For someone classically educated — and a cryptographer, to boot — Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) ought to have gotten right the count of ancient meters, the patterns of long and short syllables that form the prosody of Greek and Latin poetry. But he didn’t. His importing of the Pindaric ode into English would influence poets down to Wordsworth and Coleridge, but it was decidedly unlike anything Pindar (c. 518–438 B.C.) would have written. 

And then there are his Anacreontics — a term introduced into English by Cowley to signal a kinship with fragments we have from the ancient poet Anacreon (c. 575– 495 B.C.). On the choice of topics, maybe: Cowley meant them to be short and light lyrics typically about love and wine. On the choice of meter, though: Whew. Where Anacreon used uu – u – u – – (lines with short, short, long, short, long, short, long, long syllables), Cowley transfers that to English verse that has four stresses in its mostly iambic lines, with vague gestures toward the quantity of long and short syllables. And that’s the form, as with his Pindaric odes, that Cowley handed down to English poetry.

Yet if we don’t get hung up on the inaccuracy of the name “Anacreontics,” Cowley gives us some fun wine-and-women verses in his Anacreontics. Well known as a child prodigy, publishing poetry even before he attended Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, Cowley was caught up in the Civil War, spending ten years in exile in Paris as secretary to Queen Henrietta Maria. Though famous in his lifetime — and buried in the Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey — he never lived up to his early promise, perhaps because his prime was lost in the busywork of the encrypted correspondence of royals in exile. His popularity faded quickly after his death.

Drinking
by Abraham Cowley

The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,
And drinks and gapes for drink again;
The plants suck in the earth, and are
With constant drinking fresh and fair;
The sea itself (which one would think
Should have but little need of drink)
Drinks twice ten thousand rivers up,
So fill’d that they o’erflow the cup.
The busy Sun (and one would guess
By ’s drunken fiery face no less)
Drinks up the sea, and when he’s done,
The Moon and Stars drink up the Sun:
They drink and dance by their own light,
They drink and revel all the night:
Nothing in Nature ’s sober found,
But an eternal health goes round.
Fill up the bowl, then, fill it high,
Fill all the glasses there — for why
Should every creature drink but I?
Why, man of morals, tell me why?

___________________________________________
With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past and the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.