The Body.

The body is the soul's poor house or home,
Whose ribs the laths are, and whose flesh the loam.

Robert Herrick

Robert Herrick was a 17th-century English lyric poet and cleric. He is known for his book of poems, "Hesperides," which includes the carpe diem poem "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time." His works are noted for their clarity, simplicity, and musical quality. Herrick was also a vicar of Dean Prior in Devon, despite being ejected during the English Civil War and later reinstated.

Robert Herrick

To Perilla

Robert Herrick, Simple Poetry

Up Scoble

Robert Herrick, Simple Poetry

On Heaven.

Robert Herrick, Simple Poetry

Upon God.

Robert Herrick, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Soul Is The Salt.

The body's salt the soul is; which when gone,
The flesh soon sucks in putrefaction.

Robert Herrick

Life Is The Body's Light

Life is the body's light; which, once declining,
Those crimson clouds i' th' cheeks and lips leave shining:
Those counter-changed tabbies in the air,
The sun once set, all of one colour are:
So, when death comes, fresh tinctures lose their place,
And dismal darkness then doth smutch the face.

Robert Herrick

The Soul.

When once the soul has lost her way,
O then how restless does she stray!
And having not her God for light,
How does she err in endless night!

Robert Herrick

I Sing The Body Electric

I sing the Body electric;
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves;
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do as much as the Soul?
And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?

The love of the Body of man or woman balks account - the body itself balks account;
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.

The expression of the face balks account;
But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face;
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is c...

Walt Whitman

On Himself.

If that my fate has now fulfill'd my year,
And so soon stopt my longer living here;
What was't, ye gods, a dying man to save,
But while he met with his paternal grave!
Though while we living 'bout the world do roam,
We love to rest in peaceful urns at home,
Where we may snug, and close together lie
By the dead bones of our dear ancestry.

Robert Herrick

Possessions.

Those possessions short-liv'd are,
Into the which we come by war.

Robert Herrick