‘Cherrie-Ripe’
Cherrie-ripe, Ripe, Ripe, I cry,
Full and faire ones; come and buy:
If so be, you ask me where
They doe grow? I answer, There,
Where my Julia’s lips doe smile;
There’s the Land, or Cherry-Ile:
Whose Plantations fully show
All the yeere, where Cherries grow.
This short poem’s interest comes from its rapid changes of tone and speaker. These add complexity, surprise, and irony to what would otherwise be a cliché (‘my girlfriend’s lips look like cherries’).
The first four lines seem to belong to a busy street-scene. ‘Cherry-ripe’ was a call used by hawkers selling cherries in 17th century London. The first line tells us that the speaker of the poem is crying it. Is the poem being spoken by a street-trader (perhaps a young woman)?
In the third line a customer appears. At first, it seems we might be hearing them speak directly (as in drama) – but then it becomes apparent that the poem’s first speaker is reporting the question. More surprising is the statement that ‘you ask me where they doe grow’. We ourselves have been drawn into the scene as participants, playing the part of the customer. Perhaps this makes us imagine the setting more clearly. Rather than just listening to a story, we are taking part in it.
Another twist comes in the fifth line. We expect to be told where the cherries were grown. The word ‘There’ left dangling at the end of the fourth line looks like it’s going to lead to a geographic location. Instead, the answer is ‘Where my Julia’s lips do smile’.
All at once, the poem’s conceit is revealed. The tone of the poem changes instantly as we realise that we’ve not been listening to a street-hawker, but to a poet self-consciously using a familiar metaphor. The fact that it’s a cliché means that the revelation is easy and sudden, helping to make the change of tone crisp.
Now we see the opening lines in a different light and our place in the poem becomes clearer. The dramatic setting was completely different to the one we first imagined. We weren’t talking on the street to a fruit-seller, but probably in private with a friend who wishes to confide in us about his mistress. We, reading the poem, now understand what’s been going on after some initial confusion. This is probably how a friend of Herrick’s would have felt if he had begun a conversation by crying ‘cherrie-ripe, ripe, ripe’, and then explained that he’d been driven to distraction by Julia’s lips.
This sudden about-turn adds dollops of irony and narrative complexity to what, so far, has been a poem of only five lines. We can also imagine, on its basis, something of the psychology of the poem’s speaker who is willing to indulge in such games. Maybe he’s really being driven to distraction by love, or maybe he’s a bit of a poseur who enjoys putting people at a conversational disadvantage by parading his excesses of passion.
The poem still has three lines to run at this point. What does Herrick do with them? Not much, I’m afraid. The claim that cherries grow ‘all the yeere’ on Julia’s lips does neatly imply that Julia is more fruitful than the earth itself. Whilst nature blooms only in Spring and Summer, Julia keeps on giving all the year round. Apart from that, however, the last three lines do very little when compared to the opening five. They merely elaborate on the ‘lips like cherries’ conceit which isn’t really that interesting in itself.
Despite this slight bagginess (characteristic of many of Herrick’s poems) I think we can count the poem a success. It takes skill to make clichés interesting. The pleasure of this poem comes from the story it creates about us, as readers, discovering the familiar conceit. All love-affairs are clichés, but none of us can resist a story which makes them seem new again.
Comments