The love poems of Robert Herrick and John Donne

“I do not love to wed, / Though I do like to woo,” wrote Robert Herrick, who died as a bachelor. His lyrical poetry, though containing many Classical allusions, is fresh and simple. The author of many love poems, he writes advice to virgins and descriptions of the type of mistress he desires.John Donne, in contrast to Herrick, is the type of poet who married the woman he loved even though it meant having to go to jail because of his disapproving father-in-law. Writing most of his evocative love poems in the 1950s, the decade before his marriage, his poems are full of aching passion.