The Works of Abraham Cowley, Volume 3

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Page 227 - Thus would I double my life's fading space, For he that runs it well, twice runs his race. And in this true delight, These unbought sports...
Page 206 - And they said : Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
Page 146 - ... of all others, a perpetual companion of the husbandman: and that is, the satisfaction of looking round about him, and seeing nothing but the effects and improvements of his own art and diligence; to be always gathering of some fruits of it, and at the same time to behold others ripening, and others budding; to see all his fields and gardens covered with the beauteous creatures of his own industry; and to see, like God, that all his works are good.
Page 54 - What can be more extraordinary, than that a person of mean birth, no fortune, no eminent qualities of body, which have sometimes, or of mind, which have often, raised men to the highest dignities, should have the courage to attempt, and the happiness to succeed in, so improbable a design, as the destruction of one of the most ancient and most...
Page 180 - Where does the wisdom and the power divine In a more bright and sweet reflection shine? Where do we finer strokes and colours see Of the Creator's real poetry, Than when we with attention look Upon the third day's volume of the Book ? If we could open and intend our eye, We all, like Moses, should espy, Ev'n in a bush, the radiant Deity...
Page 229 - I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights, and giants, and monsters, and brave houses, which I found every where there (though my understanding had little to do with all this) ; and, by degrees, with the tinkling of the rhyme and dance of the numbers ; so that, I think, I had read him all over before I was twelve years old, and was thus made a poet as immediately as a child is made an eunuch.
Page 230 - Well, then, I now do plainly see This busy world and I shall ne'er agree, &c.
Page 80 - Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths.
Page 145 - We are here among the vast and noble scenes of nature; we are there among the pitiful shifts of policy ; we walk here in the light and open ways of the divine bounty ; we grope there in the dark and confused labyrinths of human malice : our senses are here feasted with the clear and genuine taste of their objects; which are all sophisticated there, and for the most part overwhelmed with their contraries.
Page 232 - ... separate me from a mistress which I have loved so long, and have now at last married, though she neither has brought me a rich portion, nor lived yet so quietly with me as I hoped from her. - Nee vos, dulcissima mundi Nomina, vos Musae, libertas, otia, libri, Hortique sylvesque anima remanente relinquam.

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