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To His Honoured Kinsman, Sir Richard Stone.
By Robert Herrick
To this white temple of my heroes here,
Beset with stately figures everywhere
Of such rare saintships, who did here consume
Their lives in sweets, and left in death perfume,
Come, thou brave man! And bring with thee a stone
Unto thine own edification.
High are these statues here, besides no less
Strong than the heavens for everlastingness:
Where build aloft; and, being fix'd by these,
Set up thine own eternal images.
Extra Info:
To his honoured kinsman, Sir Richard Stone, son of John Stone, sergeant-at-law, the brother of Julian Stone, Herrick's mother. He died in 1660.
To this white temple of my heroes. Ben Jonson's admirers were proud to call themselves "sealed of the tribe of Ben," and Herrick, a devout Jonsonite, seems to have imitated the idea so far as to plan sometimes, as here, a Temple, sometimes a Book (see infra, sometimes a City, a Plantation, a Calendar, a College, of his own favourite friends, to whom his poetry was to give immortality. The earliest direct reference to this plan is in his address to John Selden, the antiquary, in which he writes:--
"A city here of heroes I have made
Upon the rock whose firm foundation laid
Shall never shrink; where, making thine abode,
Live thou a Selden, that's a demi-god".
It is noteworthy that the poems which contain the clearest reference to this Temple (or its variants) are mostly addressed to kinsfolk, e.g., this to Sir Richard Stone, to Mrs. Penelope Wheeler, to Mr. Stephen Soame, and to Susanna and Thomas Herrick. Other recipients of the honour are Sir Edward Fish and Dr. Alabaster, Jack Crofts, Master J. Jincks, etc.
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