(baptized Aug. 24, 1591, London, Eng.
died October 1674, Dean Prior, Devonshire) English poet.
Educated at Cambridge and later ordained, he became known as a poet in the 1620s and by the end of that decade had become a country vicar in Devonshire. A disciple of Ben Jonson , he wrote classically influenced lyrics whose appeal is in their freshness and their perfection of form and style. The only book he published was Hesperides (1648), containing 1,400 poems, mostly short, many of them epigram s. He is best remembered for the line "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may."
Robert Herrick, detail of an engraving by W. Marshall, from the frontispiece to Hesperides , ...
By courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum; photograph, J.R. Freeman & Co. Ltd.