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To M. Leonard Willan, His Peculiar Friend.

By Robert Herrick

Topics: classic

I will be short, and having quickly hurl'd     This line about, live thou throughout the world;     Who art a man for all scenes; unto whom,     What's hard to others, nothing's troublesome.     Can'st write the comic, tragic strain, and fall     From these to pen the pleasing pastoral:     Who fli'st at all heights: prose and verse run'st through;     Find'st here a fault, and mend'st the trespass too:     For which I might extol thee, but speak less,     Because thyself art coming to the press:     And then should I in praising thee be slow,     Posterity will pay thee what I owe.

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"I will be short, and having quickly hurl'd..."

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Author:Robert Herrick

"I will be short, and having quickly hurl'd..." by Robert Herrick

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Robert Herrick

About Robert Herrick

Robert Herrick (1591–1674) was an English Cavalier poet whose "Hesperides" (1648) contains over 1,200 poems. His carpe diem verse "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" ("Gather ye rosebuds while ye may") and lyric poems celebrate love, beauty, and the passing of time.

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