Poetry Friday: 17th Century Cheek

To the Soure Reader
by Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

If thou dislik'st the piece thou light'st on first,
Thinke that of all that I have writ the worst:
But if thou read'st my booke unto the end,
And still do'st this and that verse reprehend,
O perverse man! if all disgustfull be,
The extreame scabbe take thee and thine for me.


Herrick's instructions to the reader near the beginning of his Hersperides, Volume I.

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