The Abraham Cowley
Text and Image Archive



Garden-grave. From Virgil, Opera (Lyons, 1517). Reproduced with permission from the Special Collections of the University of Virginia. The tomb-inscription, "Daphnis ego in sylvis" ("I Daphnis in the woods"), is from Virgil, Ecl. 5.43. Cowley is hailed with the pastoral nickname of Daphnis in an elegy of 1702*, as in Macaulay's 1824 imaginary conversation between Cowley and Milton regarding the "Great Civil War."
*S. Cobb, "Nicander, a Pastoral Elegy, Lamenting . . . William III":
              Where was the Magick which to Plants belong,
              So boasted, Daphnis, in thy Sacred Song?
                                  Sidenote: "Mr. Cowley of Plants."

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