His contractions are often rugged and harsh:
One flings a mountain, and its rivers too
Torn up with 't.
His rhymes are very often made by pronouns, or particles, or the like unimportant words, which disappoint the ear, and destroy the energy of the line.
His combination of different measures is, sometimes, dissonant and unpleasing; he joins verses together, of which the former does not slide easily into the latter.
The words do and did, which so much degrade, in present estimation, the line that admits them, were, in the time of Cowley, little censured or avoided; how often he used them, and with how bad an effect, at least to our ears, will appear by a passage, in which every reader will lament to see just and noble thoughts defrauded of their praise by inelegance of language:
Where honour or where conscience does not bind,
No other law shall shackle me;
Slave to myself I ne'er will be;
Nor shall my future actions be confin'd
By my own present mind.
Who by resolves and vows engag'd does stand
For days, that yet belong to fate,
Does, like an unthrift, mortgage his estate,
Before it falls into his hand;
The bondman of the cloister so,
All that he does receive does always owe:
And still, as time comes in, it goes away,
Not to enjoy, but debts to pay!
Unhappy slave, and pupil to a bell,
Which his hour's work, as well as hours, does tell!
Unhappy till the last, the kind releasing knell.
His heroick lines are often formed of monosyllables; but yet they are sometimes sweet and sonorous.
He says of the Messiah:
Round the whole earth his dreaded name shall sound, And reach to worlds that must not yet be found.