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Poetry · Poem

Delight in Disorder

Robert HerrickSeventeenth-century EnglishPoem
SOURCE TEXT · English original
A SWEET disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction:
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher:
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbands to flow confusedly:
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat:
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part.
Cultural reading

Reading the poem

A list of slightly disarranged details of dress—a thrown lawn, a straying lace, a careless shoe-string—builds to the claim that such 'wild civility' bewitches the speaker more than art that is too precise in every part.

Language notes

Text and edition

The English text follows the fixed historical witness in The Oxford Book of English Verse; no modern third-party translation is included.