"novels that pander / to my taste for candor / give me a pleasure sublime"

Public service announcement:

If you have recently read an ox-cart's worth of Japanese poems about the scattering of sakura petals, and the transience of life they represent, and the beauty of said transience, and the refinement such appreciation evinces, you might have a slightly idiosyncratic reaction to Robert Herrick's "To Cherry-Blossoms":

Ye may simper, blush and smile,
And perfume the air awhile;
But, sweet things, ye must be gone,
Fruit, ye know, is coming on;
Then, ah! then, where is your grace,
Whenas cherries come in place?

In my case, it was to all but fell out of my chair as I tried to keep from howling with laughter. Since said chair was in a coffee shop, this got me some odd looks -- I would probably have been better off just laughing my butt off. Er, off me, instead of off the chair.

It doesn't help that this is the first in a short series, in Hesperides, of codedly smutty verses on flowers.

Fair warning.

---L.