This only grant me, that my means may lie
Too low for envy, for contempt too high.

These lines are from Abraham Cowley’s poem “The Wish,” a lyric in which the speaker asks Providence for a modest, private life rather than public greatness. Cowley wrote much of his poetry amid the political turbulence of mid‑17th‑century England and, after serving the royalist cause, spent years in exile in France. The poem reflects a cultivated desire to withdraw from faction, ambition, and courtly competition—seeking a “middle” condition that avoids both the jealousy directed at the powerful and the scorn directed at the destitute. The couplet encapsulates that social ideal of quiet sufficiency and unostentatious independence.

The speaker asks for a social and economic position calibrated to avoid two corrosive forms of public attention: envy (provoked by conspicuous success) and contempt (invited by abject poverty or dependence). The line praises moderation not as mediocrity but as a protective moral stance—freedom from the pressures, rivalries, and humiliations that accompany extremes of wealth or want. Cowley’s phrasing also implies a desire for dignity: “means” should be sufficient to command self-respect and basic esteem, yet modest enough to keep life unentangled from others’ resentments. The couplet thus condenses a classical and Christian ethic of contentment into a memorable social observation.