Jesse Sharpe PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

Herrick’s Church of Earthly Delights 182
Herrick dreams that his penis is a vine that circles and entraps a woman. In ‘Upon the
Nipples of Julia’s Breasts’ (H-440), Herrick’s description of the nipples is actually a list of
natural objects that become visual metaphors for the flesh of Julia’s breasts:
HAve ye beheld (with much delight)
A red-Rose peeping through a white?
Or else a Cherrie (double grac’t)
Within a Lillie? Center plac’t?
Or ever mark’t the pretty beam,
A Strawberry shewes halfe drown’d in Creame?
Or seen rich Rubies blushing through
A pure smooth Pearle, and Orient too?
So like to this, nay all the rest,
Is each neate Niplet of her breast.
However, as mentioned before, it is not just plants that describe the intimate parts of the
body, but the sexual body that creates the plants we see around us. Thus we find in ‘How
Lillies came white’ (H-190) that they got their colour when Cupid,
He with his pretty finger prest
The rubie niplet of her [his mother] breast;
Out of the which, the creame of light,
Like to a Dew,
Fell downe on you,
And made ye white.