The Hag

Summary

In The Hag, Robert Herrick paints a vivid nocturnal scene of a witch—riding through stormy darkness with the Devil—wreaking havoc across land and sea. Armed with thorn and bramble, she gallops fearlessly through tangled woods and foul weather, disturbing both man and beast. Her passage summons storms, frightens ghosts from their graves, and embodies the raw, chaotic energy of night. Compressed into tight stanzas, Herrick’s poem blends folk superstition with atmospheric poetry, showcasing a world ruled by primal fear and witchly power.


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The Hag is astride,
This night for to ride;
The Devill and shee together:
Through thick, and through thin,
Now out, and then in,
Though ne’r so foule be the weather.

A Thorn or a Burr
She takes for a Spurre:
With a lash of a Bramble she rides now,
Through Brakes and through Bryars,
O’re Ditches, and Mires,
She followes the Spirit that guides now.

No Beast, for his food,
Dares now range the wood;
But husht in his laire he lies lurking:
While mischiefs, by these,
On Land and on Seas,
At noone of Night are working,

The storme will arise,
And trouble the skies;
This night, and more for the wonder,
The ghost from the Tomb
Affrighted shall come,
Cal’d out by the clap of the Thunder.