[Page 366]

To the Rev. WILLIAM CAWTHORNE UNWIN.
[ed.] William Cawthorne Unwin (1744–86), son of the Revd. Morley Unwin, a retired schoolmaster, and his wife Mary, became curate of Comberton, Cambridgeshire, in 1769, and rector of Stock, in Essex, in 1778. (Baird/Ryskamp [1980-95], vol. 1, xv.) (AH)

1.
1 UNWIN, I should but ill repay,
2 The kindness of a friend,
3 Whose worth deserves as warm a lay
4 As ever friendship penn'd,
5 Thy name omitted in a page,
6 That would reclaim a vicious age.
2.
7 An union form'd, as mine with thee,
8 Not rashly or in sport,
9 May be as fervent in degree,
10 And faithful in its sort,
11 And may as rich in comfort prove,
12 As that of true fraternal love.
3.
13 The bud inserted in the rind,
14 The bud of peach or rose,
15 Adorns, though diff'ring in its kind,
16 The stock whereon it grows
[Page 367]
17 With flow'r as sweet or fruit as fair,
18 As if produc'd by nature there.
4.
19 Not rich, I render what I may,
20 I seize thy name in haste,
21 And place it in this first assay,
22 Lest this should prove the last.
23 'Tis where it should be, in a plan
24 That holds in view the good of man.
5.
25 The poet's lyre, to fix his fame,
26 Should be the poet's heart,
27 Affection lights a brighter flame
28 Than ever blaz'd by art.
29 No muses on these lines attend,
30 I sink the poet in the friend.

Text

  • TEI/XML [chunk] (XML - 58K / ZIP - 6.5K) / ECPA schema (RNC - 357K / ZIP - 73K)
  • Plain text [excluding paratexts] (TXT - 1.0K / ZIP - 755 )

About this text

Title (in Source Edition): To the Rev. WILLIAM CAWTHORNE UNWIN.
Themes: friendship
Genres: address

Text view / Document view

Source edition

Poems: by William Cowper, of the Inner Temple, Esq. London: printed for J. Johnson, 1782, pp. 366-367. [4],367,[1]p. ; 8⁰. (ESTC T14895; OTA K027775.000)

Editorial principles

The text has been typographically modernized, but without any silent modernization of spelling, capitalization, or punctuation. The source of the text is given and all editorial interventions have been recorded in textual notes. Based on the electronic text originally produced by the ECCO-TCP project, this ECPA text has been edited to conform to the recommendations found in Level 5 of the Best Practices for TEI in Libraries version 3.0.

Other works by William Cowper
{"cc_re__cc_re__cc_by_sa_4_0": ["r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t</h4></a></div><div id=\"collapsePra\" class=\"panel-collapse collapse in\" role=\"tabpanel\" aria-labelledby=\"pragmatic\"><div class=\"panel-body\" id=\"pragmatic-body\"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></section>\n      <div style=\"clear: both; height: 40px;\"></div>\n    </div>\n    <!-- /#wrap -->\n\n    <!-- footer -->\n    <footer id=\"footer\">\n      <div class=\"container text-muted\">\n\t<p>&copy; 2015 Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA). &nbsp;\n\tECPA is licensed under <a rel=\"license\" target=\"_blank\"\n\thref=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/\"><img \n\talt=\"CC BY-SA 4.0\" style=\"border-width:0\"\n\tsrc=\"https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/4.0/80x15.png\"/></a>.\n\t</p>\n\t<nav>\n\t  <ul class=\"footer-links\">\n            <li><a id=\"citation\"\n                   data-placement=\"top\"\n                   data-toggle=\"popover\"\n                   data-container=\"body\"\n                   data-html=\"true\"\n                   title=\"Citation (MLA-style)\">Cite this page</a>\n\t    </li>\n\t    <li><a href=\"/about/#contact\">Contact</a></li>\n\t    <li><div class=\"a"], "copyright__copyright__copyright": [".000)\n\nEditorial principles\n\nThe text has been typographically modernized, but without any silent modernization of spelling, capitalization, or punctuation. The source of the text is given and all editorial interventions have been recorded in textual notes. Based on the electronic text originally produced by the ECCO-TCP project, this ECPA text has been edited to conform to the recommendations found in Level 5 of the Best Practices for TEI in Libraries version 3.0.\n\nOther works by William Cowper"]}