William Cowper- Collected Poetical Works

by William Cowper

  But falsely. Sages after sages strove,

  In vain, to filter off a crystal draught

  Pure from the lees, which often more enhanced

  The thirst than slaked it, and not seldom bred

  Intoxication and delirium wild.

  In vain they pushed inquiry to the birth

  And spring-time of the world; asked, Whence is man?

  Why formed at all? and wherefore as he is?

  Where must he find his Maker? With what rites

  Adore Him? Will He hear, accept, and bless?

  Or does He sit regardless of His works?

  Has man within him an immortal seed?

  Or does the tomb take all? If he survive

  His ashes, where? and in what weal or woe?

  Knots worthy of solution, which alone

  A Deity could solve. Their answers vague,

  And all at random, fabulous and dark,

  Left them as dark themselves. Their rules of life,

  Defective and unsanctioned, proved too weak

  To bind the roving appetite, and lead

  Blind nature to a God not yet revealed.

  ’Tis Revelation satisfies all doubts,

  Explains all mysteries, except her own,

  And so illuminates the path of life,

  That fools discover it, and stray no more.

  Now tell me, dignified and sapient sir,

  My man of morals, nurtured in the shades

  Of Academus, is this false or true?

  Is Christ the abler teacher, or the schools?

  If Christ, then why resort at every turn

  To Athens or to Rome for wisdom short

  Of man’s occasions, when in Him reside

  Grace, knowledge, comfort, an unfathomed store?

  How oft when Paul has served us with a text,

  Has Epictetus, Plato, Tully, preached!

  Men that, if now alive, would sit content

  And humble learners of a Saviour’s worth,

  Preach it who might. Such was their love of truth,

  Their thirst of knowledge, and their candour too.

  And thus it is. The pastor, either vain

  By nature, or by flattery made so, taught

  To gaze at his own splendour, and to exalt

  Absurdly, not his office, but himself;

  Or unenlightened, and too proud to learn,

  Or vicious, and not therefore apt to teach,

  Perverting often, by the stress of lewd

  And loose example, whom he should instruct,

  Exposes and holds up to broad disgrace

  The noblest function, and discredits much

  The brightest truths that man has ever seen.

  For ghostly counsel, if it either fall

  Below the exigence, or be not backed

  With show of love, at least with hopeful proof

  Of some sincerity on the giver’s part;

  Or be dishonoured in the exterior form

  And mode of its conveyance, by such tricks

  As move derision, or by foppish airs

  And histrionic mummery, that let down

  The pulpit to the level of the stage;

  Drops from the lips a disregarded thing.

  The weak perhaps are moved, but are not taught,

  While prejudice in men of stronger minds

  Takes deeper root, confirmed by what they see.

  A relaxation of religion’s hold

  Upon the roving and untutored heart

  Soon follows, and the curb of conscience snapt,

  The laity run wild. — But do they now?

  Note their extravagance, and be convinced.

  As nations, ignorant of God, contrive

  A wooden one, so we, no longer taught

  By monitors that Mother Church supplies,

  Now make our own. Posterity will ask

  (If e’er posterity sees verse of mine),

  Some fifty or a hundred lustrums hence,

  What was a monitor in George’s days?

  My very gentle reader, yet unborn,

  Of whom I needs must augur better things,

  Since Heaven would sure grow weary of a world

  Productive only of a race like us,

  A monitor is wood — plank shaven thin.

  We wear it at our backs. There, closely braced

  And neatly fitted, it compresses hard

  The prominent and most unsightly bones,

  And binds the shoulders flat. We prove its use

  Sovereign and most effectual to secure

  A form, not now gymnastic as of yore,

  From rickets and distortion, else, our lot.

  But thus admonished we can walk erect,

  One proof at least of manhood; while the friend

  Sticks close, a Mentor worthy of his charge.

  Our habits costlier than Lucullus wore,

  And, by caprice as multiplied as his,

  Just please us while the fashion is at full,

  But change with every moon. The sycophant,

  That waits to dress us, arbitrates their date,

  Surveys his fair reversion with keen eye;

  Finds one ill made, another obsolete,

  This fits not nicely, that is ill conceived;

  And, making prize of all that he condemns,

  With our expenditure defrays his own.

  Variety’s the very spice of life,

  That gives it all its flavour. We have run

  Through every change that fancy, at the loom

  Exhausted, has had genius to supply,

  And, studious of mutation still, discard

  A real elegance, a little used,

  For monstrous novelty and strange disguise.

  We sacrifice to dress, till household joys

  And comforts cease. Dress drains our cellar dry,

  And keeps our larder lean; puts out our fires,

  And introduces hunger, frost, and woe,

  Where peace and hospitality might reign.

  What man that lives, and that knows how to live,

  Would fail to exhibit at the public shows

  A form as splendid as the proudest there,

  Though appetite raise outcries at the cost?

  A man o’ the town dines late, but soon enough,

  With reasonable forecast and despatch,

  To ensure a side-box station at half-price.

  You think, perhaps, so delicate his dress,

  His daily fare as delicate. Alas!

  He picks clean teeth, and, busy as he seems

  With an old tavern quill, is hungry yet.

  The rout is folly’s circle which she draws

  With magic wand. So potent is the spell,

  That none decoyed into that fatal ring,

  Unless by Heaven’s peculiar grace, escape.

  There we grow early gray, but never wise;

  There form connections, and acquire no friend;

  Solicit pleasure hopeless of success;

  Waste youth in occupations only fit

  For second childhood, and devote old age

  To sports which only childhood could excuse.

  There they are happiest who dissemble best

  Their weariness; and they the most polite,

  Who squander time and treasure with a smile,

  Though at their own destruction. She that asks

  Her dear five hundred friends, contemns them all,

  And hates their coming. They (what can they less?)

  Make just reprisals, and, with cringe and shrug

  And bow obsequious, hide their hate of her.

  All catch the frenzy, downward from her Grace,

  Whose flambeaux flash against the morning skies,

  And gild our chamber ceilings as they pass,

  To her who, frugal only that her thrift

  May feed excesses she can ill afford,

  Is hackneyed home unlackeyed; who, in haste

  Alight
ing, turns the key in her own door,

  And, at the watchman’s lantern borrowing light,

  Finds a cold bed her only comfort left.

  Wives beggar husbands, husbands starve their wives,

  On Fortune’s velvet altar offering up

  Their last poor pittance — Fortune, most severe

  Of goddesses yet known, and costlier far

  Than all that held their routs in Juno’s heaven. —

  So fare we in this prison-house the world.

  And ’tis a fearful spectacle to see

  So many maniacs dancing in their chains.

  They gaze upon the links that hold them fast

  With eyes of anguish, execrate their lot,

  Then shake them in despair, and dance again.

  Now basket up the family of plagues

  That waste our vitals. Peculation, sale

  Of honour, perjury, corruption, frauds

  By forgery, by subterfuge of law,

  By tricks and lies, as numerous and as keen

  As the necessities their authors feel;

  Then cast them, closely bundled, every brat

  At the right door. Profusion is its sire.

  Profusion unrestrained, with all that’s base

  In character, has littered all the land,

  And bred within the memory of no few

  A priesthood such as Baal’s was of old,

  A people such as never was till now.

  It is a hungry vice: — it eats up all

  That gives society its beauty, strength,

  Convenience, and security, and use;

  Makes men mere vermin, worthy to be trapped

  And gibbeted, as fast as catchpole claws

  Can seize the slippery prey; unties the knot

  Of union, and converts the sacred band

  That holds mankind together to a scourge.

  Profusion, deluging a state with lusts

  Of grossest nature and of worst effects,

  Prepares it for its ruin; hardens, blinds,

  And warps the consciences of public men

  Till they can laugh at virtue; mock the fools

  That trust them; and, in the end, disclose a face

  That would have shocked credulity herself,

  Unmasked, vouchsafing this their sole excuse; —

  Since all alike are selfish, why not they?

  This does Profusion, and the accursed cause

  Of such deep mischief has itself a cause.

  In colleges and halls, in ancient days,

  When learning, virtue, piety, and truth

  Were precious, and inculcated with care,

  There dwelt a sage called Discipline. His head,

  Not yet by time completely silvered o’er,

  Bespoke him past the bounds of freakish youth,

  But strong for service still, and unimpaired.

  His eye was meek and gentle, and a smile

  Played on his lips, and in his speech was heard

  Paternal sweetness, dignity, and love.

  The occupation dearest to his heart

  Was to encourage goodness. He would stroke

  The head of modest and ingenuous worth,

  That blushed at its own praise, and press the youth

  Close to his side that pleased him. Learning grew

  Beneath his care, a thriving, vigorous plant;

  The mind was well informed, the passions held

  Subordinate, and diligence was choice.

  If e’er it chanced, as sometimes chance it must,

  That one among so many overleaped

  The limits of control, his gentle eye

  Grew stern, and darted a severe rebuke;

  His frown was full of terror, and his voice

  Shook the delinquent with such fits of awe

  As left him not, till penitence had won

  Lost favour back again, and closed the breach.

  But Discipline, a faithful servant long,

  Declined at length into the vale of years;

  A palsy struck his arm, his sparkling eye

  Was quenched in rheums of age, his voice unstrung

  Grew tremulous, and moved derision more

  Than reverence in perverse, rebellious youth.

  So colleges and halls neglected much

  Their good old friend, and Discipline at length,

  O’erlooked and unemployed, fell sick and died.

  Then study languished, emulation slept,

  And virtue fled. The schools became a scene

  Of solemn farce, where ignorance in stilts,

  His cap well lined with logic not his own,

  With parrot tongue performed the scholar’s part,

  Proceeding soon a graduated dunce.

  Then compromise had place, and scrutiny

  Became stone-blind, precedence went in truck,

  And he was competent whose purse was so.

  A dissolution of all bonds ensued,

  The curbs invented for the mulish mouth

  Of headstrong youth were broken; bars and bolts

  Grew rusty by disuse, and massy gates

  Forgot their office, opening with a touch;

  Till gowns at length are found mere masquerade;

  The tasselled cap and the spruce band a jest,

  A mockery of the world. What need of these

  For gamesters, jockeys, brothellers impure,

  Spendthrifts and booted sportsmen, oftener seen

  With belted waist, and pointers at their heels,

  Than in the bounds of duty? What was learned,

  If aught was learned in childhood, is forgot,

  And such expense as pinches parents blue

  And mortifies the liberal hand of love,

  Is squandered in pursuit of idle sports

  And vicious pleasures; buys the boy a name,

  That sits a stigma on his father’s house,

  And cleaves through life inseparably close

  To him that wears it. What can after-games

  Of riper joys, and commerce with the world,

  The lewd vain world that must receive him soon,

  Add to such erudition thus acquired,

  Where science and where virtue are professed?

  They may confirm his habits, rivet fast

  His folly, but to spoil him is a task

  That bids defiance to the united powers

  Of fashion, dissipation, taverns, stews.

  Now, blame we most the nurselings, or the nurse?

  The children crooked and twisted and deformed

  Through want of care, or her whose winking eye

  And slumbering oscitancy mars the brood?

  The nurse no doubt. Regardless of her charge,

  She needs herself correction; needs to learn

  That it is dangerous sporting with the world,

  With things so sacred as a nation’s trust;

  The nurture of her youth, her dearest pledge.

  All are not such. I had a brother once —

  Peace to the memory of a man of worth,

  A man of letters and of manners too —

  Of manners sweet as virtue always wears,

  When gay good-nature dresses her in smiles.

  He graced a college in which order yet

  Was sacred, and was honoured, loved, and wept,

  By more than one, themselves conspicuous there.

  Some minds are tempered happily, and mixt

  With such ingredients of good sense and taste

  Of what is excellent in man, they thirst

  With such a zeal to be what they approve,

  That no restraints can circumscribe them more

  Than they themselves by choice, for wisdom’s sake.

  Nor can example hurt them. What they see

  Of vice in others but enhancing more

  The charms of virtue in their just esteem.

  If such escape contagion, and emerge

  Pure, from
so foul a pool, to shine abroad,

  And give the world their talents and themselves,

  Small thanks to those whose negligence or sloth

  Exposed their inexperience to the snare,

  And left them to an undirected choice.

  See, then, the quiver broken and decayed,

  In which are kept our arrows. Rusting there

  In wild disorder and unfit for use,

  What wonder if discharged into the world

  They shame their shooters with a random flight,

  Their points obtuse and feathers drunk with wine.

  Well may the Church wage unsuccessful war

  With such artillery armed. Vice parries wide

  The undreaded volley with a sword of straw,

  And stands an impudent and fearless mark.

  Have we not tracked the felon home, and found

  His birthplace and his dam? The country mourns —

  Mourns, because every plague that can infest

  Society, that saps and worms the base

  Of the edifice that Policy has raised,

  Swarms in all quarters; meets the eye, the ear,

  And suffocates the breath at every turn.

  Profusion breeds them. And the cause itself

  Of that calamitous mischief has been found,

  Found, too, where most offensive, in the skirts

  Of the robed pedagogue. Else, let the arraigned

  Stand up unconscious and refute the charge.

  So, when the Jewish leader stretched his arm

  And waved his rod divine, a race obscene,

  Spawned in the muddy beds of Nile, came forth

  Polluting Egypt. Gardens, fields, and plains

  Were covered with the pest. The streets were filled;

  The croaking nuisance lurked in every nook,

  Nor palaces nor even chambers ‘scaped,

  And the land stank, so numerous was the fry.

  BOOK III. THE GARDEN.

  As one who, long in thickets and in brakes

  Entangled, winds now this way and now that

  His devious course uncertain, seeking home;

  Or, having long in miry ways been foiled

  And sore discomfited, from slough to slough

  Plunging, and half despairing of escape,

  If chance at length he find a greensward smooth

  And faithful to the foot, his spirits rise,

  He chirrups brisk his ear-erecting steed,

  And winds his way with pleasure and with ease;

  So I, designing other themes, and called

  To adorn the Sofa with eulogium due,

  To tell its slumbers and to paint its dreams,

  Have rambled wide. In country, city, seat

  Of academic fame, howe’er deserved,

  Long held, and scarcely disengaged at last.