COWLEY.

THE PRAISE OF PINDAR.

Written in Paris, about 1645, during the Royalist exile, and first printed in the volume of 1656.

I.

PINDAR is imitable by none;

The Phoenix Pindar is a vast species alone,

Whoe'er but Dedalus with waxen wings could fly
And neither sink too low, nor soar too high?
What could he who followed claim,
But of vain boldness the unhappy fame,

And by his fall a sea to name?

Pindar's unnavigable song

Like a swoln flood from some steep mountain pours along ; The ocean meets with such a voice

From his enlarged mouth, as drowns the ocean's noise.

II.

So Pindar does new words and figures roll
Down his impetuous dithyrambic tide,

Which in no channel deigns to abide,

Which neither banks nor dykes control;

Whether the immortal gods he sings

In a no less immortal strain,

Or the great acts of god-descended kings,
Who in his numbers still survive and reign;
Each rich embroidered line

Which their triumphant brows around
By his sacred hand is bound,
Does all their starry diadems outshine.

IH.

Whether at Pisa's race he please

To carve in polished verse the conqueror's images ;
Whether the swift, the skilful, or the strong,
Be crowned in his nimble, artful, vigorous song;
Whether some brave young man's untimely fate
In words worth dying for he celebrate,

Such mournful and such pleasing words As joy to his mother and his mistress grief affords ; He bids him live and grow in fame,

Among the stars he sticks his name,

The grave can but the dross of him devour,
So small is death's, so great the poet's power.

IV.

Lo, how the obsequious wind, and swelling air,
The Theban Swan does upward bear,

Into the walks of clouds, where he does play,

And with extended wings opens his liquid way;
Whilst, alas, my timorous Muse
Unambitious tracks pursues,
Does with weak unballast wings
About the mossy brooks and springs,
About the trees' new-blossomed heads,
About the garden's painted beds,
About the fields and flowery meads,
And all inferior beauteous things,
Like the laborious bee,

For little drops of honey flee,

And there with humble sweets contents her industry.

COWLEY.

CHRIST'S PASSION.

First printed in the "Verses on several Occasions" of 1663.

I.

ENOUGH, my Muse, of earthly things,

And inspirations but of wind,

Take up thy lute and to it bind

Loud and everlasting strings;

And on them play, and to them sing,

The happy mournful stories,

The lamentable glories

Of the great crucified King!

Mountainous heap of wonders, which dost rise

Till earth thou joinest with the skies!
Too large at bottom and at top too high
To be half seen by mortal eye;

How shall I grasp this boundless thing?
What shall I play? what shall I sing?
I'll sing the riddle of mysterious love,

Which neither wretched man below, nor blessed spirits above,

With all their comments can explain,

How all the whole world's Life to die did not disdain.

II.

I'll sing the searchless depths of the compassion divine, The depths unfathomed yet

By reason's plummet and the line of wit,—

Too light the plummet and too short the line;
How the Eternal Father did bestow

His own Eternal Son as ransom for his foe;
I'll sing aloud that all the world may hear
The triumph of the buried conqueror,
How Hell was by its prisoner captive led,
And the great slayer, Death, slain by the Dead.

III.

Methinks I hear of murdered men the voice

Mixed with the murderers' confused noise,
Sound from the top of Calvary;

My greedy eyes fly up the hill, and see
Who 'tis hangs there, the midmost of the three;

O how unlike the others He!

Look how he bends his gentle head with blessings from the

tree !

His gracious hands, ne'er stretched but to do good,
Are nailed to the infamous wood;

And sinful man does fondly bind

The arms which He extends to embrace all human kind.