No More Learning

Of the seven stanzas subsequently omitted
several are of great beauty. There are few happier images in Herrick
than that of _Time throned in a saffron evening_ in stanza 11. It is
only when the earlier version is read as a whole that Herrick's taste
in omitting is vindicated. Each stanza is good in itself, but in the
MSS. the poem drags from excessive length, and the reduction of its
twenty-three stanzas to sixteen greatly improves it.

286. _Ever full of pensive fear. _ Ovid, _Heroid. _ i. 12: Res est
solliciti plena timoris amor.

287. _Reverence to riches. _ Perhaps from Tacit. _Ann. _ ii.
33: Neque in
familia et argento quaeque ad usum parantur nimium aliquid aut modicum,
nisi ex fortuna possidentis.

288. _Who forms a godhead. _ From Martial, VIII. xxiv. 5:--

Qui fingit sacros auro vel marmore vultus
Non facit ille deos: qui rogat, ille facit.

290. _The eyes be first that conquered are. _ From Tacitus, _Germ. _ 43:
Primi in omnibus proeliis oculi vincuntur.

293. _Oberon's Feast. _ For a note on Herrick's Fairy Poems and on the
_Description of the King and Queene of the Fayries_ (1635), in which
part of this poem was first printed, see Appendix. Add. MS. 22, 603, at
the British Museum, and Ashmole MS.