Abraham Cowley (1618–67) was an English poet and essayist. Often considered a transitional figure from the metaphysical poets to the Augustan poets of the 18th century, Cowley wrote poetry in a coarsely elaborate, self-consciously poetic language that decorated, rather than expressed, his feelings. He also adapted the ceremonious Pindaric ode to English verse.
Born in London, Cowley was attracted to poetry by Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queen (1590.) Cowley wrote verses at the age of ten, and 15 published five poems. From Westminster School, he went in 1637 to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he wrote a large portion of his epic the Davideis, which was published in 1656 with a reprint of his first book, The Mistress, and a number of other poems.
During the Civil War, he was ejected from Cambridge in 1644 but studied at Oxford for another two years. In 1646, he accompanied or followed the queen consort Henrietta Maria to Paris, was sent on Royalist missions, and carried on her correspondence in cipher with King Charles I. He returned to England in 1654 and, in 1655, was arrested and released on bail.
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Life is an incurable Disease.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: Life
We may talk as we please of lilies, and lions rampant, and spread eagles in fields of d’or or d’argent, but if heraldry were guided by reason, a plough in the field arable would be the most noble and ancient arms.
—Abraham Cowley
And I myself a Catholic will be,
So far at least, great saint, to pray to thee.
Hail, Bard triumphant! and some care bestow
On us, the Poets militant below.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: Religion
Hope—of all ills that men endure, the only cheap and universal cure; the captive’s freedom, and the sick man s health, the lover’s victory, and the beggar’s wealth.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: Aspirations, Hope
Hope—fortune’s cheating lottery, where for one prize, a hundred blanks there be.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: Hope
Much of our ignorance is of ourselves. Our eyes are full of dust. Prejudice blinds us.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: Prejudice
Solitude can be used well by very few people. They who do must have a knowledge of the world to see the foolishness of it, and enough virtue to despise all the vanity.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: Solitude, Foolishness
The first three men in the world were a gardener, a ploughman, and a grazier; and if any object that the second of these was a murderer, I desire him to consider that as soon as he was so, he quitted our profession, and turned builder.
—Abraham Cowley
The world is a scene of changes; to be constant in nature were inconstancy.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: Change
The present is all the ready money Fate can give.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: The Present
Nothing is to come, and nothing past: But an eternal now, does always last.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: Time, Time Management
Man is to man all kinds of beasts; a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf, a dissembling crocodile, a treacherous decoy, and a rapacious vulture.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: Man
The present is an eternal now.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: The Present
The world’s a scene of changes, and to be Constant, in Nature were inconstancy.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: Change, Consistency
Lukewarmness I account a sin, as great in love as in religion.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: Indifference, Apathy
Money was made not to command our will, but all our lawful pleasures to fulfill; shame and woe to us, if we our wealth obey—the horse doth with the horseman run away.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: Money
There is no saying shocks me so much as that which I hear very often, “that a man does not know how to pass his time.” It would have been but ill-spoken by Methusaleh in the nine hun-dred and sixty-ninth year of his life.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: Time
Acquaintance I would have, but when’t depends not on the number, but the choice of friends.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: Friendship
The liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatsoever form it be of government. The liberty of a private man, in being master of his own time and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of God and of his country.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: Laws, Liberty
God the first garden made, and Cain the first city.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: Cities
I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and a large Garden.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: Gardening
Of all ills that one endures, hope is a cheap and universal cure.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: Hope
The woman that has not touched the heart of a man, before he leads her to the altar, has scarcely a chance to charm it when possession and security turn their powerful arms against her.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: Love
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.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: Philosophy
This only grant me, that my means may lie too low for envy, for contempt too high.
—Abraham Cowley
Topics: Blessings, Appreciation, Gratitude
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