FROM THE MISCELLANIES.

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Cowley is the greatest of the class of poets in the seventeenth century whom Johnson terms the metaphysical school, of which Donne was the father. The chief characteristic of this " metaphysical" style is the affectation of remote and uncommon imagery, often drawn from scientific sources, and anatomized with a hair-splitting minuteness. Cowley's writings are so deeply imbued with this spirit, that he sometimes, appar. ently unconsciously, borrows the very words and images of Donne. His style is unequal, rising frequently to nervous grandeur, sinking often to the lowest simplicity. His vast learning, however, renders his works an exhaustless well of instruction. His prose writing in his prefaces and essays is remarkable for purity and unaffected elegance, and for a genuine love of nature.

FROM THE MISCELLANIES.

THE MOTTO.

-TENTANDA VIA EST, QUÂ ME QUOQUE POSSIM
TOLLERE HUMO, VICTORQUE VIRUM VOLITARE PER ORA.

What shall I do to be for ever known,

Virg. Georg. iii. 8.

And make the age to come my own?

I shall, like beasts or common people, die,
Unless you write my elegy;

Whilst others great, by being born, are grown;
Their mothers' labour, not their own.

In this scale gold, in th' other fame does lie,
The weight of that mounts this so high.
These men are Fortune's jewels, moulded bright;
Brought forth with their own fire and light:

If I, her vulgar stone, for either look,

Out of myself it must be strook.

Yet I must on. What sound is't strikes mine ear?
Sure I Fame's trumpet hear:

It sounds like the last trumpet; for it can

Raise up the buried man.

Unpast Alps stop me; but I'll cut them all,
And march, the Muses' Hannibal..
Hence, all the flattering vanities that lay
Nets of roses in the way!

Hence, the desire of honours or estate,

And all that is not above Fate!

Hence, Love himself, that tyrant of my days,

Which intercepts my coming praise.

Come, my best friends, my books, and lead me on ;

'Tis time that I were gone.

Welcome, great Stagyrite 1 and teach me now

All I was born to know:

1 Aristotle was born at Stagyra, in Macedonia, near the mouth of the Strymon. He was the instructor of Alexander the Great.

L

Thy scholar's victories thou dost far out-do;

He conquer'd th' earth, the whole world you. Welcome, learn'd Cicero ! whose blest tongue and wit Preserves Rome's greatness yet:

Thou art the first of orators; only he

Who best can praise thee, next must be. Welcome the Mantuan swan, Virgil1 the wise!

Whose verse walks highest, but not flies Who brought green Poesy to her perfect age, And made that art which was a rage. Tell me, ye mighty Three! what shall I do To be like one of you?

;

But you have climb'd the mountain's top, there sit
On the calm flourishing head of it,"

And, whilst with wearied steps we upwards go,
See us, and clouds below.

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.

Thou in the Moon's bright chariot, proud and gay,
Dost thy bright wood of stars survey;

And all the year dost with thee bring

Of thousand flowery lights thine own nocturnal spring.

Thou, Scythian-like, dost round thy lands above
The Sun's gilt tent for ever move,

And still, as thou in pomp dost go,
The shining pageants of the world attend thy show.

Nor amidst all these triumphs dost thou scorn
The humble glow-worms to adorn,
And with those living spangles gild
(O greatness without pride!) the bushes of the field.

Night, and her ugly subjects thou dost fright,
And Sleep, the lazy owl of night;

Ashamed, and fearful to appear,

They screen their horrid shapes with the black hemisphere.

1 Virgil was a native of the village of Andes on the Mincius, near Mantua.

* Johnson censures Cowley's frequent use of pronouns as rhymes.

FROM THE HYMN TO LIGHT.

With them there hastes, and wildly takes th' alarm,
Of painted dreams a busy swarm:

At the first opening of thine eye

The various clusters break, the antic atoms fly.

*

At thy appearance, Grief itself is said

To shake his wings, and rouse his head :
And cloudy Care has often took

A gentle beamy smile, reflected from thy look.

When, goddess! thou lift'st up thy waken'd head,
Out of the morning's purple bed,

Thy quire of birds about thee play,

And all the joyful world salutes the rising day.

All the world's bravery, that delights our eyes,
Is but thy several liveries ;

Thou the rich dye on them bestow'st,

Thy nimble pencil paints this landscape as thou go'st.

A crimson garment in the rose thou wear'st;
A crown of studded gold thou bear'st;
The virgin-lilies, in their white,

Are clad but with the lawn of almost naked light.

The violet, Spring's little infant, stands

Girt in thy purple swaddling-bands;
On the fair tulip thou dost doat;

Thou cloth'st it in a gay and party-colour'd coat.

Through the soft ways of Heaven, and air, and sea,
Which open all their pores to thee,

Like a clear river thou dost glide,

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And with thy living stream through the close channels slide.

But the vast ocean of unbounded day,

In th' empyræan Heaven dost stay.
Thy rivers, lakes, and springs, below,

From thence took first their rise, thither at last must flow.1

1 The omitted stanzas of the hymn abound with the conceits of the metaphysical poetry.

FROM THE PINDARIC ODES.

DESTRUCTION OF THE FIRST-BORN, IN THE
66 PLAGUES OF EGYPT."

XIV.

It was the time when the still moon
Was mounted softly to her noon,

And dewy sleep, which from night's secret springs arose,
Gently as Nile the land o'erflows;

When, lo, from the high countries of refinéd day
The golden heaven without allay,—
Whose dross in the creation purged away,
Made up the sun's adulterate ray,-

Michael, the warlike prince, does downward fly,
Swift as the journeys of the sight,

Swift as the race of light,

And with his winged will cuts through the yielding sky,
He passed through many a star, and, as he passed,
Shone (like a star in them) more brightly there
Than they did in their sphere.

On a tall pyramid's pointed head he stopped at last,
And a mild look of sacred pity cast

Down on the sinful land where he was sent

To inflict the tardy punishment.

Ah, yet," said he, " yet, stubborn king, repent,
While thus unarmed I stand,

Ere the keen sword of God fill my commanded hand..
Suffer but yet thyself and thine to live;
Who would, alas, believe,

That it for man," said he,

"So hard to be forgiven should be,
for God so easy to forgive."1

And

yet

XV.

He spoke, and downwards flew,

And o'er his shining form a well-cut cloud he threw,
Made of the blackest fleece of night,

And close wrought to keep in the powerful light;
Yet wrought so fine, it hindered not his flight,
But through the keyholes and the chinks of doors,
And through the narrowest walks of crooked pores,2
He passed more swift and free

Than in wide air the wanton swallows flee.

He took a pointed Pestilence in his hand;

1 Michael is represented in Scripture as the champion of God's armies against his enemies. Dan. xii. 1-3; Rev. xii. 7. See also Milton, Par. Lost, Book vi.

2 These lines exemplify the tedious and often vulgar minuteness of the imagery of Cowley and his school. It is difficult to extract a passage of any length from his finest odes free from these blemishes.

FROM THE DAVIDEIS.

The spirits of thousand mortal poisons made
The strongly tempered blade;

The sharpest sword that e'er was laid

Up in the magazines of God to scourge a wicked land.
Through Egypt's wicked land his march he took,
And as he marched the sacred' first-born strook
Of every womb; none did he spare,

None from the meanest beast to Cenchre's2 purple heir.

XVI.

The swift approach of endless night
Breaks ope the wounded sleepers' rolling eyes
They wake the rest with dying cries,
And darkness doubles the affright.

The mixéd sounds of scatter'd deaths they hear
And lose their parted souls 'twixt grief and fear:
Louder than all, the shrieking women's voice
Pierces this chaos of confused noise;

As brighter lightning cuts a way

Clear and distinguished through the day:
With less complaints the Zoan temples sound
When the adoréd heifer's drown'd,

And no true mark'd successor to be found.3
While health, and strength, and gladness does possess
The festal Hebrew cottages;

The blest destroyer comes not there,
To interrupt the sacred cheer

That new begins their well reformed year.
Upon their doors he read and understood
God's protection writ in blood.

Well was he skilled i' the character divine;
And though he passed by it in haste,
He bowed and worshipp'd as he pass'd,
The mighty mystery through its humble sign.

FROM THE "DAVIDEIS."

THE PECULIAR SEAT OF GOD'S GLORY.

Above the subtile foldings of the sky,
Above the well-set orbs' soft harmony,

Above those petty lamps that gild the night,
There is a place, o'erflown with hallow'd light,

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1 "We are assured by Diodorus, that when a sacred animal died in a house, the affliction was greater and the lamentation louder than at the death of a child."-Pict. Bib., Ex. xi. 6.

The tenth monarch in the fourth dynasty of Egypt is named Acenchris (B. C. 1452). See Encyc. Brit. Art. Egypt. The princes of the Byzantine empire were termed Porphyrogennetoi (born in the purple).

See Pictoral Bible note on Ex. xxxii. 4.

4 The sacred year of the Israelites was made to commence about the spring equinox, with the month Abib, in commemoration of the Exodus from Egypt.