NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
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Vol. V. No. 44 
@)|_A WEEKLY JOURNAL DEVOTED TO THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE NORTH SHORE 
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24 Pages 
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HOURS WITH LESS KNOWN WRITERS. 
BY D. F. LAMSON. 
Abraham Cowley was the first in order 
of time in the list of English poets, 
whose works were edited and whose 
lives were written by Doctor Johnson. 
He was born in 1618, in the reign of 
James I., only ten years after the birth 
of Milton and but two years after the 
death of Shakespeare. He died in 1667. 
He numbered among his contempora- 
ries, therefore, such men as Quarles, 
Hall, Fuller, Taylor, Sir Matthew 
Hale, Davenaut and Milton, names as 
great as any that poetry, law-and divinity 
can boast. He is said very early to have 
imbibed a taste for poetry, and to have 
published a collection of verses under 
the appropriate name of “‘ Poetical Blos- 
soms, ’’ in his sixteenth year. 
Though now but little read, Cowley 
may justly be classed as one of the first 
poets of the second rank in his age, 
Milton of course towering above all who 
surrounded him like a Mont Blanc 
among Alps. The ‘‘Comus,’’ and 
other of Milton’s minor poems, had 
been published in Cowley’s lifetime, but 
they had not yet secured their world-wide 
and undying fame. Johnson says, “‘It 
‘may be affirmed that he brought to his 
poetic labors a mind replete with learn- 
ing, and that his pages are embellished 
with all the ornaments which books 
could supply; that he was the first who 
imparted to English numbers the en- 
thusiasm of the greater ode and the 
gayety of the less, and that he was 
equally qualified for sprightly sallies and 
for lofty flights.’’ His poems evince 
labor and accuracy, learning and taste; 
he won the admiration even of Muilton, 
which speaks volumns in his praise; he 
writes in imitation of Puidar and strives 
to revive the harmonies of the classics; 
he is too full of antithesis and the play of 
an eccentric intellect to captivate the 
present age, but he is still deserving of 
being read by the student of poetry for 
his varied numbers and his gleams of 
thought. 
The little poem on ‘‘Gold’’ sounds 
a note that is needed in every age that 
- 
suffers from the auri sacra fames, and 
that worships Mammon; 
** A mighty pain to love it is, 
And ’tis a pain that pain to miss, 
But, ofall pains, the greatest pain 
It is to love, but love in vain. 
Virtue now, nor noble blood, 
Nor wit, by love is understood. 
Gold alone does passion move! 
Gold monopolizes love! 
A curse on her and on the man 
Who this trafic first began! 
A curse on him who found the ore! 
A curse on him who digged the store! 
A curse on him who did refine it! 
A curse on him who first did coin it! 
A curse, all curses else above, 
On him who used it first in love! 
Gold begets in brethren hate; 
Gold, in families, debate; 
Gold does friendship separate, 
Gold does civil wars create, 
These are the small harms,of it; 
Gold, alas! does love beget.”’ 
And yet, Cowley lived long before the 
times of California and modern plu- 
tocracy were dreamed of. 
A remarkable resemblance may be 
noted between Emerson’s fine poem, 
a The Humble Bee’’ and Cowley’ s lines, 
The Grass-hopper;’’ the breadth of 
two centuries between the English Roy- 
alist and the New England Puritan and 
Transcendentalist makes the similarity 
of conceit and even language the more 
striking. It is certainly one of the curi- 
osities of literature. Who can fail to 
recognize something 
these lines? 
‘Happy insect! what can be 
In happiness compared to thee? 
Fed with nourishment divine, 
The dewy morning’s gentle wine! 
All the fields which thou dost see 
All the plants belong to thee; 
Happy insect! happy thou, 
Dost neither age nor winter know; 
But when thou’st drunk, and danced, and 
sung 
Thy fill, the flowery leaves among, 
(Voluptuous and wise withal 
Epicurean animal! ) 
Sated with thy summer feast, 
Thou retir’st to endless rest.”’ 
Emersonian in 
Note the exact resemblances in many of 
the lines between the earlier and later 
poems, not only in the thought and 
structure but in the words and phrases; 
call to mind especially the ‘“* Epicurean 
of June,’’ with the same Elisabethan 
elongation of a syllable to preserve the 
metre. 
One of the finest applications made 
in poetry of anything in Hebrew history 
is made by Cowley to Bacon, the great 
philosopher, who like the Jewish’ law- 
giver— 
**Did on the very border stand 
Of the blessed promised Land; 
And from the mountain’s top of his ex- 
alted wit 
Saw it himself, and showed us it; 
But life did never to one man allow 
Time to discover worlds and conquer 
too;”’ 
an image nobly amplified by Macaulay 
in his Essay on Bacon; an image true of 
many a leader, reformer and martyr, 
who have died on the threshold of 
success, leaving others to reap the re- 
ward of their toil. 
Cowley’s prose has been adjudged as 
even better than his,poetry. His style is 
smooth and easy, with no harsh in- 
versions or far-fetched conceits; his 
language is clear and his periods well- 
balanced and harmonious. It is perhaps 
hardly too much to say, that however 
unfamiliar even his name may be to 
modern readers, Cowley did much to 
give the English language its purity and 
elegance; we owe him a debt which 
time cannot cancel or repudiate. 
The life of Cowley was full of change 
and not without its bitterness; a courtier, 
he learned ‘‘ how wretched is the poor 
man who hangs on princes’ favors;”’ 
he tasted the pleasures of the court, and 
the dolefulness of the prison; he sighed 
for some peaceful shelter in tie wilds of 
America; he fled from Cambridge in the 
civil wars; when royalty at last shone 
upon him, ‘‘weary and old with ser- 
vice,’ it was too late. He was buried 
with splendor in Westminister Abbey, 
beside the graves. of Chaucer and 
Spencer; neglected in life, he was hon- 
ored in death, and did not have to wait 
for after ages to build his sepulchre. 
