In Robert Herrick’s brief lyric, the poet Sappho returns from a meadow, her apron brimming with gathered flowers. She’s blushing and smiling so radiantly that the speaker imagines she’s been made pregnant by Favonius, the warm west wind of spring. The tone is tender and playfully flirtatious—caught between innocent admiration and a hint that nature itself is falling for her. As she passes, the apron gives off a fragrance more divine than the lap of Proserpine, the goddess whose own flower-gathering leads her to the underworld. Herrick doesn’t pause to moralize; he simply holds up a fleeting moment where beauty, scent, and youthful warmth fuse into something quietly ecstatic. The poem leaves you with the feel of a perfect spring day, when the air seems blessed by a passing grace.
THE APRON OF FLOWERS — Summary
To gather flowers, Sappha went, And homeward she did bring Within her lawny continent, The treasure of the Spring.
She smiling blush'd, and blushing smiled, And sweetly blushing thus, She look'd as she'd been got with child By young Favonius.
Her apron gave, as she did pass, An odour more divine, More pleasing too, than ever was The lap of Proserpine.