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Delight In Disorder By Ben Herrick Summary

Decent Essays
The poems “Delight in Disorder” by Robert Herrick and “Still to be Neat” by Ben Johnson display similar themes. Both poems are written about natural beauty, “Delight in Disorder”, focuses more on the careless beauty while “Still to be Neat” focuses on the simplicity of natural beauty. Although these two poems are extremely similar because of their themes they are also different. Both authors aim to unveil the true meaning of beauty through being natural and having a balance between disorder and order in one's appearance. In “Delight in disorder”, Herrick describes a woman that is dressed without extreme care and her detail is more enticing and captivating than a woman who has put all their energy and effort into dressing up. Herrick writes in lines 11-14, “A careless shoestring, in whose tie I see a wild civility; Do more bewitch me than when art is too precise in every part” (766), in these lines he is describing the elegance of the woman’s imperfections. Herrick is emphasizing in his poem that if a woman takes extreme care in her appearance it can make her seem rigid and uptight. Herrick believes that a woman whose appearance is disorganized comes across as easy going, and more approachable. Ben Johnson’s, “Still to be Neat”, the woman is described in line 9 as neatly dressed from her hair to her makeup along with her “loosely flowing” clothes (767). Johnson is describing that he prefers and natural beauty rather than the artificial beauty described in the poem. The
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