Abraham Cowley

Abraham Cowley (1618-1667), English poet and essayist, born in London and educated at Westminster School and at the University of Cambridge. His Poetical Blossoms (1633) contains five poems, one written at the age of ten. In 1644 Cowley left England for Paris, where he served in the court of Henrietta Maria, queen consort of England during the English Revolution (1640-1660). He returned to England in 1655 as a Royalist spy. After the Restoration he retired to the country. Cowley was highly regarded as a poet during his lifetime. He adapted the style of the ancient Greek lyric poet Pindar to form the English Pindaric ode. He is best known for the cycle of love poems The Mistress (1647) and for Miscellanies (1656), containing “Pindarique Odes,” also love poems, and “Davideis,” an unfinished epic on the biblical king David.