Delight in Disorder - Poetry Study Guide (LitCharts)

THE ALLURE OF MESSINESS
In Robert Herrick’s “Delight in Disorder,” a speaker relishes the thought of women’s messy, “disorder[ly]” clothes: untied laces, wrinkled skirts, and wild ribbons. That kind of disorder, the speaker says, “bewitch[es]” him more than when a woman’s clothes are neat, elegant, and “precise”—not least because messy clothes make him think about the various sexy ways those clothes could have gotten messed up! Through his “delight in disorder,” the speaker suggests that beauty and sexiness lie not in polished perfection, but in imperfection.

Robert Herrick's "Delight in Disorder" was first published in his 1648 collection Hesperides—a book that reflects all the joie de vivre of the 17th-century English Cavalier poets.