ABSTRACT
The actual conflicts of the Civil Wars inspired relatively little poetry, almost all unmemorable. However, consciousness of the war is often betrayed by the language of poetry reaching instinctively for military or political idioms or using the vocabulary of destruction and waste. Andrew Marvell wrote obscurely about great matters, rarely allowing his name to catch the light of public scrutiny. Abraham Cowley, the significant poet writing of public affairs in the 1650s, published openly, though preferring to clothe his opinions in biblical or classical dress. Cowley, like William Davenant, is a good example of the royalist who returned to England in the 1650s and determined to make an accommodation with the Commonwealth. His death did precipitate a crisis of government, out of which arose what seemed to many the miracle of the Restoration. When the Restoration came, with its flood of patronage, there was a broad and varied cultural life ready to be enlarged and transformed.
