Robert Herrick was a 17th-century English lyric poet. He is best known for his book of poems, Hesperides, which includes the carpe diem poem "To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time", with the first line "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may".
Background
Robert Herrick was born in August 1591, at Cheapside, London. His father, Nicholas Herrick, was a prosperous goldsmith of substantial Leicestershire descent. He was named for his uncle, Robert Herrick (or Heyrick), a prosperous MP for Leicester, who had bought the land Greyfriars Abbey stood on after its dissolution. Nicholas Herrick died in a fall from a fourth-floor window in November 1592, when Robert was a year old (whether this was suicide remains unclear).
Education
It is more likely that (like his uncle's children) he attended The Merchant Taylors' School. In 1607 he became apprenticed to his other uncle, Sir William Herrick, a goldsmith and jeweler to the king. The apprenticeship ended after only six years when Herrick, at age twenty-two, matriculated at St John's College, Cambridge (1613). He later migrated to Trinity Hall graduating in 1617. He was granted the B.A. in 1617 and the M.A. in 1620.
Upon his graduation in 1617, Herrick returned to London, where as an established wit he associated with Ben Jonson and other literary men of the taverns. In 1627 he became military chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham and in 1629 was appointed vicar at Dean Prior, Devonshire. A strong Royalist, Herrick was expelled from his parish by the Long Parliament in 1647. He then lived in London until reinstated by Charles II in 1662. When King Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, Herrick petitioned for his own restoration to his living. He had obtained favour by writing verses celebrating the births of both Charles II and his brother James before the Civil War. Herrick became the vicar of Dean Prior again in the summer of 1662 and lived there until his death in October 1674, at the age of 83. His date of death is not known, but he was buried on 15 October.