Both poets Herrick and Johnson focus on the woman in their respective poems “Delight in Disorder” and “Still to Be Neat.” However, though the topic of both poems overlaps, the way they handle the theme of attraction is slightly different; Herrick’s take leans more into lust whereas Johnson seems to write from tame, physical infatuation with a little more insight beyond the surface of his sight.
Johnson’s structure of the poem reflects the title in the sense that it is tidy and consistent in its iambic tetrameter and the rhyming scheme between pairs of lines that follow one after the other. The woman in the poem dresses and readies herself for some event, “still to be powdered” and “still perfumed” (Johnson 3). There is a bit of a lustful eye similar to Herrick’s tone as the poet writes of watching this woman ready herself and eyes her features such as the “robes loosely flowing” and “hair as free” (Johnson 9), but in comparison to the viewing eye in “Delight in Disorder,” Johnson’s attraction to this woman is fairly conservative. Though also in comparison to Herrick, Johnson has the addition of many semicolons, periods, and commas, almost making it seem as though his gaze lingers over the woman for a considerable amount of time.
On the other hand, Herrick has fewer punctuation marks, which perhaps represents his skimming gaze over this woman, only noting her outward features with little thought for anything else whereas Johnson notes that beneath her looks, “All is not sweet, all is not sound” (Johnson 6). This may be in reference to the complexity that is a woman or perhaps just to the idea that she dresses modestly but may desire more as Johnson goes on to speak of the desperateness to be noticed by her and the secret “adulteries” that is her appearance. Herrick’s gaze focuses less on what is beneath the “art” of a woman’s appearance but more just on what his eyes can see on the surface. He focuses on the little details and items that the woman dons such as the “erring lace” (Herrick 5) or the enthralling “crimson stomacher” (Herrick 6). All these details, to Herrick, makes up a disorder, a “wild civility” (Herrick 12) that attracts him to this woman, but nothing more. This disorder can also be seen in the lack of a consistent rhyming scheme and alternating meters of the lines.
Though both poems reflect on the outward beauty of a woman, Herrick takes a shallower view whereas Johnson does briefly look beyond the outside.
Caitlyn Klemm
Introduction to Poetry 