The foure ages of England, or, The iron age with other select poems / written by Mr. A. Cowley.
About this Item
- Title
- The foure ages of England, or, The iron age with other select poems / written by Mr. A. Cowley.
- Author
- Cowley, Abraham, 1618-1667.
- Publication
- [London :: s.n.],
- 1648.
- Rights/Permissions
-
To the extent possible under law, the Text Creation Partnership has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above, according to the terms of the CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). This waiver does not extend to any page images or other supplementary files associated with this work, which may be protected by copyright or other license restrictions. Please go to http://www.textcreationpartnership.org/ for more information.
- Subject terms
- English poetry -- Early modern, 1500-1700.
- Link to this Item
-
http://name.umdl.umich.edu/A34821.0001.001
- Cite this Item
-
"The foure ages of England, or, The iron age with other select poems / written by Mr. A. Cowley." In the digital collection Early English Books Online. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/A34821.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 30, 2025.
Pages
Page 4
Coffin'd their limbs in cloaths, (cloaths first were meant
But for necessity, not ornament:
But pride, the child of plenty, made them grow
From warmth to comely, thence t'a gawdy show:)
Then such magnificence in them begun,
That glittring vestures seem'd to stain the Sun;
Houses to Babels swell'd, and were baptiz'd
With their own Founders names; and men devis'd
All waies to write their names, that they might be
Read in the Rolls of vast Eternitie.
Turrets on tiptoe stood, to kisse the Skies,
And Marble Pillars to the Spheres did rise.
Towers did periwig their heads in clouds,
As if those were their bases, these their shrouds.
Men deckt their walls, and drest their spacious rooms
With costly excrements of Persian Looms;
And guiltlesse Aras was condemn'd to be
Hang'd, for no crime, but its imagerie.