Take this one instance -
"Like some fair pine o'erlooking all the ignobler wood."
If Cowley's delicate example had ruled in English poetry (and he
surely had authority on this one point, at least), this alexandrine
would have taken its own place as an important line of English
metre, more mobile than the heroic, less fitted to epic or dramatic
poetry, but a line liberally lyrical. It would have been the
light, pursuing wave that runs suddenly, outrunning twenty, further
up the sands than these, a swift traveller, unspent, of longer
impulse, of more impetuous foot, of fuller and of hastier breath,
more eager to speak, and yet more reluctant to have done. Cowley
left the line with all this lyrical promise within it, and if his
example had been followed, English prosody would have had in this a
valuable bequest.
Cowley probably was two or three years younger than Richard
Crashaw, and the alexandrine is to be found--to be found by
searching--in Crashaw; and he took precisely the same care as
Cowley that the long wand of that line should not give way in the
middle--should be strong and supple and should last. Here are four
of his alexandrines -
"Or you, more noble architects of intellectual noise."
"Of sweets you have, and murmur that you have no more."
"And everlasting series of a deathless song.
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