Today’s Poem: Delight in Disorder
Today’s Poem: Delight in Disorder
Robert Herrick’s skill
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.
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.”
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.
My 16 year old and I are currently reading Jane Eyre and as I read this poem I can't help but remember the severe punishments poor Helen Burns received for her disorderly dress. It's interesting to ponder how Herrick is both in a way challenging that punitive approach to disorder; but also in a way affirming it -- in that he affirms that disorderly dress is an invitation to wantonness and flirtation, which is precisely what Lowood Institution is trying to beat out of the girls.
In terms of the prosody, I like the effect of "Into a fine distraction," where the last word is transformed into four syllables--an effect of the regularity of the meter. The apparent distraction is absorbed into the artistic plan for the poem, in keeping with my sense of the poem's light irony.