William Cowper- Collected Poetical Works

by William Cowper

  But souls that carry on a blest exchange

  Of joys they meet with in their heav’nly range,

  And with a fearless confidence make known

  The sorrows sympathy esteems its own,

  Daily derive encreasing light and force

  From such communion in their pleasant course,

  Feel less the journey’s roughness and its length,

  Meet their opposers with united strength,

  And one in heart, in int’rest and design,

  Gird up each other to the race divine.

  But Conversation, chuse what theme we may,

  And chiefly when religion leads the way,

  Should flow like waters after summer show’rs,

  Not as if rais’d by mere mechanic pow’rs.

  The Christian in whose soul, though now distress’d,

  Lives the dear thought of joys he once possess’d,

  When all his glowing language issued forth

  With God’s deep stamp upon its current worth,

  Will speak without disguise, and must impart

  Sad as it is, his undissembling heart,

  Abhors constraint, and dares not feign a zeal,

  Or seem to boast a fire he does not feel.

  The song of Sion is a tasteless thing,

  Unless when rising on a joyful wing

  The soul can mix with the celestial bands,

  And give the strain the compass it demands.

  Strange tidings these to tell a world who treat

  All but their own experience as deceit!

  Will they believe, though credulous enough

  To swallow much upon much weaker proof,

  That there are blest inhabitants of earth,

  Partakers of a new aethereal birth,

  Their hopes, desires and purposes estranged

  From things terrestrial, and divinely changed,

  Their very language of a kind that speaks

  The soul’s sure int’rest in the good she seeks,

  Who deal with scripture, its importance felt,

  As Tully with philosophy once dealt,

  And in the silent watches of the night,

  And through the scenes of toil-renewing light,

  The social walk, or solitary ride,

  Keep still the dear companion at their side?

  No — shame upon a self-disgracing age,

  God’s work may serve an ape upon a stage,

  With such a jest as fill’d with hellish glee

  Certain invisibles as shrewd as he,

  But veneration or respect finds none,

  Save from the subjects of that work alone.

  The world grown old, her deep discernment shows,

  Claps spectacles on her sagacious nose,

  Peruses closely the true Christian’s face,

  And finds it a mere mask of sly grimace,

  Usurps God’s office, lays his bosom bare,

  And finds hypocrisy close-lurking there,

  And serving God herself through mere constraint,

  Concludes his unfeign’d love of him, a feint.

  And yet God knows, look human nature through,

  (And in due time the world shall know it too)

  That since the flow’rs of Eden selt the blast,

  That after man’s defection laid all waste,

  Sincerity towards th’ heart-searching God,

  Has made the new-born creature her abode,

  Nor shall be found in unregen’rate souls,

  Till the last fire burn all between the poles.

  Sincerity! Why ’tis his only pride,

  Weak and imperfect in all grace beside,

  He knows that God demands his heart entire,

  And gives him all his just demands require.

  Without it, his pretensions were as vain,

  As having it, he deems the world’s disdain;

  That great defect would cost him not alone

  Man’s favourable judgment, but his own,

  His birthright shaken and no longer clear,

  Than while his conduct proves his heart sincere.

  Retort the charge, and let the world be told

  She boasts a confidence she does not hold,

  That conscious of her crimes, she feels instead,

  A cold misgiving, and a killing dread▪

  That while in health, the ground of her support

  Is madly to forget that life is short,

  That fick, she trembles, knowing she must die,

  Her hope presumption, and her faith a lie.

  That while she doats and dreams that she believes,

  She mocks her maker and herself deceives,

  Her utmost reach, historical assent,

  The doctrines warpt to what they never meant.

  That truth itself is in her head as dull

  And useless as a candle in a scull,

  And all her love of God a groundless claim,

  A trick upon the canvass, painted flame.

  Tell her again, the sneer upon her face,

  And all her censures of the work of grace,

  Are insincere, meant only to conceal

  A dread she would not, yet is forc’d to feel,

  That in her heart the Christian she reveres,

  And while she seems to scorn him, only fears.

  A poet does not work by square or line,

  As smiths and joiners perfect a design,

  At least we moderns, our attention less,

  Beyond th’ example of our sires, digress,

  And claim a right to scamper and run wide,

  Wherever chance, caprice, or fancy guide.

  The world and I fortuitously met,

  I ow’d a trifle and have paid the debt,

  She did me wrong, I recompens’d the deed,

  And having struck the balance, now procecd.

  Perhaps, however, as some years have pass’d

  Since she and I conversed together last,

  And I have liv’d recluse in rural shades,

  Which seldom a distinct report pervades,

  Great changes and new manners have occurr’d,

  And blest reforms that I have never heard,

  And she may now be as discreet and wise,

  As once absurd in all discerning eyes.

  Sobriety perhaps may now be found,

  Where once intoxication press’d the ground,

  The subtle and injurious may be just,

  And he grown chaste that was the slave of lust;

  Arts once esteem’d may be with shame dismiss’d,

  Charity may relax the miser’s fist,

  The gamester may have cast his cards away,

  Forgot to curse and only kneel to pray.

  It has indeed been told me (with what weight,

  How credibly, ’tis hard for me to state)

  That fable’s old that seem’d for ever mute,

  Reviv’d, are hast’ning into fresh repute,

  And gods and goddesses discarded long,

  Like useless lumber or a stroller’s fong,

  Are bringing into vogue their heathen train,

  And Jupiter bids fair to rule again.

  That certain feasts are instituted now,

  Where Venus hears the lover’s tender vow,

  That all Olympus through the country roves,

  To consecrate our few remaining groves,

  And echo learns politely to repeat,

  The praise of names for ages obsolete,

  That having proved the weakness, it should seem,

  Of revelation’s ineffectual beam,

  To bring the passions under sober sway,

  And give the moral springs their proper play,

  They mean to try what may at last be done

  By stout substantial gods of wood and stone,

  And whether Roman rites may not produce

  The virtues of old Rome for English use.

  May much success attend the pious p
lan,

  May Mercury once more embellish man,

  Grace him again with long forgotten arts,

  Reclaim his taste and brighten up his parts,

  Make him athletic as in days of old,

  Learn’d at the bar, in the paloestra bold,

  Divest the rougher sex of female airs,

  And teach the softer not to copy theirs.

  The change shall please, nor shall it matter aught

  Who works the wonder if it be but wrought.

  ’Tis time, hoewever, if the case stand thus,

  For us plain folks and all who side with us,

  To build our altar, confident and bold,

  And say as stern Elijah said of old,

  The strife now stands upon a fair award,

  If Is’rael’s Lord be God, then serve the Lord —

  If he be silent, faith is all a whim,

  Then Baal is the God and worship him.

  Digression is so much in modern use,

  Thought is so rare, and fancy so profuse,

  Some never seem so wide of their intent,

  As when returning to the theme they meant.

  As mendicants whose business is to roam,

  Make ev’ry parish but their own, their home

  Though such continual zigzags in a book,

  Such drunken reelings have an aukward look,

  And I had rather creep to what is true,

  Than rove and stagger with no mark in view,

  Yet to consult a little, seem’d no crime,

  The freakish humour of the present time.

  But now, to gather up what seems dispers’d,

  And touch the subject I design’d at first,

  May prove, though much beside the rules of art,

  Best for the public, and my wisest part.

  And first let no man charge me that I mean

  To cloath in sables every social scene,

  And give good company a face severe

  As if they met around a father’s bier;

  For tell some men that pleasure all their bent,

  And laughter all their work, is life mispent,

  Their wisdom bursts into this sage reply,

  Then mirth is sin, and we should always cry.

  To find the medium asks some share of wit,

  And therefore ’tis a mark fools never hit.

  But though life’s valley be a vale of tears,

  A brighter scene beyond that vale appears,

  Whose glory with a light that never fades,

  Shoots between scattered rocks and opening shades,

  And while it shows the land the soul desires,

  The language of the land she seeks, inspires.

  Thus touched, the tongue receives a sacred cure

  Of all that was absurd, profane, impure,

  Held within modest bounds the tide of speech

  Pursues the course that truth and nature teach,

  No longer labours merely to produce

  The pomp of sound, or tinkle without use,

  Where’er it winds, the salutary stream

  Sprightly and fresh, enriches ev’ry theme,

  While all the happy man possess’d before,

  The gift of nature or the classic store,

  Is made subservient to the grand design

  For which heav’n form’d the faculty divine.

  So should an ideot while at large he strays,

  Find the sweet lyre on which an artist plays,

  With rash and aukward force the chords he shakes,

  And grins with wonder at the jar he makes;

  But let the wise and well-instructed hand,

  Once take the shell beneath his just command,

  In gentle sounds it seems as it complained

  Of the rude injuries it late sustained,

  ‘Till tun’d at length to some immortal song,

  It sounds Jehovah’s name, and pours his praise along.

  RETIREMENT.

  — studiis florens ignobilis oti.

  VIRG. GEOR. LIB. 4.

  HACKNEY’D in business, wearied at that oar

  Which thousands once fast chain’d to, quit no more,

  But which when life at ebb runs weak and low,

  All wish, or seem to wish they could forego,

  The statesman, lawyer, merchant, man of trade,

  Pants for the refuge of some rural shade,

  Where all his long anxieties forgot

  Amid the charms of a sequester’d spot,

  Or recollected only to gild o’er

  And add a smile to what was sweet before,

  He may possess the joys he thinks he sees,

  Lay his old age upon the lap of ease,

  Improve the remnant of his wasted span,

  And having liv’d a trifler, die a man.

  Thus conscience pleads her cause within the breast,

  Though long rebell’d against, not yet suppress’d,

  And calls a creature formed for God alone,

  For heaven’s high purposes and not his own,

  Calls him away from selfish ends and aims,

  From what debilitates and what inflames,

  From cities humming with a restless crowd,

  Sordid as active, ignorant as loud,

  Whose highest praise is that they live in vain,

  The dupes of pleasure, or the slaves of gain,

  Where works of man are cluster’d close around,

  And works of God are hardly to be found,

  To regions where in spite of sin and woe,

  Traces of Eden are still seen below,

  Where mountain, river, forest, field and grove,

  Remind him of his Maker’s pow’r and love.

  ’Tis well if look’d for at so late a day,

  In the last scene of such a senseless play,

  True wisdom will attend his feeble call,

  And grace his action e’er the curtain fall.

  Souls that have long despised their heav’nly birth,

  Their wishes all impregnated with earth,

  For threescore years employed with ceaseless care,

  In catching smoke and feeding upon air,

  Conversant only with the ways of men,

  Rarely redeem the short remaining ten.

  Invet’rate habits choak th’ unfruitful heart,

  Their fibres penetrate its tend’rest part,

  And draining its nutritious pow’rs to feed

  Their noxious growth, starve ev’ry better seed.

  Happy if full of days — but happier far

  If e’er we yet discern life’s evening star,

  Sick of the service of a world that feeds

  Its patient drudges with dry chaff and weeds,

  We can escape from custom’s ideot sway,

  To serve the sov’reign we were born t’ obey.

  Then sweet to muse upon his skill display’d

  (Infinite skill) in all that he has made!

  To trace in nature’s most minute design,

  The signature and stamp of pow’r divine,

  Contrivance intricate express’d with ease

  Where unassisted sight no beauty sees,

  The shapely limb and lubricated joint,

  Within the small dimensions of a point,

  Muscle and nerve miraculously spun,

  His mighty work who speaks and it is done,

  Th’ invisible in things scarce seen reveal’d,

  To whom an atom is an ample field.

  To wonder at a thousand insect forms,

  These hatch’d, and those resuscitated worms,

  New life ordain’d and brighter scenes to share,

  Once prone on earth, now buoyant upon air,

  Whose shape would make them, had they bulk and size,

  More hideous foes than fancy can devise,

  With helmed heads and dragon scales adorn’d,

  The mighty myriads, now securely scorn’d,

  Would mock t
he majesty of man’s high birth,

  Despise his bulwarks and unpeople earth.

  Then with a glance of fancy to survey,

  Far as the faculty can stretch away,

  Ten thousand rivers poured at his command

  From urns that never fail through ev’ry land,

  These like a deluge with impetuous force,

  Those winding modestly a silent course,

  The cloud-surmounting alps, the fruitful vales,

  Seas on which ev’ry nation spreads her sails,

  The sun, a world whence other worlds drink light,

  The crescent moon, the diadem of night,

  Stars countless, each in his appointed place,

  Fast-anchor’d in the deep abyss of space —

  At such a sight to catch the poet’s flame,

  And with a rapture like his own exclaim,

  These are thy glorious works, thou source of good,

  How dimly seen, how faintly understood! —

  Thine, and upheld by thy paternal care,

  This universal frame, thus wond’rous fair;

  Thy pow’r divine and bounty beyond thought,

  Ador’d and prais’d in all that thou hast wrought.

  Absorbed in that immensity I see,

  I shrink abased, and yet aspire to thee;

  Instruct me, guide me to that heav’nly day,

  Thy words, more clearly than thy works display,

  That while thy truths my grosser thoughts refine,

  I may resemble thee and call thee mine.

  Oh blest proficiency! surpassing all

  That men erroneously their glory call,

  The recompence that arts or arms can yield,

  The bar, the senate or the tented field.

  Compar’d with this sublimest life below,

  Ye kings and rulers what have courts to show?

  Thus studied, used and consecrated thus,

  Whatever is, seems form’d indeed for us,

  Not as the plaything of a froward child,

  Fretful unless diverted and beguiled,

  Much less to feed and fan the fatal fires

  Of pride, ambition or impure desires,

  But as a scale by which the soul ascends

  From mighty means to more important ends,

  Securely, though by steps but rarely trod,

  Mounts from inferior beings up to God,

  And sees by no fallacious light or dim,

  Earth made for man, and man himself for him.

  Not that I mean t’ approve, or would inforce

  A superstitious and monastic course:

  Truth is not local, God alike pervades

  And fills the world of traffic and the shades,

  And may be fear’d amid the busiest scenes,

  Or scorn’d where business never intervenes.

  But ’tis not easy with a mind like ours,

  Conscious of weakness in its noblest pow’rs,