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COWLEY.
69
Cowley, whatever was his subject, seems to have been carried, by a kind of destiny, to the light and the familiar, or to conceits which require still more ignoble epithets. A slaughter in the Red Sea new dies the waters name; and England, during the Civil War, was Albion no more, nor to be named from white. It is surely by some fascination not easily surmounted, that a writer, professing to revive the noblest and highest writing in verse, makes this address to the new year:
Nay, if thou lov'st me, gentle year,
Let not so much as love be there,
Vain, fruitless love I mean: for, gentle year,
Although I fear,
There's of this caution little need,
Yet, gentle year, take heed
How thou dost make
Such a mistake;
Such love I mean alone
As by thy cruel predecessors has been shewn;
For, though I have too much cause to doubt it,
I fain would try, for once, if life can live without it.
Let not so much as love be there,
Vain, fruitless love I mean: for, gentle year,
Although I fear,
There's of this caution little need,
Yet, gentle year, take heed
How thou dost make
Such a mistake;
Such love I mean alone
As by thy cruel predecessors has been shewn;
For, though I have too much cause to doubt it,
I fain would try, for once, if life can live without it.
The reader of this will be inclined to cry out with Prior—
Ye Critics, say,
How poor to this was Pindar's style!
How poor to this was Pindar's style!
F 3
Even
