Love Quote by Robert Herrick

Herrick’s line flirts with submission while quietly keeping the upper hand. “Bid me to love” sounds like a courtly command, the kind a suitor might accept to prove devotion, but the syntax makes love feel less like a spontaneous force than a performable duty. That’s the slyness: he’s offering obedience, yet he’s also framing affection as something he can choose to grant on request. The speaker is pliable, but not powerless.

The compact bargain of the sentence is part of its charm. “Bid” carries social weight, hinting at hierarchy or ritualized courtship; “give” turns emotion into a gift with a giver who retains agency. Even “to thee,” with its intimate, slightly archaic directness, pulls the addressee close while keeping the exchange formal, like a vow delivered across a polished table.

Context matters: Herrick is a Cavalier poet, writing in a culture where love poetry often plays games with consent, status, and performance. The Cavaliers prized elegance, speed, and a kind of smiling bravado; feelings are real, but they’re also staged. Read that way, the line becomes a miniature of the period’s romantic economy: desire expressed as contract, sincerity filtered through wit.

Subtextually, it’s also a test. If love can be summoned by command, then the beloved’s power is immense; if it can’t, the speaker gets to claim he tried, that he would have loved if properly “bid.” Herrick compresses devotion and self-protection into one graceful offer.