THE FLOWER OF THE MIND
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metre, more mobile than the heroic, less fitted to epic or dramatic
poetry, but a line liberally lyrical. It would have been the
light, pursuing wave that runs suddenly, outrunning twenty, further
up the sands than these, a swift traveller, unspent, of longer
impulse, of more impetuous foot, of fuller and of hastier breath,
more eager to speak, and yet more reluctant to have done. Cowley
left the line with all this lyrical promise within it, and if his
example had been followed, English prosody would have had in this a
valuable bequest.

Cowley probably was two or three years younger than Richard
Crashaw, and the alexandrine is to be found--to be found by
searching--in Crashaw; and he took precisely the same care as
Cowley that the long wand of that line should not give way in the
middle--should be strong and supple and should last. Here are four
of his alexandrines -

"Or you, more noble architects of intellectual noise."
"Of sweets you have, and murmur that you have no more."
"And everlasting series of a deathless song."
"To all the dear-bought nations this redeeming name."

A later poet--Coventry Patmore--wrote a far longer line than even
these--a line not only speeding further, but speeding with a more
celestial movement than Cowley or Crashaw heard with the ear of
dreams.

"He unhappily adopted," says Dr. Johnson as to Cowley's diction,
"that which was predominant." "That which was predominant" was as
good a vintage of English language as the cycles of history have
ever brought to pass.


TO LUCASTA


Colonel Richard Lovelace, an enchanting poet, is hardly read,
except for two poems which are as famous as any in our language.
Perhaps the rumour of his conceits has frightened his reader. It
must be granted they are now and then daunting; there is a poem on
"Princess Louisa Drawing" which is a very maze; the little paths of
verse and fancy turn in upon one another, and the turns are pointed
with artificial shouts of joy and surprise. But, again, what a
reader unused to a certain living symbolism will be apt to take for
a careful and cold conceit is, in truth, a rapture--none graver,