So... this is a very interesting song cycle, I'm a bit of a Robert Herrick fan actually, and I think you capture the slightly-depressive-but-jovial feel in his short, rather to-the-point poetry. I think the last song is by far the most successful of the lot (closely followed by 'Upon Julia's hair Filled with Dew') which in its pensive harmony and the generous amount of space you give to the words reminded me alot of the more morose bits of Butterworth songs (near the end of Bredon Hill, maybe). The 6/8 of 'Julia's Hair' fit the words perfectly, and I think harmonically and melodically this was also very strong. The long phrases in 'Julia's Breath' should be broken up, and it would probably be advisable to repeat the words as many times as you break them up rather than have a breath in the middle of the word Purcell-style; otherwise though, I thought this was a very creative setting and I liked your idea for it. I thought the harmony possibly went a bit wayward in 'To Daisies', especially in the accompaniment figure from b.182: I can see what you're getting at here but I think it could do with being slightly tidied up.
Generally, I thought you created a very cohesive yet moving mood that showed a strong progression towards the end, especially highlighted by the atmospheric return of IV at VIII. The immense piano chords - you
could consider taming these a little. It's certainly possible to do that but I don't know without trying whether it might obstruct the flow of the performance, on account of taking so long: bar 271 requires changing hands three times, for instance, which is a bit of a pain if not much else. There were some really atmospheric bits of word setting (eg. the triplets at 39), and while I thought while listening through that there were occasionally some points where the word-setting didn't quite seem natural, I just sang through it and couldn't find them really, so it was probably just the recording, lol. So, wow. Well done.
