TO A GENTLEWOMAN OBJECTING TO HIM HIS GRAY HAIRS:
DID YOU KNOW. . . ?

• One of Herrick’s shortest verses, published in 1647 when the poet was over fifty years old, is the perennial classic “I’m rubber and you’re glue/Everything you say bounces off of me/And sticks to you.”

• People with gray hair are often referred to as “octogenarians.” This phrase come from the fact that, in olden days, as someone’s hair lost its natural pigmentation, they also grew tentacles and secreted an ink-like substance.

• Robert Herrick never had a date. No mystery there.

• People in Herrick’s day only lived to an average of twenty-six years old.

• Instead of “old age is just a state of mind,” people used to say “gray hair is just a state of mind,” until they figured out that it wasn’t.