Abraham Cowley (1618 – 1667)
English metaphysical poet.
Build yourself a book-nest to forget the world without.
Words that weep and tears that speak.
If of their pleasures and desires no end be found;
God to their cares and fears will set no bound.
What would content you? Who can tell?
Ye fear so much to lose what you have got
As if ye liked it well.
Ye strive for more, as if ye liked it not.
Thus would I double my life's fading space;
For he that runs it well, runs twice his race.
Hope, of all ills that men endure,
The only cheap and universal cure.
Fill all the glasses there, for why
Should every creature drink but I?
Why, man of morals, tell me why?
When Israel was from bondage led,
Led by the Almighty's hand
From out of foreign land,
The great sea beheld and fled.
What shall I do to be forever known,
And make the age to come my own?
Life is an incurable disease.
His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might
Be wrong; his life, I 'm sure, was in the right.
A mighty pain to love it is,
And 't is a pain that pain to miss;
But of all pains, the greatest pain
It is to love, but love in vain.
Fond archer, Hope! who tak'st thy aim so far,
That still or short, or wide thine arrows are!
His time is forever, everywhere his place.
Let but thy wicked men from out thee go,
And all the fools that crowd thee so,
Even thou, who dost thy millions boast,
A village less than Islington wilt grow,
A solitude almost.
Beauty, thou wild fantastic ape
Who dost in every country change thy shape!
An harmless flaming meteor shone for hair,
And fell adown his shoulders with loose care.
Charm'd with the foolish whistling of a name.
Awake, awake, my Lyre!
And tell thy silent master's humble tale
In sounds that may prevail;
Sounds that gentle thoughts inspire:
Though so exalted she
And I so lowly be
Tell her, such different notes make all thy harmony.
To be a husbandman, is but a retreat from the city; to be a philosopher, from the world; or rather, a retreat from the world, as it is man's, into the world, as it is God's.
We spent them not in toys, in lusts, or wine,
But search of deep philosophy,
Wit, eloquence, and poetry;
Arts which I lov'd, for they, my friend, were thine.