William Cowper- Collected Poetical Works

by William Cowper

  Such health and gaiety of heart enjoy

  The houseless rovers of the sylvan world;

  And breathing wholesome air, and wandering much,

  Need other physic none to heal the effects

  Of loathsome diet, penury, and cold.

  Blest he, though undistinguished from the crowd

  By wealth or dignity, who dwells secure

  Where man, by nature fierce, has laid aside

  His fierceness, having learnt, though slow to learn

  The manners and the arts of civil life.

  His wants, indeed, are many; but supply

  Is obvious; placed within the easy reach

  Of temperate wishes and industrious hands.

  Here virtue thrives as in her proper soil;

  Not rude and surly, and beset with thorns,

  And terrible to sight, as when she springs

  (If e’er she spring spontaneous) in remote

  And barbarous climes, where violence prevails,

  And strength is lord of all; but gentle, kind,

  By culture tamed, by liberty refreshed,

  And all her fruits by radiant truth matured.

  War and the chase engross the savage whole;

  War followed for revenge, or to supplant

  The envied tenants of some happier spot;

  The chase for sustenance, precarious trust!

  His hard condition with severe constraint

  Binds all his faculties, forbids all growth

  Of wisdom, proves a school in which he learns

  Sly circumvention, unrelenting hate,

  Mean self-attachment, and scarce aught beside.

  Thus fare the shivering natives of the north,

  And thus the rangers of the western world,

  Where it advances far into the deep,

  Towards the Antarctic. Even the favoured isles

  So lately found, although the constant sun

  Cheer all their seasons with a grateful smile,

  Can boast but little virtue; and inert

  Through plenty, lose in morals what they gain

  In manners, victims of luxurious ease.

  These therefore I can pity, placed remote

  From all that science traces, art invents,

  Or inspiration teaches; and enclosed

  In boundless oceans, never to be passed

  By navigators uninformed as they,

  Or ploughed perhaps by British bark again.

  But far beyond the rest, and with most cause,

  Thee, gentle savage! whom no love of thee

  Or thine, but curiosity perhaps,

  Or else vain-glory, prompted us to draw

  Forth from thy native bowers, to show thee here

  With what superior skill we can abuse

  The gifts of Providence, and squander life.

  The dream is past. And thou hast found again

  Thy cocoas and bananas, palms, and yams,

  And homestall thatched with leaves. But hast thou found

  Their former charms? And, having seen our state,

  Our palaces, our ladies, and our pomp

  Of equipage, our gardens, and our sports,

  And heard our music; are thy simple friends,

  Thy simple fare, and all thy plain delights

  As dear to thee as once? And have thy joys

  Lost nothing by comparison with ours?

  Rude as thou art (for we returned thee rude

  And ignorant, except of outward show),

  I cannot think thee yet so dull of heart

  And spiritless, as never to regret

  Sweets tasted here, and left as soon as known.

  Methinks I see thee straying on the beach,

  And asking of the surge that bathes the foot

  If ever it has washed our distant shore.

  I see thee weep, and thine are honest tears,

  A patriot’s for his country. Thou art sad

  At thought of her forlorn and abject state,

  From which no power of thine can raise her up.

  Thus fancy paints thee, and, though apt to err,

  Perhaps errs little when she paints thee thus.

  She tells me too that duly every morn

  Thou climb’st the mountain-top, with eager eye

  Exploring far and wide the watery waste,

  For sight of ship from England. Every speck

  Seen in the dim horizon turns thee pale

  With conflict of contending hopes and fears.

  But comes at last the dull and dusky eve,

  And sends thee to thy cabin, well prepared

  To dream all night of what the day denied.

  Alas, expect it not. We found no bait

  To tempt us in thy country. Doing good,

  Disinterested good, is not our trade.

  We travel far, ’tis true, but not for naught;

  And must be bribed to compass earth again

  By other hopes, and richer fruits than yours.

  But though true worth and virtue, in the mild

  And genial soil of cultivated life

  Thrive most, and may perhaps thrive only there,

  Yet not in cities oft. In proud and gay

  And gain-devoted cities, thither flow,

  As to a common and most noisome sewer,

  The dregs and feculence of every land.

  In cities, foul example on most minds

  Begets its likeness. Rank abundance breeds

  In gross and pampered cities sloth and lust,

  And wantonness and gluttonous excess.

  In cities, vice is hidden with most ease,

  Or seen with least reproach; and virtue, taught

  By frequent lapse, can hope no triumph there,

  Beyond the achievement of successful flight.

  I do confess them nurseries of the arts,

  In which they flourish most; where, in the beams

  Of warm encouragement, and in the eye

  Of public note, they reach their perfect size.

  Such London is, by taste and wealth proclaimed

  The fairest capital in all the world,

  By riot and incontinence the worst.

  There, touched by Reynolds, a dull blank becomes

  A lucid mirror, in which nature sees

  All her reflected features. Bacon there

  Gives more than female beauty to a stone,

  And Chatham’s eloquence to marble lips.

  Nor does the chisel occupy alone

  The powers of sculpture, but the style as much;

  Each province of her art her equal care.

  With nice incision of her guided steel

  She ploughs a brazen field, and clothes a soil

  So sterile with what charms soe’er she will,

  The richest scenery and the loveliest forms.

  Where finds philosophy her eagle eye,

  With which she gazes at yon burning disk

  Undazzled, and detects and counts his spots?

  In London. Where her implements exact,

  With which she calculates, computes, and scans

  All distance, motion, magnitude, and now

  Measures an atom, and now girds a world?

  In London. Where has commerce such a mart,

  So rich, so thronged, so drained, and so supplied,

  As London, opulent, enlarged, and still

  Increasing London? Babylon of old

  Not more the glory of the earth, than she

  A more accomplished world’s chief glory now.

  She has her praise. Now mark a spot or two

  That so much beauty would do well to purge;

  And show this queen of cities, that so fair

  May yet be foul; so witty, yet not wise.

  It is not seemly, nor of good report,

  That she is slack in discipline; more prompt

  To avenge than to prevent the breach of law:

  That she is rigid in denouncing death<
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  On petty robbers, and indulges life

  And liberty, and ofttimes honour too,

  To peculators of the public gold:

  That thieves at home must hang; but he, that puts

  Into his overgorged and bloated purse

  The wealth of Indian provinces, escapes.

  Nor is it well, nor can it come to good,

  That through profane and infidel contempt

  Of holy writ, she has presumed to annul

  And abrogate, as roundly as she may,

  The total ordinance and will of God;

  Advancing fashion to the post of truth,

  And centring all authority in modes

  And customs of her own, till Sabbath rites

  Have dwindled into unrespected forms,

  And knees and hassocks are wellnigh divorced.

  God made the country, and man made the town.

  What wonder, then, that health and virtue, gifts

  That can alone make sweet the bitter draught

  That life holds out to all, should most abound

  And least be threatened in the fields and groves?

  Possess ye therefore, ye who, borne about

  In chariots and sedans, know no fatigue

  But that of idleness, and taste no scenes

  But such as art contrives, possess ye still

  Your element; there only ye can shine,

  There only minds like yours can do no harm.

  Our groves were planted to console at noon

  The pensive wanderer in their shades. At eve

  The moonbeam, sliding softly in between

  The sleeping leaves, is all the light they wish,

  Birds warbling all the music. We can spare

  The splendour of your lamps, they but eclipse

  Our softer satellite. Your songs confound

  Our more harmonious notes. The thrush departs

  Scared, and the offended nightingale is mute.

  There is a public mischief in your mirth;

  It plagues your country. Folly such as yours,

  Graced with a sword, and worthier of a fan,

  Has made, which enemies could ne’er have done,

  Our arch of empire, steadfast but for you,

  A mutilated structure, soon to fall.

  BOOK II. THE TIMEPIECE.

  Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness,

  Some boundless contiguity of shade,

  Where rumour of oppression and deceit,

  Of unsuccessful or successful war,

  Might never reach me more! My ear is pained,

  My soul is sick with every day’s report

  Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled.

  There is no flesh in man’s obdurate heart,

  It does not feel for man. The natural bond

  Of brotherhood is severed as the flax

  That falls asunder at the touch of fire.

  He finds his fellow guilty of a skin

  Not coloured like his own, and having power

  To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause

  Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.

  Lands intersected by a narrow frith

  Abhor each other. Mountains interposed

  Make enemies of nations, who had else

  Like kindred drops been mingled into one.

  Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;

  And worse than all, and most to be deplored,

  As human nature’s broadest, foulest blot,

  Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat

  With stripes, that mercy, with a bleeding heart,

  Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.

  Then what is man? And what man, seeing this,

  And having human feelings, does not blush

  And hang his head, to think himself a man?

  I would not have a slave to till my ground,

  To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,

  And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth

  That sinews bought and sold have ever earned.

  No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart’s

  Just estimation prized above all price,

  I had much rather be myself the slave

  And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.

  We have no slaves at home — then why abroad?

  And they themselves, once ferried o’er the wave

  That parts us, are emancipate and loosed.

  Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs

  Receive our air, that moment they are free,

  They touch our country and their shackles fall.

  That’s noble, and bespeaks a nation proud

  And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then,

  And let it circulate through every vein

  Of all your empire; that where Britain’s power

  Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.

  Sure there is need of social intercourse,

  Benevolence and peace and mutual aid,

  Between the nations, in a world that seems

  To toll the death-bell to its own decease;

  And by the voice of all its elements

  To preach the general doom. When were the winds

  Let slip with such a warrant to destroy?

  When did the waves so haughtily o’erleap

  Their ancient barriers, deluging the dry?

  Fires from beneath and meteors from above,

  Portentous, unexampled, unexplained,

  Have kindled beacons in the skies, and the old

  And crazy earth has had her shaking fits

  More frequent, and foregone her usual rest.

  Is it a time to wrangle, when the props

  And pillars of our planet seem to fail,

  And nature with a dim and sickly eye

  To wait the close of all? But grant her end

  More distant, and that prophecy demands

  A longer respite, unaccomplished yet;

  Still they are frowning signals, and bespeak

  Displeasure in His breast who smites the earth

  Or heals it, makes it languish or rejoice.

  And ’tis but seemly, that, where all deserve

  And stand exposed by common peccancy

  To what no few have felt, there should be peace,

  And brethren in calamity should love.

  Alas for Sicily, rude fragments now

  Lie scattered where the shapely column stood.

  Her palaces are dust. In all her streets

  The voice of singing and the sprightly chord

  Are silent. Revelry and dance and show

  Suffer a syncope and solemn pause,

  While God performs, upon the trembling stage

  Of His own works, His dreadful part alone.

  How does the earth receive Him? — With what signs

  Of gratulation and delight, her King?

  Pours she not all her choicest fruits abroad,

  Her sweetest flowers, her aromatic gums,

  Disclosing paradise where’er He treads?

  She quakes at His approach. Her hollow womb,

  Conceiving thunders, through a thousand deeps

  And fiery caverns roars beneath His foot.

  The hills move lightly and the mountains smoke,

  For He has touched them. From the extremest point

  Of elevation down into the abyss,

  His wrath is busy and His frown is felt.

  The rocks fall headlong and the valleys rise,

  The rivers die into offensive pools,

  And, charged with putrid verdure, breathe a gross

  And mortal nuisance into all the air.

  What solid was, by transformation strange

  Grows fluid, and the fixed and rooted earth

  Tormented into billows, heaves and swells,

  Or with vortiginous and hideous whirl

  Sucks down its prey insatiable. Immense

  The tumult and
the overthrow, the pangs

  And agonies of human and of brute

  Multitudes, fugitive on every side,

  And fugitive in vain. The sylvan scene

  Migrates uplifted, and, with all its soil

  Alighting in far-distant fields, finds out

  A new possessor, and survives the change.

  Ocean has caught the frenzy, and upwrought

  To an enormous and o’erbearing height,

  Not by a mighty wind, but by that voice

  Which winds and waves obey, invades the shore

  Resistless. Never such a sudden flood,

  Upridged so high, and sent on such a charge,

  Possessed an inland scene. Where now the throng

  That pressed the beach and hasty to depart

  Looked to the sea for safety? They are gone,

  Gone with the refluent wave into the deep,

  A prince with half his people. Ancient towers,

  And roofs embattled high, the gloomy scenes

  Where beauty oft and lettered worth consume

  Life in the unproductive shades of death,

  Fall prone: the pale inhabitants come forth,

  And, happy in their unforeseen release

  From all the rigours of restraint, enjoy

  The terrors of the day that sets them free.

  Who then, that has thee, would not hold thee fast,

  Freedom! whom they that lose thee so regret,

  That even a judgment, making way for thee,

  Seems in their eyes a mercy, for thy sake.

  Such evil sin hath wrought; and such a flame

  Kindled in heaven, that it burns down to earth,

  And, in the furious inquest that it makes

  On God’s behalf, lays waste His fairest works.

  The very elements, though each be meant

  The minister of man to serve his wants,

  Conspire against him. With his breath he draws

  A plague into his blood; and cannot use

  Life’s necessary means, but he must die.

  Storms rise to o’erwhelm him: or, if stormy winds

  Rise not, the waters of the deep shall rise,

  And, needing none assistance of the storm,

  Shall roll themselves ashore, and reach him there.

  The earth shall shake him out of all his holds,

  Or make his house his grave; nor so content,

  Shall counterfeit the motions of the flood,

  And drown him in her dry and dusty gulfs.

  What then — were they the wicked above all,

  And we the righteous, whose fast-anchored isle

  Moved not, while theirs was rocked like a light skiff,

  The sport of every wave? No: none are clear,

  And none than we more guilty. But where all

  Stand chargeable with guilt, and to the shafts