To Penshurst

“The Country Life” by Robert Herrick (1681)

One of the self-styled “Sons of Ben,” a loose confederation of younger poets who found in Jonson and in his poetry a mentor and who used Jonson ‘s prosody and his subject matter to direct their own output, Robert Herrick (1591-1674) composed this pastoral idyll concerning the life at a country estate just outside his native London as a kind of riff on “To Penshurst.” For Herrick, however, the focus was less on Jonson’s interest in using the country house of the Sydneys as a bellwether for great socio-economic changes and more on the simple delights of the bounty and beauties of the rural life.

“Upon Appleton House” by Andrew Marvell (1681)

One of the most accomplished poets in the generation after Jonson’s death, a generation collectively known now as the Metaphysical Poets, Marvell here pays his own tribute to Jonson’s country house poetry. In this tour of the country home of Royalist general Sir Thomas Fairfax, Marvell takes a leisurely look (more than 900 lines) at the architecture, the grounds, and the actual home, emphasizing that here is the stability, order, and integrity of the generation that supported the restoration of the monarchy.