Omnibus mundi Dominator horis
Aptat urgendas psr inane pennas,
Pars adhuc nido latet, et futuros
Crescit in annos.


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 dyes the water's 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 shown:
For, though I have too much cause to doubt it,
I fain would try, for once, if life can live without it.