause and Word that's not inlaid with thee, my Lord, forgive me God, and blot each line

Out of my book that is not thine.

But if, amongst all, thou findst here one worthy thy benediction,

that one of all the rest shall be the glory of my work and me.

Though fairly straightforward, I think this is a wonderful poem, because it is both very particular in that it deals with Herrick's own personal experience and body of work, and is a petition of a very particular

nature to God, to judge that work, mercifully and generously, to pardon anything in his previous writings that is not, as he says, inlaid with the

Lord or lines that are not the words of God. And yet, to find some redeeming quality even in

that work, which might cause it to last or to stand to the poet's

account when all things are hailed up.

And this is something certainly that's universal to all of us.

Life is full of reformations,

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