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'SS 1* n <1 H 1* PI PI PI PI n <1 P i 1 WILLIAM COWPER f WITH AN W INTRODUCTION fjr BY 1 JOHt'^.ILEY A TBDMAS NELSON & SONS LTD A LONDON & EDINBURGH g PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT THE PRESS OF THE PUBLISHERS CONTENTS Introduction. By John Bailey . . . , • ix The Task — Book I. The Sofa .... 3 Book II. The Time-Piece. 25 Book III. The Garden 48 Book IV. The Winter Evening. 71 Book V. The Winter Morning Walk 93 Book VI. The Winter Walk at Noon 118 Selected Olney Hymns — Walking with God 149 Praise for the Fountain Opened. 150 Lovest Thou Me ? .. 151 On Opening a Place for Social Prayer 152 Exhortation to Prayer .. 153 Light Shining out of Darkness. 154 Temptation 155 The Valley of the Shadow of Death. 155 Joy and Peace in Believing .156 The Narrow Way .... 157 Dependence 158 Not of Works 159 Table Talk . . - . , .. 161 The Progress of Error . . , .. 182 INTRODUCTION No one who was bom in the lifetime of Pope represents the antithesis of him more completely ttian Cowper. Pope was the poet and genius of ‘‘ the town/’ Cowper never saw a city after he became a poet, and his well- known line, God made the country, and man made the town/* represented a settled conviction that both goodness and happiness preferred country lanes to city streets. One of the most beautiful, though not one of the best known of his hymns, is in praise of rural retirement : — “ There, if thy Spirit touch the soul And grace her mean abode, Oh ! with what peace, and joy, and love. She communes with her God ! “ There, like the nightingale, she pours Her sohtary lays : Nor asks a witness of her song, Nor thirsts for human praise/* Pope also praised retirement and obscurity, but rarely stayed long out of the reach of Mayfair coaches, while with obscurity he never had any voluntary, or indeed involuntary, connection. And he, too, once wrote a h3mn, what he called “ The Universal Prayer.” It is an aspiration after a more moral life, not the worst thing for a hymn to be. On one verse of it— A xnwoaucuon ** Teach me to feel another's woe, To hide the fault I see ; That mercy I to others show, That mercy show to me/' — Cowper commented, ''Alas for Pope, if the mercy he showed to others was the measure of the mercy he received.** But all sincere preachers preach against themselves, and Johnson justly rebuked the folly of supposing a man must be a hypocrite because he does not practise all he preaches or praises. Still, however sincere Pope may have been when he wrote his h57nin, he was certainly a far less sincere and an infinitely less rehgious man than Cowper. Pope*s hymn is addressed to "Jehovah, Jove, or Lord: ** it is, in fact, the prayer of a man who had no particular belief ' to a God who is not particularly divine. Cowper reacts against the vague rationalism as much as against the urbanism of Pope. Pope was a nominal Roman Catholic, and not much more than a nominal Christian. Cowper was a very definite and literal Christian of the Evangelical ahd Protestant type. Cowper, then, is in these two ways the exact opposite of Pope. He is the poet of the country, as Pope is of the town : he is the poet of the Olney Hy'i. ms, and Pope is the poet of tint Essay on Man, But there is a third point of contrast. Cowper is the simplest of poets, Pope the most artificial. And not merely the most artificial. It is art even more than artifice. Cowper, on the other hand, scarcely knew that poetry was an art at all. He could take trouble over his writing and even enjoy taking it. Yet it is certain that Pope could no more have written the best passages of The Task than Cowper Introduction xi could have written the Epistle to Arbuthnot Cdwper, in fact, gave poetry a new heart and took it to a new world. Leaving the great world behind him in poetry, as be had left it in life, he began his career as a poet by writing hymns simple enough to be sung by the poor folk of Olney, whom he and Mrs. Unwin would join at their early morning prayer meeting, often, as he says, trudging there before daylight through snow and rain. Then when the strain of all this had again brought on the madness which had driven him from London, and when, after a year and a half or more of misery, he again slowly began to be himself, it was soon to poetry that he turned as the occupation which best relieved his melancholy. This was done on the suggestion of the inseparable friend who but for the return of his madness would by this time have been his wife. But it is curious to notice that long before he ever saw Mrs. Unwin, when his love for his cousin Theodora, occupied his thoughts and her father's veto depressed his spirits, it was to the same remedy that he had resorted. Among the Early Poems, not published till after his death, there is an Epistle to his friend Lloyd, who was also a poet of a kind, in which he says that if he writes verse it is in order “ to divert a fierce banditti (Sworil foes to everything that’s witty), That, with a black infernal train. Make cruel inroads in my brain. And daily threaten to drive thence My little garrison of sense : The fierce banditti which I mean, Are gloomy thoughts led on by Spleen.” So that the remedy was as old as the disease, and Cowper applied it alThis life till the disease grew too strong for it, and left him no remedy but to write The Castaway and to die. In 1780, however, when Mrs. Unwin set him to writing verse, though he was already fifty, he still had twenty years of life before him, and for half of them. X fut/r fb or mofe than half, his principal occupation was poetry — first the Satires, which appeared in 1782, then The Task in 1785, and finally his translation of Homer in 1791. Putting aside the Homer, which, revolting against the freedom of Pope, exhibits too often the much more un-Homeric quality of dullness, Copwer's poems fall naturally into five divisions. The first is that of the Early Poems, written before he left London, which have received less attention than they deserve. They were not pubhshed in his lifetime, no doubt because many of them deal with his passion for his cousin, Theodora Cowper, whose feelings he and his friends wished to spare. But they prove that his two chief characteristics — ^the absolute simplicity and sincerity of his nature, and his love of the quieter sort of English country— were in him from the very first. He was to live his mature Hfe among the flat meadows of the Ouse. That was his choice, it seems, before he ever saw them. The Muse he asks for in one of these early pieces is she Who can the tall Parnassian cliff forsake To visit oft the still Lethaean lake ; and he seldom wrote lines more characteristic of himself than those which follow : — Now her slow pinions brush the silent shore, Now gently skim the unwrinkled waters o'er ; There dips her downy plumes, there upward flies; And sheds soft slumbers on her votary's eyes 1 " Among these Early Poems there is also in some lines of Absence and Bereavement a curious anticipation of The Castaway, and there are the terrible English Sapphics, Hatred and Vengeance, written after he had attempted suicide and before his removal to the care of the St. Albans doctor. But the most interesting of these pieces are certainly the love poems. Whether in later life he ever thought of Theodora is not known, but at any rate Introd^uction xiii she never forgot him. She has the reward of such iinmortality as the simple and beautiful poems To Delia can give her. We have not many things of a tenderness so unaffected as that of the poem in which he urges her not to conceal her grief at their parting. Cowper was no Stoic, and even before he was an Evangelical in religion he believed in the feelings. So he tells his Delia to weep her fill : — Hard is that heart and unsubdued by love That feels no pain nor ever heaves a sigh ; Such hearts the fiercest passions only prove, Or freeze in cold insensibility. Oh ! then indulge thy grief, nor fear to tell The gentle source from whence thy sorrows flow : Nor think it weakness when we love to feel. Nor think it weakness what we feel to show/’ From 1763 to 1765 Cowper was in an asylum, and when he came out rehgion had become the absorbing interest of his life. It was not unnatural, therefore, that the first verse he wrote after his recovery took the form of hymns. Of the Olney Hymns, pubhshed by his friend John Newton, curate of Olney, in 1779, over sixty were his work. The hymns are as simple and sincere as the early love poems, and even his own letters are not written in a purer Enghsh. They include some of the very best hymns in the language, such as “ Hark, my soul, it is the Lordl” ‘'Jesus, where'er Thy people meet," and “ Oh ! for a closer walk with -God." They are marked by an obviously genuine and even passionate love of goodness and of God ; and it is noteworthy that they nearly aU strike a hopeful note, in marked contrast with the religious despair which he seldom shook off after 1773. Long may the con^egations in our churches continue to sing verses wMch unite so much that is truest both in rehgion and in poetry as Cowper's '' Jesus 1 wherever thy people meet, There they behold thy mercy-seat ; xiv Introduction * Wherever they seek thee, thou art found. And every place is hallowed ground. ** For thou, within no walls confined, Inhabitest the humble mind ; Such ever bring thee where they come. And going, take thee to their home/' The first volume published by Cowper in his own name was the Poems of 1782, a volume consisting of satires, to which he gave such names as Table T alk, Hope, Charity, Retirement, and so on. They are not often read now- adays, and some of them are rather dull. On large parts of them the true criticism is his own confession in his jingling letter, “ I have written Charity, not for popu- larity, But as well as I could, in hopes to do good.'' They are, in fact, rather too often mere sermons in verse, and, as he says, '‘The clear harangue, and cold as it is clear, Falls soporific on the listless ear." But there are charming places to be found in them. Conversation is full of pleasant humour, rural perhaps, and a Httle old-maidish, and certainly not to be com- pared with the humour of the Letters, but entertaining enough in a quiet way. In others Cowper breaks out into passages of vigorous invective, sometimes recalling Churchill ; while occasionally, too occasionally, he drops into autobiography or into landscape, hi? two best sub- jects. Retirement anticipates The Task: it states his central doctrine, but too much from the point of view of the pulpit. Its best things are the admirable Horatian pictures of the retired statesman, and of the squire fallen to be ostler at an hm. The Task, Cowper's greatest achievement, followed in 1785. Here he has turned away from the rhymed couplet in which he could not escape a damaging comparison with Pope. The Task is written in blank verse, large parts of it with Introduction xv that fatal facility to which blank verse so easily lends itself. But the best parts of the poem give us a blank verse which is as fine as it is unlike Milton, and superior to any written in the hundred years since the death of Milton. The subject of The Task, or of its best parts, is life in the country, the sights and sounds of Nature as seen and heard in the quietest and least romantic district of England. And this is what Cowper shows he can make of such a subject directly he has finished the introductory passage of the first book : — How oft upon yon eminence our pace Has slackened to a pause, and we have borne The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew, While admiration feeding at the eye. And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene. Thence with what pleasure have we just discerned The distant plough slow moving, and beside His labouring team, that swerved not from the track. The sturdy swain diminished to a boy. Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain Of spacious meads with cattle sprinkled o'er. Conducts the eye along his sinuous course Delighted. There, fast rooted in their bank, Stand, never overlooked, our favourite elms, That screen the herdsman's sohtary hut ; While far beyond, and overthwart the stream. That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale, The sloping land recedes into the clouds ; Displaying on its varied side the grace Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower. Tall spire from which the sound of cheerful bells Just undulates upon the hstening ear ; Groves, heaths, and smoking villages remote. Scenes must be beautiful which, daily viewed. Please daily, and whose noveliy survives Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years : Praise justly due to those that I describe." How true it all is, how well-observed, how felt and loved ! The man himself is in all Cowper's poems. They are the xvi Introduction records of actual experiences. Their genius lies in their wealth of detail, their simplicity and their truth. Milton, in his way, and Thomson in his, will carry the reader to scenes which they have only known through books. Wordsworth keeps mainly to the lakes and mountains of his youth ; but they are the finest scenery in this island, and besides he makes of them a philosophy and a faith. The strength of Cowper lies in the quickness and tenderness of his sympathetic perception of all the common things about him, and in his power of putting us by his side as he enjoys them. Are we not with him and Mrs. Unwin all the while on the hill as they stand and look at the river, and the plough, and the trees, and the church spire, “ from which the sound of cheerful bells Just undulates upon the listening ear’* ? Nothing quite like these descriptive passages which abound in T he T ask existed before Cowper in our language, or, so far as I know, in any other. Nothing quite like them has come since. Crabbe, and Tennyson, and Mr. Bridges, to speak of no others, are all full of wonderful bits of observation about our plain English woods and fields. But I doubt whether any of them comes with one so well on a country walk in Bedfordshire or Norfolk. As we stand and listen to the robin on a winter day, is there any poet in all the long line who tells us so weU all that we are seeing and hearing and feeling ? '" No noise is here, or none that hinders thought. The redbreast warbles still, but is content With slender notes, and more than half-suppressed ; Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light From spray to spray, where’er he rests he shakes From many a tmg the pendent drops of ice That tinkle in the withered leaves below. Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft, Charms more th^ silence.” Introduction xvii Cowper wrote at the moment when the domination of the town '' was be^nning to pass away, and he had no small share in preparing for that larger and deeper poetry of Nature which was so soon to come from Wordsworth and his successors. They gave us greater things than he, and he claims no rivalry with them. But his smaller field is his own. It is Man and Nature, on the whole, that interest Wordsworth ; with Cowper, on the whole, it is men and Olney and Weston Underwood. I doubt if there is any square mile in England, even that which encloses Grasmere, where a poet's steps can still be traced in such detail as Cowper’s can, or could a few years ago, in the park and “ wilderness " of Weston Underwood. But there is nothing exceptional in the woods and fields of Weston ; and he who lets Cowper teach him to know and love them as he reads of them in The Task soon comes to see more in his own familiar fields than he ever saw before ; and so, by Cowper's help, to love them, and, after them, all the fields and trees and streams of all the world. And so The Task shows the way to the Prelude and the Excursion, and even to the great Ode itself. Of course such a poem, so fresh, so true, so ready in its answer to the call of the moment, had an immediate success. Cowper was at once seen to be the greatest poet then writing, and he was read abroad as well as at home, having, as he tells us, sixty readers in the single city of The Hague. A word must be added about his shorter poems, which include some of the most popular in the language. Who does not know John Gilpin? Who has not been set to learn The Royal George, and Boadicea, and “ I am monarch of all I survey " by heart ? Who has not gone near cry- ing over the beauty and pathos oi My Mother's Picture ? The poetry of the natural affections has seldom been more poignantly moving than it is here and in the well-known lines To Mary. Of both of these poems Francis Palgrave has recorded that Tennyson shrank from trying to read them aloud for fear of breaking down. xviii Introduction He was k great admirer, too, of another of Cowper's best known short poems, The Poplar of which he said : People nowadays, I believe, hold this style and metre light. I wish there were any who could put words together with such exquisite flow and evenness." The truth is that Cowper has a unique position as, more than any other, the poet who, without profundity, without elaboration of art, without doing, or aiming at doing, great things, made true poems about the common affec- tions, ordinary experiences, and simplest surroundings of English life. Wordsworth, it is true, did the same thing, but he did it in a spirit so much more profound, and with emotions so much deeper and a range so much wider, that simple people find him much more difficult of approach. Indeed, since Wordsworth and Shelley, and their followers, poetry has become altogether, for good and for evil, a thing much more difficult than it was in Cowper's day. Anybody who put verses together on any subject might be called a poet in the days when Johnson published his Lives and when Cowper wrote verses on every little incident that occurred in his life. And in those days everybody could and did read poetry. The seriousness that followed had its disadvantages. Neither Wordsworth nor Shelley nor Tennyson could have written such verses of pleasant playfulness as The 4 Coluhriad zxidi the Retired Cat. The smaller poems of Cowper, both grave and gay, have a place of their own which the greater poets of the nineteenth century could ij not or did not fill. And what is true of the smaller poems is true of the poet as a whole. No one would pretend I that Cowper ranks with Wordsworth. But neither will any competent critic pretend that The Task is super- : seded by The Excursion. Over sixty years after it : appeared, a discussion took place about Cowper at a ; dinner of the historic society founded by Reynolds and Johnson, and still known as “ The Club." Among those^present were Macaulay, Hallam, and Milman. The question asked was whether Cowper was or was not still Introduction ^ xix the most popular of English poets. The answer is of no importance. The fact that such men could raise such a question in 1849 is extraordinary proof of the long vogue enjoyed by Cowper. That vogue is over, and can never return. But the poetry of Cowper can never be ignored or forgotten until tenderness of heart, sin- cerity and simpHcity, a personal intimacy with Nature in her most English moods, and a mastery of our language at its purest, have become quahties either so common among poets as not to be valued, or else so little admired as no longer to be sought after or regretted. THE TASK ADVERTISEMENT The history of the following production is briefly this : A lady, fond of blank verse, demanded a poem of that kind from the author, and gave him the SOFA for a subject. He obeyed ; and, having much leisure, con- nected another subject with it ; and, pursuing the train of thought to which his situation and turn of mind led him, brought forth at length, instead of the trifle which he at first intended, a serious affair — a Volume. In the poem on the subject of Education, he would be very sorry to stand suspected of having aimed his censure at any particular school. His objections are such as naturally apply themselves to schools in general. If there were not, as for the most part there is, wilful neglect in those who manage them, and an omission even of such discipline as they are susceptible of, the objects are yet too numerous for minute attention ; and the aching hearts of ten thousand parents, mourning under the bitterest of all disappointments, attest the truth of the allegation. His quarrel, therefore, is with the mischief at large, and not with any particular instance of it. POEMS OF COWPER THE TASK BOOK I THE SOFA Argument Historical deduction of seats, from the stool to the sofa — ^A schoolboy’s ramble — -A walk in the country— The scene desmbed — Rural sounds as well as sights delightful — ^Another walk — Mistake concerning the charms of solitude corrected— Colonnades commenced — ^Alcove, and the view from it— The wilderness — ^The grove — The thresher — The necessity and the benefits of exercise — ^The works of nature superior to, and in some instances inimitable by, art — ^The wearisomeness of what is commcnly called a life of pleasure — Change of scene sometimes expedient— A common described, and the character of crazy Kate introduced — Gipsies — ^The blessing of civilized life — ^That state most favourable to virtue — ^The South Sea islanders compassionated, but chiefly Omai — ^His present state of mind supposed— Civilized life friendly to virtue, but not great cities— Great cities, and London in particular, allowed their due praise, but censured— F^te chamipetre — ^The book concludes with a reflection on the effects of dissipation and effeminacy upon our public measures, I SING the Sofa. I who lately sang Truth, Hope, and Charity, and touched with awe The solemn chords, and with a trembling hand Escaped with pain from that adventurous flight. Now seek repose upon an humbler theme ; The theme though humble, yet august and proud The occasion — ^for the Fair commantfe the song. 4 Poems of Cowper Time was, when clothing sumptuous or for use. Save their own painted skins, our sires had none. As yet black breeches were not, satin smooth, Or velvet soft, or plush with shaggy pile : The hardy chief, upon the rugged rock Washed by the sea, or on the gravelly bank Thrown up by wintry torrents roaring loud. Fearless of wrong, reposed his weary strength. Those barbarous ages past, succeeded next The birthday of Invention, weak at first. Dull in design, and clumsy to perform. Joint-stools were then created ; on three legs Upborne they stood : — ^three legs upholding firm A massy slab, in fashion square or round. On such a Stool immortal Alfred sat, And swayed the sceptre of his infant realms ; And such in ancient haUs and mansions drear May stni be seen, but perforated sore And drilled in holes the solid oak is found. By worms voracious eating through and through. At length a generation more refined Improved the simple plan ; made three legs four, Gave them a twisted form vermicular. And o'er the seat, with plenteous wadding stuffed. Induced a splendid cover, green and blue, Yellow and red, of tapestry richly wrought And woven close, or needlework sublime. There might ye see the peony spread wide. The full-blown rose, the shepherd and Ms lass. Lap-dog and lambMn with black staring eyes, And parrots with twin cherries in their beak. Now came the cane from India, smooth and bright With Nature's varnish, severed into stripes That interlaced each other, these supplied Of texture firm a lattice-work, that braced The new macMne, and it became a Chair. But restless was the chair ; the back erect Distressed the weary loins, that felt no ease ; 5 The Task The slippery seat betrayed the sliding part That pressed it, and the feet hung danghng down. Anxious in vain to find the distant floor. These for the rich ; the rest, whom fate had placed In modest mediocrity, content With base materials, sat on well-tanned hides Obdurate and unyielding, glassy smooth. With here and there a tuft of crimson yam. Or scarlet crewel in the cushion fixed : If cushion might be called what harder seemed Than the firm oak of which the frame was formed. No want of timber then was felt or feared In Albion's happy isle. The lumber stood Ponderous, and feed by its own massy weight. But elbows still were wanting ; these, some say. An alderman of Cripplegate contrived. And some ascribe the invention to a priest Burly and big, and studious of his ease. But rude at first, and not with easy slope Receding wide, they pressed against the ribs. And braised the side, and elevated high Taught the raised shoulders to invade the ears. Long time elapsed or e'er our ragged sires Complained, though incommodiously pent in. And ill at ease behind. The ladies first 'Gan murmur, as became the softer sex. Ingenious Fancy, never better pleased Than when employed to accommodate the fair. Heard the sweet moan with pity, and devised The soft Settee ; one elbow at each end. And in the midst an elbow, it received. United yet divided, twain at once. So sit two kings at Brentford on one throne ; And so two citizens who take the air Close packed and smiling, in a chaise and one. But relaxation of the languid frame. By soft recumbency of outstretched limbs. Was bliss reserved for happier days so slow 6 Poems of Cowper The growth of what is excellent, so hard To attain perfection in this nether world. Thus first Necessity invented Stools, Convenience next suggested Elbow-chairs, And Luxury the accomplished Sofa last. The nurse sleeps sweetly, hired to watch the sick. Whom snoring she disturbs. As sweetly he Who quits the coach-box at the midnight hour To sleep within the carriage more secure, His legs depending at the open door. Sweet sleep enjoys the curate in his desk, The tedious rector drawling o'er his head. And sweet the clerk below : but neither sleep Of lazy nurse, who snores the sick man dead, Nor his who quits the box at midnight hour To slumber in the carriage more secure, Nor sleep enjoyed by curate in his desk. Nor yet the dozings of the clerk, are sweet. Compared with the repose the Sofa yields. Oh ! may I live exempted (while I live Guiltless of pampered appetite obscene) From pangs arthritic that infest the toe Of hbertine excess. The Sofa suits The gouty limb, 'tis true ; but gouty hmb. Though on a Sofa, may I never feel : For I have loved the rural walk through lanes Of grassy swarth, close cropped by nibbling sheep And skirted thick with intertexture firm Of thorny boughs ; have loved the rural walk O'er hills, through valleys, and by rivers' brink. E'er since a truant boy I passed my bounds To enjoy a ramble on the banks of Thames ; And still remember, nor without regret, Of hours that sorrow since has mudi endeared, How oft, my slice of pocket store consumed. Still htmgering, p^nhess and far from home, I fed on scarlet hips and stony haws. Or blushing crabs, or berries that emboss The Task The bramble, black as jet, or sloes austere. Hard fare ! but such as boyish appetite Disdains not, nor the palate undepraved By culinary arts, unsavoury deems. No Sofa then awaited my return, Nor Sofa then I needed. Youth repairs His wasted spirits quickly, by long toil Incurring short fatigue ; and though our years. As life declines, speed rapidly away, And not a year but pilfers as he goes Some youthful grace that age would gladly keep, A tooth or auburn lock, and by degrees Their length and colour from the locks they spare, The elastic spring of an unwearied foot That mounts the stile with ease, or leaps the fence. That play of lungs, inhaling and again Respiring freely the fresh air, that makes Swift pace or steep ascent no toil to me, Mine have not pilfered yet ; nor yet impaired My relish of fair prospect : scenes that soothed Or charmed me young, no longer young, I find Still soothing and of power to charm me still. And witness, dear companion of my walks. Whose arm this twentieth winter I perceive Fast locked in mine, with pleasure such as love. Confirmed by long experience of thy worth And well-tried virtues, could alone inspire. Witness a joy that thou hast doubled long. Thou knowest my praise of nature most sincere. And that my raptures are not conjured up To serve occasions of poetic pomp, But genuine, and art partner of them all. How oft upon yon eminence our pace Has slackened to a pause, and we have borne The rufiiing wind, scarce conscious that it blew, While admiration feeding at the eye. And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene. Thence with what pleasure have we just discerned 5 Poems of Cowper The^distant plough slow moving, and beside Ilis labouring team, that swerved not from the track, The sturdy swain diminished to a boy. Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain df spacious meads with cattle sprinkled o'er. Conducts the eye along his sinuous course Delighted. There, fast rooted in their bank, Stand, never overlooked, our favourite elms. That screen the herdsman's solitary hut ; While far beyond, and overthwart the stream. That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale, The sloping land recedes into the clouds ; Displaying on its varied side the grace Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower. Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells Just undulates upon the listening ear ; Groves, heaths, and smoking villages remote. Scenes must be beautiful which, daily viewed. Please daily, and whose novelty survives Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years : Praise justly due to thoSe that I describe. • Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds Exhilarate the spirit, and restore The tone of languid nature. Mighty winds, That sweep the skirt of some far-spreading wood Of ancient growth, make music not unlike The dash of Ocean on his winding shore. And lull the spirit while they fill the mind ; Unnumbered branches waving in the blast, And all their leaves fast fluttering, all at once. Nor less composure waits upon the roar Of distant floods, or on the softer voice Of neighbouring fountain, or of rills that slip Through the cleft rock, and chiming as they fall Upon loose pebbles, lose themselves at len^h In matted grass, that with a livelier green Betrays the secret of their silent course. Nature inanimate employs sweet sounds. 9 The Task But animated nature sweeter still, To soothe and satisfy the human ear. Ten thousand warblers cheer the day, and one The livelong night : nor these alone, whose notes Nice-fingered art must emulate in vain. But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime In still repeated circles, screaming loud ; The jay, the pie, and even the boding owl That hails the rising moon, have charms for me. Sounds inharmonious in themselves and harsh, Yet heard in scenes where peace for ever reigns. And only there, please highly for their sake. Peace to the artist, whose ingenious thought Devised the weather-house, that useful toy 1 Fearless of humid air and gathering rains Forth steps the man, — ^an emblem of myself, — More delicate, his timorous mate retires. When Winter soaks the fields, and female feet. Too weak to struggle with tenacious clay. Or ford the rivulets, are best at home. The task of new discoveries falls on me. At such a season, and with such a charge, Once went I forth, and found, till then unknown, A cottage, whither oft we since repair : 'Tis perched upon the green-hill top, but close Environed with a ring of branching elms That overhang the thatch, itself unseen. Peeps at the vale below ; so thick beset With foliage of such dark redundant growth, I called the low-roofed lodge the Peasant* s Nest And hidden as it is, and far remote From such unpleasing sounds as haunt the ear In village or in town, the bay of curs Incessant, clinking hammers, grinding wheels. And infants clamorous whether pleased or pained. Oft have I wished the peaceful covert mine. Here, I have said, at least I should possess The poet's treasure, silence, and indulge ( 2 » 612 ) la lo Poems of Cowper The dreams of fancy, tranquil and secure. Vain thought ! the dweller in that stiE retreat Dearly obtains the refuge it affords. Its elevated site forbids the wretch To drink sweet waters of the crystal well ; He dips his bowl into the weedy ditch. And heavy-laden brings his beverage home, Far-fetched and Ettle worth : nor seldom waits, Dependent on the baker's punctual call, To hear his creaking panniers at the door. Angry and sad, and his last crust consumed. So fareweE envy of the Peasant's Nest. If soEtude make scant the means of Efe, Society for me ! — ^Thou- seeming sweet, . Be stiE a pleasing object in my view, My visit stiE, but never mine abode. Not distant far, a length of colonnade Invites us : monument of ancient taste, Now scorned, but worthy of a better fate. Gur fathers knew the value of a screen From sultry suns, and in their shaded walks And long protracted bowers enjoyed at ndon The gloom and coolness of declining day. We bear our shades about us ; self-deprived Of other screen, the thin umbreEa spread. And range an Indian waste without a tree. Thanks to Benevolus * — ^he spares me yet These chestnuts ranged in corresponding lines. And, though himself sapoEshed, stiE reprieves The obsolete prolixity of shade. Descending now (but cautious, lest too fast) A sudden steep, upon a rustic bridge. We pass a gulf, in which the wiEows dip Their pendent boughs, stooping as if to drink. Hence, ankle-deep in moss and flowery thyme. We mount again, and feel at every step Our foot half sunk in hfllocks green and soft, * John Courtenay Throckmorton, Esq., of Weston Underwood. II The Task Raised by the mole, the miaer of the soil. He, not unlike the great ones of mankind. Disfigures earth, and, plotting in the dark, Toils much to earn a monumental pile. That may record the mischiefs he has done. The summit gained, behold the proud alcove That crowns it 1 yet not all its pride secures The grand retreat from injuries impressed By rural carvers, who with knives deface The panels, leaving an obscure, rude name. In characters uncouth, and spelt amiss. So strong the zeal to immortalize himself Beats in the breast of man, that even a few. Few transient years, won from the abyss abhorred Of blank oblivion, seem a glorious prize. And even to a clown. Now roves the eye. And posted on this speculative height Exults in its command. The sheepfold here Pours out its fleecy tenants o'er the glebe. At first, progressive as a stream, they seek The mid^e field ; but scattered by degrees. Each to his choice, soon whiten all the land. There from the sunburnt ha 5 ^eld, homeward creeps The loaded wain, while, lightened of its charge, The wain that meets it passes swiftly by, The boorish driver leaning o'er his team Vociferous, and impatient of delay. Nor less attractive is the woodland scene. Diversified with trees of every growth, Alike yet various. Here the grey smooth trunks Of ash, or lime, or beech, distinctly shine, Within the twilight of their distant shades ; There lost behind a rising ground, the wood Seems sunk, and shortened to its topmost boughs No tree in all the grove but has its charms, Though each its hue peculiar : paler some. And of a wannish ^ey ; the willow such. And poplar that with ^ver lines his leaf. 12 Poems of Cowper And ash far stretching his umbrageous arm ; Of deeper green the elm ; and deeper still, Lord of the woods, the long-surviving oak. Some glossy-leaved, and shining in the sun, The maple, and the beech of oily nuts Prolific, and the lime at dewy eve Diffusing odours : nor unnoted pass The sycamore, capricious in attire, Now green, now tawny, and ere autumn yet Have changed the woods, in scarlet honours bright. O'er these, but far beyond (a spacious map Of hill and valley interposed between), The Ouse, dividing the well-watered land. Now glitters in the sun, and now retires, As bashful, yet impatient to be seen. Hence the declivity is sharp and short. And such the re-ascent ; between them weeps A little naiad her impoverished urn All summer long, which winter fills again. The folded gates would bar my progress now, But that the lord of this enclosed demesne, Communicative of the good he owns. Admits me to a share : the guiltless eye Commits no wrong, nor wastes what it enjoys. Refreshing change ! where how the blazing sun ? By short transition we have lost his glare. And stepped at once into a cooler clime. Ye fallen avenues ! once more I mourn Your fate unmerited, once more rejoice That yet a remnant of your race survives. How airy and how light the graceful arch. Yet awful as the consecrated roof Re-echoing pious anthems ! while beneath The chequered earth seems restless as a flood Brushed by the wind. So sportive is the hght Shot through the boughs, it dances as they dance. Shadow and sunshine intermingling quick, And darkening and enlightening, as the leaves 13 The Task Play wanton, every moment, every spot. And now, with nerves new-braced and spirits cheered. We tread the Wilderness, whose well-rolled walks, With curvature of slow and easy sweep — Deception innocent — give ample space To narrow bounds. The Grove receives us next ; Between the upright shafts of whose taU elms We may discern the thresher at his task. Thump after thump resounds the constant flail, That seems to swing uncertain, and yet falls Full on the destined ear. Wide flies the chaff ; The rustling straw sends up a frequent mist Of atoms, sparkling in the noonday beam. Come hither, ye that press your beds of down And sleep not ; see him sweating o'er his bread Before he eats it. — 'Tis the primal curse. But softened into mercy ; made the pledge Of cheerful days, and nights without a groan. By ceaseless action all that is subsists. Constant rotation of the unwearied wheel That Nature rides upon, maintains her health. Her beauty, her fertility. She dreads An instant's pause, and hves but while she moves. Its own revolvency upholds the world. Winds from all quarters agitate the air. And fit the limpid element for use. Else noxious ; oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams. All feel the freshening impulse, and are cleansed By restless undulation. Even the oak Thrives by the rude concussion of the storm : He seems indeed indignant, and to feel The impression of the blast with proud disdain. Frowning as if in his unconscious arm He held the thunder. But the monarch owes His firm stability to what he scorns. More fixed below, the more disturbed above. The law by which all creatures else are bound. Binds man, the lord of all. Himself derives 14 . Poems of Cowper No mean advantage from a kindred cause, From strenuous toil Ms hours of sweetest ease. The sedentary stretch their lazy length When custom bids, but no refreshment find, For none they need : the languid eye, the cheek Deserted of its bloom, the flaccid, shrunk, And withered muscle, and the vapid soul. Reproach their owner with that love of rest To wMch he forfeits even the rest he loves. Not such the alert and active. Measure life By its true worth, the comforts it affords. And theirs alone seems worthy of the name. Good health, and its associate in the most, Good temper ; spirits prompt to undertake. And not soon spent, though in an arduous task ; The powers of fancy and strong thought, are theirs ; Even age itself seems privileged in them With clear exemption from its own defects. A sparkling eye beneath a wrinkled front The veteran shows, and gracing a grey beard With youthful smiles, descends toward the grave Sprightly, and old almost without decay. Like a coy maiden. Ease, when courted most,. Farthest retires — ^an idol, at whose shrine Who oftenest sacrifice are favoured least The love of Nature, and the scenes she draws, Is Nature's dictate. Strange there should be found Who, self-imprisoned in their proud saloons, Renounce the odours of the open field For the unscented fictions of the loom ; Who, satisfied with only pencilled scenes, Prefer to the performance of a God The inferior* wonders of an artist's hand. Lovely indeed the mimic works of Art, But Nature's works far lovelier. I admire. None more admires, the painter's magic skill. Who shows me that whidb I shall never see. Conveys a distant country into mine. x5 The Task And throws Italian light on English walls : But imitative strokes can do no more Than please the eye — ^sweet Nature every sense. The air salubrious of her lofty hills. The cheering fragrance of her dewy vales. And music of her woods — ^no wor!^ of man May rival these ; these all bespeak a power Peculiar, and exclusively her own. Beneath the open sky she spreads the feast ; ’Tis free to all — Tis every day renewed ; Who scorns it, starves deservedly at home. He does not scorn it, who, imprisoned long In some unwholesome dungeon, and a prey To sallow sickness, which the vapours dank And clammy of his dark abode have bred. Escapes at last to liberty and light : His cheek recovers soon its healthful hue. His eye relumines its extinguished fires. He walks, he leaps, he runs— is winged with joy. And riots in the sweets of every breeze. He does not scorn it, who has long endured A fever’s agonies, and fed on drags. Nor yet the mariner, his blood inflamed With acrid salts ; his very heart athirst To gaze at Nature in her green array. Upon the ship’s tall side he stands, possessed With visions prompted by intense desire : Fair fields appear below, such as he left Far distant, such as he would die to find,^ — He seeks them headlong, and is seen no more. The spleen is seldom fdt where Flora reigns ; The lowering eye, the petulance, the frown. And sullen sadness, that o’ershade, distort, And mar the face of beauty, when no cause For such immeasurable woe appears. These Flora banishes, and gives the fair Sweet smiles, and bloom less transient than her own. It is the constant revolution, stale i6 . Poems of Cowper And tasteless, of the same repeated joys. That palls and satiates, and makes languid life A pedler's pack, that bows the bearer down. Health suffers, and the spirits ebb ; the heart Recoils from its own choice — at the full feast Is famished — ^finds no music in the song. No smartness in the jest, and wonders why. Yet thousands still desire to journey on, Though halt, and weary of the path they tread. The paralytic who can hold her cards But cannot play them, borrows a friend's hand To deal and shuffle, to divide and sort Her mingled suits and sequences, and sits Spectatress both and spectacle, a sad And silent cipher, while her proxy plays. Others are dragged into the crowded room Between supporters ; and, once seated, sit Through downright inability to rise. Till the stout bearers lift the corpse again. These speak a loud memento. Yet even these Themselves love life, and cling to it, as he That overhangs a torrent, to a twig. They love it, and yet loathe it ; fear to die, Yet scorn the purposes for which they live. Then wherefore not renounce them ? No — ^the dread, The slavish dread of solitude, that breeds Reflection and remorse, the fear of shame. And their inveterate habits, aU forbid. Whom call we gay ? That honour has been long The boast of mere pretenders to the name. The innocent are gay — -the lark is gay, That dries his feathers saturate with dew Beneath the rosy cloud, while yet the beams Of dayspring overshoot his humble nest. The peasant too, a witness of his song, Himseh a songster, is as gay as he. But save me from the gaiety of those Whose headaches nail them to a noonday bed : 17 The Task And save me too from theirs whose haggard ey^ Flash desperation, and betray their pangs For property stripped oft by cruel chance ; From gaiety that fills the bones with pain, The mouth with blasphemy, the heart with woe. The earth was made so various, that the mind Of desultory man, studious of change. And pleased with novelty, might be indulged. Prospects, however lovely, may be seen Till half their beauties fade ; the weary sight. Too well acquainted with their smiles, slides off Fastidious, seeking less familiar scenes. Then snug enclosures in the sheltered vale, Where frequent hedges intercept the eye, Delight us, happy to renounce awhile. Not senseless of its charms, what still we love, That such short absence may endear it more. Then forests, or the savage rock, may please. 