Today’s Poem: Delight in Disorder

Robert Herrick’s skill

John Singer Sargent, The Misses Vickers, 1884 (Wikimedia Commons)

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Delight in Disorder

by Robert Herrick

A sweet disorder in the dress 
Kindles in clothes a wantonness; 
A lawn about the shoulders thrown    ◦ lawn = a piece of fine linen or cotton cloth
Into a fine distraction; 
An erring lace, which here and there 
Enthrals the crimson stomacher;         ◦ stomacher = triangular front panel on a bodice
A cuff neglectful, and thereby 
Ribands to flow confusedly;
A winning wave, deserving note, 
In the tempestuous petticoat; 
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie 
I see a wild civility: 
Do more bewitch me, than when art 
Is too precise in every part.

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Robert Herrick (1591–1674) left us a curious legacy. It’s as though there were two poets with the name: the first, a writer of verse as sensual as any in English poetry; the second, a pious Devonshire vicar. The first was a Cavalier Poet and a member of the Tribe of Ben (the literary followers of poet and dramatist Ben Jonson) along with Richard Lovelace, Sir John Suckling, and Thomas Carew. And the second was the author of such works as “A Thanksgiving to God, for his House.”

Of course, the truth is more complicated than simple bifurcation. “The Argument of his Book” makes an attempt at reconciling his art:

I write of youth, of love, and have access
By these to sing of cleanly wantonness.
 . . . I sing (and ever shall)
Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all.

And there are other versions of Herrick as well — notably, his skill as a writer of epigrams in English.

Today’s Poem, however, belongs entirely to the sensualist. Owing a debt to Ben Jonson, “Delight in Disorder” is fourteen lines of tetrameter about the allure of small imperfections in a woman’s clothes: Slight disorders “Do more bewitch me, than when art / Is too precise in every part.”

Robert Herrick (Wikimedia Commons)

Mostly iambic, the poem rollicks with Herrick’s skill. The S, D, K, and L alliteration in the first two lines are a showy display: “A sweet disorder in the dress / Kindles in clothes a wantonness.” And notice, too, the inversion in the second line. After the straightforward iambs of the first line, A swèet / disòr- / der ìn / the drèss, the second line substitutes a trochee in the first foot, Kìndles / in clòthes / a wàn- / tonnèss — as though in illustration of the thesis of wild civility in small carelessness. Weak syllables carry a minor stress in several lines, and the substitutions in Ìn the / tempèst- / uous pèt- / ticòat” suggest a small tempest.

The focus on what women wear reaches its peak in Herrick’s “Upon Julia’s Clothes,” which opens “Whenas in silks my Julia goes, / Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows / That liquefaction of her clothes.” And his “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” (which was Today’s Poem earlier in the summer) is a central classic of carpe diem poetry in English. But “Delight in Disorder” has its own perfection, a delight in a summer mood.

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