On the Death of Mr. Crashaw — Page 157
This ode has been chosen as more nobly representative than that, better known, On the Death of Mr. William Harvey. In the Crashaw ode, and in the Hymn to the Light, Cowley is, at last, tender. But it cannot be said that his love-poems had tenderness. He wrote in a gay language, but added nothing to its gaiety. He wrote the language of love, and left it cooler than he found it. What the conceits of Lovelace and the rest—flagrant, not frigid—did not do was done by Cowley’s quenching breath; the language of love began to lose by him. But even then, even then, who could have foretold what the loss at a later day would be!