ON HIS MAJESTY'S RECOVERY FROM THE SMALL-POX, 1633. I do confess, the over-forward tongue A well-meant spite, or loyal injury. Let then the name be alter'd; let us say To show the ill, not make it; and to tell Let there be new computes, let reckoning be Let not the Kingdom's Acts hereafter run But from His Health, as in a better strain. That plac'd Him on His throne; This makes Him reign. A NEW YEAR'S GIFT TO BRIAN LORD BISHOP OF SARUM UPON THE AUTHOR'S ENTERING INTO HOLY ORDERS, 1638. Now that the village reverence doth lie hid, As Egypt's Wisdom did, In birds and beasts, and that the tenant's soul So that the cock and hen speak more Truly make love have wings: Though we no flying present have to pay, But, being the Canon bars me wit and wine, Being the bays must yield unto the Cross, So that my raptures are to steal And that my each day's breath Must be a daily death: Without all strain or fury I must than1 Tell you this New-year brings you a new man. New, not as th' year, to run the same course o'er Lest in the man himself there be a round, And that return seem to make good Motion, as in a mill, Is busy standing still; And by such wheeling we but thus prevail, 1 then. 2 moisture, i. e. the blood. Nor new by solemnising looser toys, Taking the flag and trumpet from the sin, As some men silence loud perfumes More wary, not more good. Sins too may be severe, and so, no doubt, But new, by th' using of each part aright, That false direction come not from the eye, That neither that the way aver Is not the right, but rich; That thus the foot being fix'd, thus led the eye, I pitch my walk low, but my prospect high. New too, to teach my opinions not t' submit Nor yet to walk on edges, where they may Nor to search out for new paths, where Where no impression stays; Nor servile thus, nor curious, may I then Approve my faith to Heaven, my life to men. But I who thus present myself as new, Am thus made new by you. Had not your rays dwelt on me, one long night Your beams exhale me from among Things tumbling in the common throng. Now gives not, but returns. To others then be this a day of thrift: ON A VIRTUOUS YOUNG GENTLEWOMAN THAT DIED SUDDENLY. When the old flaming Prophet climb'd the sky, That she could die, or that she could live here. ABRAHAM COWLEY. [ABRAHAM COWLEY was the posthumous son of a London stationer, and was born in the latter part of the year 1618. He was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained from 1636 to 1643. He took the royalist side during the Civil War, and helped the King's cause both at Oxford and afterwards as Secretary to the Queen in her exile in Paris. In 1655 he returned to England, where he remained under strict surveillance till Cromwell's death; then he rejoined his friends in France. At the Restoration he came back, and lived in retirement at Barnes and Chertsey till his death in 1667. His poems were published in the following order: Poetical Blossomes, 1633; Love's Riddle, a comedy, 1638; The Mistress, 1647; The Guardian (surreptitiously published), 1650: the first folio edition of the Works, 1656; other editions of the same followed with the addition of such new poems and essays as he produced from time to time. The most complete editions of his works are those which appeared in 1708 and 1721.] The history of Cowley's reputation offers an easy text for a discourse on the variations of the standard of taste. A marvel of precocity, widely known as a poet at fifteen; the poetical wonder of Cambridge; so famous at thirty that pirates and forgers made free with his name on their title-pages while he was serving the exiled queen; issuing in self-defence, at thirty-eight, a folio of his poems which was destined to pass through eight editions in a generation; accepted by his literary contemporaries, men of cultivated intelligence, as not only the greatest among themselves, but greater than all that had gone before; buried in state at Westminster by the side of Chaucer and Spenser, and ranked by his biographer, a sober critic, as equal not only to them but to 'the authors of that true antiquity, the best of the Greeks and Romans'; -in thirty years he had sunk out of notice and his name had become a mere memory, mentioned honoris causa but no more. 'Though |