Else the soul grew so fast within
It burst the outward shell of sin,
And so was hatched a cherubin.
Cowley is full of these tasteless, unnatural conceits. His sins of the kind have been so insisted upon by Johnson and others that I need give but a single illustration. In an ode to his friend, Dr. Scarborough, he thus compliments him upon his skill in operating for calculus:
The cruel stone, that restless pain,
That’s sometimes rolled away in vain
But still, like Sisyphus his stone, returns again,
Thou break’st and melt’st by learned juices’ force
(A greater work, though short the way appear,
Than Hannibal’s by vinegar).