books out of twelve were published; the specimen given shows how well Cowley could handle the heroic couplet. It is evident that Milton had read this neglected poem. Cowley's few prose essays entitle him to rank with Addison and Goldsmith as master of a simple and graceful prose. The Wish. Well then; I now do plainly see, Does of all meats the soonest cloy. And they, methinks, deserve my pity, Who for it can endure the stings, Of this great hive, the city. Ah, yet, ere I descend to th' grave, May I a small house and large garden have! And a few friends, and many books; both true, Both wise, and both delightfull too! And since Love neer wil from me flee, A mistresse moderately fair, And good as guardian-angels are, Onely beloved, and loving me! Oh, founts! Oh when in you shall I My selfe, eas'd of unpeaceful thoughts, espy? Oh fields! Oh woods! when, when shall I be made The happy tenant of your shade? Here's the spring-head of pleasure's flood; Where all the riches lye, that she Has coin'd and stampt for good. Pride and ambition here, Onely in far-fetcht metaphors appear; Here nought but winds can hurtfull murmurs scatter, And nought but eccho flatter. The gods, when they descended, hither And therefore we may boldly say, How happy here should I, And one dear she, live, and embracing, dye? I should have then this only fear, Lest men, when they my pleasures see, And so make a city here. From the Poem 'On the Death of Mr Crashaw.' Poet and Saint! to thee alone are given The two most sacred names of earth and heaven, A fever burns thee, and Love lights the fire. Angels (they say) brought the famed chappel there, When joyn'd with so much piety as his. Ah, mighty God, with shame I speak 't, and grief, Ah that our greatest faults were in belief! So far at least, great saint, to pray to thee. Opposed by our old enemy, adverse chance, Heaven and Hell-from the 'Davideis.' Above those petty lamps that gild the night, Is stretcht out far, nor its own bounds can find: Beneath the silent chambers of the earth, In imitation of Horace (Odes I. v.). To whom now, Pyrrha, art thou kinde? Dost thou thy golden locks unbinde, And with large bounty open set All the bright stores of thy rich cabinet? Of thy changed faith complain? Of so camæleon-like an hew, That still their colour changes with it too? How oft, alas, will he admire The blackness of the skies? Who ne're, alas, before had been at sea! No smallest cloud appears. He sees thee gentle, fair and gay, And trusts the faithless April of thy May. Unhappy thrice unhappy he, T' whom thou untryed dost shine! But there's no danger now for me, Since o're Loretto's shrine, In witness of the shipwrack past My consecrated vessel hangs at last. Anacreontics. Drinking. The thirsty earth soaks up the rain, Fill up the bowl then, fill it high, Fill the bowl with rosie wine, To day is ours; what do we feare? Happy insect, what can bee In happiness compared to thee? Thee countrey hindes with gladness hear, Thee Phoebus loves, and does inspire; To thee of all things upon earth, Dost neither age nor winter know. Then all the wide-extended sky, And Virgil's sacred work shall die; And he himself shall see in one fire shine Rich Nature's ancient Troy, though built by hands divine. Whom thunder's dismal noise, And all that prophets and apostles louder spake, And all the creatures' plain-conspiring voice, Could not, whilst they liv'd, awake, And open tombs, and open eyes; To the long sluggards of five thousand years. Some from birds, from fishes some, And where th' attending soul naked and shivering stands, As disperss'd soldiers at the trumpet's call Unhappy most, like tortur'd men, Their joints new set, to be new rackt again. To mountains they for shelter pray, The mountains shake, and run about no less confus'd than they. The Chronicle, a Ballad. Margarita first possest, If I remember well, my brest, But when a while the wanton maid Martha soon did it resign To the beauteous Catharine. Beauteous Catharine gave place, (Though loth and angry she to part With the possession of my heart) To Elisa's conqu'ring face. Elisa 'till this hour might raign, Had she not evil counsels ta'ne. Fundamental laws she broke, And still new favorites she chose, 'Till up in arms my passions rose, And cast away her yoke. Mary then and gentle Ann Both to reign at once began; And sometimes Mary was the fair, And sometimes Ann the crown did wear, And sometimes both I obey'd. Another Mary then arose, And did rigorous laws impose. Long, alas, should I have been Had not Rebecca set me free. When fair Rebecca set me free, 'Twas then a golden time with mee. But soon those pleasures fled, For the gracious princess dy'd In her youth and beautie's pride, And Judith reigned in her sted. One month, three days and half an hour And so Susanna took her place. But when Isabella came Arm'd with a resistless flame, And th' artillery of her eye, Whilst she proudly marcht about Greater conquests to find out, She beat out Susan by the by. But in her place I then obey'd Black-ey'd Besse her vice-roy maid, To whom ensu'd a vacancy. Thousand worse passions then possest The inter-regnum of my brest. Bless me from such an anarchy ! Gentle Henrietta than And a third Mary next began, Then Jone, and Jane, and Audria. And then a pretty Thomasine, And then another Katharine, And then a long et cætera. But should I now to you relate The strength and riches of their state, The powder, patches, and the pins, The ribbans, jewels, and the rings, The lace, the paint, and warlike things That make up all their magazins : If I should tell the politick arts To take and keep men's hearts, The letters, embassies and spies, The frowns, and smiles, and flatteries, The quarrels, tears, and perjuries, Numberless, nameless mysteries! And all the little lime-twigs laid By Matchavil the waiting-maid; I more voluminous should grow, (Chiefly if I like them should tell All change of weathers that befell) Then Holinshead or Stow. But I will briefer with them be, Since few of them were long with me. My present emperess does claime, Whom God grant long to reign. Lord Bacon-from 'Ode to the Royal Society.' In which our wandring predecessors went, Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last; The barren wilderness he past, And from the mountains top of his exalted wit, But life did never to one man allow From the Elegy 'On the Death of Mr William Hervey.' It was a dismal and a fearful night; Scarce could the morn drive on th' unwilling light, When sleep, death's image, left my troubled brest By something liker death possest. My eyes with tears did uncommanded flow, And on my soul hung the dull weight What bell was that? Ah me! too much I know. My sweet companion, and my gentle peere, Did not with more reluctance part My dearest friend, would I had dyed for thee! If once my griefs prove tedious too. As sullen ghosts stalk speechless by By friendship given of old to fame. For much above my self I lov'd them too. Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights, We spent them not in toys, in lusts, or wine; Wit, eloquence, and poetry; Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine. Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say, The love betwixt us two? Henceforth, ye gentle trees, for ever fade; Or your sad branches thicker joyne, And into darksome shades combine; Dark as the grave wherein my friend is laid. Henceforth no learned youths beneath you sing, 'Till all the tuneful birds to your bows they bring ; No tuneful birds play with their wonted chear, And call the learned youths to hear; No whistling winds through the glad branches fly, But all with sad solemnitie, Mute and unmoved be, Mute as the grave wherein my friend does ly. Epitaph on the Living Author. Here, stranger, in this humble nest, Here Cowley sleeps; here lies, 'Scaped all the toils that life molest, And its superfluous joys. Here, in no sordid poverty, And no inglorious ease, He braves the world, and can defy The little earth he asks, survey : Is he not dead, indeed? 'Light lie that earth,' good stranger, pray, 'Nor thorn upon it breed!' With flowers, fit emblem of his fame, Compass your poet round; With flowers of every fragrant name, Be his warm ashes crowned! Hymn-To Light. First-born of chaos, who so fair didst come From the old negro's darksome womb! The melancholly mass put on kind looks and smil'd. Thou tide of glory, which no rest dost know, Thou golden shower of a true Jove! Who does in thee descend, and heav'n to earth make love! . . . Say from what golden quivers of the sky, Do all thy winged arrows fly? Swiftness and power by birth are thine : From thy great sire they came, thy sire the word divine. Swift as light, thoughts their empty carrere run, Thy race is finisht, when begun ; Let a post-angel start with thee, And thou the goal of earth shall reach as soon as he. . . . When, goddess, thou liftst up thy wakened head, Out of the morning's purple bed, Thy quire of birds about thee play, And all the joyful world salutes the rising day. A crimson garment in the rose thou wear'st; The violet, spring's little infant, stands, And with thy living stream through the close channels slide. But where firm bodies thy free course oppose, Of colours mingled, light, a thick and standing lake. But the vast ocean of unbounded day In th' empyrean heaven does stay. Thy rivers, lakes, and springs below, From thence took first their rise, thither at last must flow. Cowley holds a distinguished position among the prose writers of this age; he has been placed at the head of those who cultivated that clear, easy, and natural style which was subsequently employed and improved by Dryden, Tillotson, Sir William Temple, and Addison. Johnson exaggerated the contrast between the excellence of Cowley's prose and the many defects of his poetry-for Johnson bore hard on Cowley as 'almost the last' of the metaphysical poets, though 'undoubtedly the best,' but addicted to artificial conceits and 'lax and lawless versification.' 'No author,' says he, 'ever kept his verse and his prose at a greater distance from each other. His thoughts are natural, and his style has a smooth and placid equability, which has never yet obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far-sought or hard-laboured; but all is easy without feebleness, and familiar without grossness.' There is also wit and humour, with an occasional touch of satire; the writer's longing for peace and retirement is a too frequently recurring theme. The prose works of Cowley extend to but sixty folio pages, and consist of Essays (appended to the collected edition of the works in 1668), which treat of Liberty, Solitude, Obscurity, Agriculture, The Garden, Greatness, Avarice, The Dangers of an Honest Man in much Company, The Shortness of Life and Uncertainty of Riches, The Danger of Procrastination, Of My Self, &c. He wrote also (apparently in the year of the Protector's death, though the earliest known printed copy dates from 1661) a Discourse, by way of Vision, concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell, and a Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy (1661). Of My Self. It is a hard and nice subject for a man to write of himself. It grates his own heart to say any thing of disparagement, and the reader's ears to hear any thing of praise from him. There is no danger from me of offending him in this kind; neither my mind, nor my body, nor my fortune, allow me any materials for that vanity. It is sufficient for my own contentment that they have preserv'd me from being scandalous, or remarkable on the defective side. But besides that, I shall here speak of my self only in relation to the subject of these precedent discourses, and shall be likelier thereby to fall into the contempt than rise up to the estimation of most people. As far as my memory can return back into my past life, before I knew or was capable of guessing what the world, or glories, or business of it were, the natural affections of my soul gave me a secret bent of aversion from them, as some plants are said to turn away from others, by an antipathy imperceptible to themselves and inscrutable to man's understanding. Even when I was a very young boy at school, instead of running about on holy-days, and playing with my fellows, I was wont to steal from them, and walk into the fields, either alone with a book, or with some one companion, if I could find any of the same temper. I was then too so much an enemy to all constraint that my masters could never prevail on me by any persuasions or encouragements to learn without book the common rules of grammar; in which they dispens'd with me alone, because they found I made a shift to do the usual exercise out of my own reading and observation. That I was then of the same mind as I am now (which, I confess, I wonder at my self) may appear by the latter end of an ode, which I made when I was but thirteen years old, and which was then printed with many other verses. The beginning of it is boyish, but of this part which I here set down (if a very little were corrected) I should hardly now be much asham'd. This only grant me, that my means may lye Not from great deeds, but good alone. Books should, not business, entertain the light; My garden painted o'er Thus would I double my life's fading space; These unbought sports, this happy state, To morrow let my sun his beams display, Or in clouds hide them; I have liv'd to day. You may see by it, I was even then acquainted with the poets (for the conclusion is taken out of Horace); and perhaps it was the immature and immoderate love of them which stamp'd first, or rather engrav'd these characters in me: they were like letters cut into the bark of a young tree, which with the tree still grow proportionably. But, how this love came to be produc'd in me so early is a hard question: I believe I can tell the particular little chance that filled my head first with such chimes of verse, as have never since left ringing |