31. A Sister ... about I'll lead. "Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife?" 1 Cor. ix. 5.
35. Mercy and Truth live with thee. 2 Sam. xv. 20.
38. To please those babies in your eyes. The phrase "babies [i.e., dolls] in the eyes" is probably only a translation of its metaphor, involved in the use of the Latin pupilla (a little girl), or "pupil," for the central spot of the eye. The metaphor doubtless arose from the small reflections of the inlooker, which appear in the eyes of the person gazed at; but we meet with it both intensified, as in the phrase "to look babies in the eyes" (= to peer amorously), and with its origin disregarded, as in Herrick, where the "babies" are the pupils, and have an existence independent of any inlooker.
Small griefs find tongue. Seneca, Hippol. 608:
Full casks. So G. Herbert, Jacula Prudentum (1640): Empty vessels sound most.
48. Thus woe succeeds a woe as wave a wave. Horace, Ep. II. ii. 176: Velut unda supervenit unda. Κύματα κακῶν and κακῶν τρικυμία are common phrases in Greek tragedy.
49. Cherry-pit. Printed in the 1654 edition of Witts Recreations, where it appears as:—
"Nicholas and Nell did lately sit
Playing for sport at cherry-pit;
They both did throw, and, having thrown,
He got the pit and she the stone".
51. Ennobled numbers. This poem is often quoted to prove that Herrick's country incumbency was
