The Parson’s Country House Poem

Abstract

This article demonstrates how early modern English poet-priest Robert Herrick uses verse form to examine tensions arising from food scarcity. I uncover Herrick’s creation of the “parsonage poem,” a subcategory of the country house poem through which he examines the impossible demands parsons faced in times of dearth. Living on agricultural tithes yet expected to redistribute food to feed their parishes, parsons struggled to measure resources and restrict consumption to make insufficient stores stretch further. Through careful manipulations of meter, rhyme, syntax, and syllable, Herrick articulates the unsustainability of the parson’s position and explores its relationship to declining rural communities.