William Cowper- Collected Poetical Works

by William Cowper

  But now with pleasant pace, a cleanlier road

  I mean to tread. I feel myself at large,

  Courageous, and refreshed for future toil,

  If toil await me, or if dangers new.

  Since pulpits fail, and sounding-boards reflect

  Most part an empty ineffectual sound,

  What chance that I, to fame so little known,

  Nor conversant with men or manners much,

  Should speak to purpose, or with better hope

  Crack the satiric thong? ‘Twere wiser far

  For me, enamoured of sequestered scenes,

  And charmed with rural beauty, to repose,

  Where chance may throw me, beneath elm or vine

  My languid limbs, when summer sears the plains;

  Or when rough winter rages, on the soft

  And sheltered Sofa, while the nitrous air

  Feeds a blue flame and makes a cheerful hearth;

  There, undisturbed by folly, and apprised

  How great the danger of disturbing her,

  To muse in silence, or at least confine

  Remarks that gall so many to the few,

  My partners in retreat. Disgust concealed

  Is ofttimes proof of wisdom, when the fault

  Is obstinate, and cure beyond our reach.

  Domestic happiness, thou only bliss

  Of Paradise that has survived the fall!

  Though few now taste thee unimpaired and pure,

  Or, tasting, long enjoy thee, too infirm

  Or too incautious to preserve thy sweets

  Unmixed with drops of bitter, which neglect

  Or temper sheds into thy crystal cup.

  Thou art the nurse of virtue. In thine arms

  She smiles, appearing, as in truth she is,

  Heaven-born, and destined to the skies again.

  Thou art not known where Pleasure is adored,

  That reeling goddess with the zoneless waist

  And wandering eyes, still leaning on the arm

  Of Novelty, her fickle frail support;

  For thou art meek and constant, hating change,

  And finding in the calm of truth-tried love

  Joys that her stormy raptures never yield.

  Forsaking thee, what shipwreck have we made

  Of honour, dignity, and fair renown,

  Till prostitution elbows us aside

  In all our crowded streets, and senates seem

  Convened for purposes of empire less,

  Than to release the adult’ress from her bond.

  The adult’ress! what a theme for angry verse,

  What provocation to the indignant heart

  That feels for injured love! but I disdain

  The nauseous task to paint her as she is,

  Cruel, abandoned, glorying in her shame.

  No; let her pass, and charioted along

  In guilty splendour shake the public ways;

  The frequency of crimes has washed them white,

  And verse of mine shall never brand the wretch

  Whom matrons now of character unsmirched

  And chaste themselves, are not ashamed to own.

  Virtue and vice had boundaries in old time

  Not to be passed; and she that had renounced

  Her sex’s honour, was renounced herself

  By all that prized it; not for prudery’s sake,

  But dignity’s, resentful of the wrong.

  ’Twas hard, perhaps, on here and there a waif

  Desirous to return, and not received;

  But was a wholesome rigour in the main,

  And taught the unblemished to preserve with care

  That purity, whose loss was loss of all.

  Men, too, were nice in honour in those days,

  And judged offenders well. Then he that sharped,

  And pocketed a prize by fraud obtained,

  Was marked and shunned as odious. He that sold

  His country, or was slack when she required

  His every nerve in action and at stretch,

  Paid with the blood that he had basely spared

  The price of his default. But now, — yes, now,

  We are become so candid and so fair,

  So liberal in construction, and so rich

  In Christian charity (good-natured age!)

  That they are safe, sinners of either sex,

  Transgress what laws they may. Well dressed, well bred,

  Well equipaged, is ticket good enough

  To pass us readily through every door.

  Hypocrisy, detest her as we may

  (And no man’s hatred ever wronged her yet),

  May claim this merit still — that she admits

  The worth of what she mimics with such care,

  And thus gives virtue indirect applause;

  But she has burnt her mask, not needed here,

  Where vice has such allowance, that her shifts

  And specious semblances have lost their use.

  I was a stricken deer that left the herd

  Long since; with many an arrow deep infixt

  My panting side was charged, when I withdrew

  To seek a tranquil death in distant shades.

  There was I found by one who had himself

  Been hurt by the archers. In his side he bore,

  And in his hands and feet, the cruel scars.

  With gentle force soliciting the darts

  He drew them forth, and healed and bade me live.

  Since then, with few associates, in remote

  And silent woods I wander, far from those

  My former partners of the peopled scene,

  With few associates, and not wishing more.

  Here much I ruminate, as much I may,

  With other views of men and manners now

  Than once, and others of a life to come.

  I see that all are wanderers, gone astray

  Each in his own delusions; they are lost

  In chase of fancied happiness, still woo’d

  And never won. Dream after dream ensues,

  And still they dream that they shall still succeed,

  And still are disappointed: rings the world

  With the vain stir. I sum up half mankind,

  And add two-thirds of the remaining half,

  And find the total of their hopes and fears

  Dreams, empty dreams. The million flit as gay

  As if created only, like the fly

  That spreads his motley wings in the eye of noon,

  To sport their season and be seen no more.

  The rest are sober dreamers, grave and wise,

  And pregnant with discoveries new and rare.

  Some write a narrative of wars, and feats

  Of heroes little known, and call the rant

  A history; describe the man, of whom

  His own coevals took but little note,

  And paint his person, character, and views,

  As they had known him from his mother’s womb;

  They disentangle from the puzzled skein,

  In which obscurity has wrapped them up,

  The threads of politic and shrewd design

  That ran through all his purposes, and charge

  His mind with meanings that he never had,

  Or, having, kept concealed. Some drill and bore

  The solid earth, and from the strata there

  Extract a register, by which we learn

  That He who made it and revealed its date

  To Moses, was mistaken in its age.

  Some, more acute and more industrious still,

  Contrive creation; travel nature up

  To the sharp peak of her sublimest height,

  And tell us whence the stars; why some are fixt,

  And planetary some; what gave them first

  Rotation, from what fountain flowed their light.

  Great contest follows, and much learned dust

  Inv
olves the combatants, each claiming truth,

  And truth disclaiming both. And thus they spend

  The little wick of life’s poor shallow lamp

  In playing tricks with nature, giving laws

  To distant worlds, and trifling in their own.

  Is’t not a pity now, that tickling rheums

  Should ever tease the lungs and blear the sight

  Of oracles like these? Great pity, too,

  That having wielded the elements, and built

  A thousand systems, each in his own way,

  They should go out in fume and be forgot?

  Ah, what is life thus spent? and what are they

  But frantic who thus spend it? all for smoke —

  Eternity for bubbles proves at last

  A senseless bargain. When I see such games

  Played by the creatures of a Power who swears

  That He will judge the earth, and call the fool

  To a sharp reckoning that has lived in vain,

  And when I weigh this seeming wisdom well,

  And prove it in the infallible result

  So hollow and so false — I feel my heart

  Dissolve in pity, and account the learned,

  If this be learning, most of all deceived.

  Great crimes alarm the conscience, but it sleeps

  While thoughtful man is plausibly amused.

  Defend me, therefore, common sense, say I,

  From reveries so airy, from the toil

  Of dropping buckets into empty wells,

  And growing old in drawing nothing up!

  ‘Twere well, says one sage erudite, profound,

  Terribly arched and aquiline his nose,

  And overbuilt with most impending brows,

  ‘Twere well could you permit the world to live

  As the world pleases. What’s the world to you? —

  Much. I was born of woman, and drew milk

  As sweet as charity from human breasts.

  I think, articulate, I laugh and weep,

  And exercise all functions of a man.

  How then should I and any man that lives

  Be strangers to each other? Pierce my vein,

  Take of the crimson stream meandering there,

  And catechise it well. Apply your glass,

  Search it, and prove now if it be not blood

  Congenial with thine own; and if it be,

  What edge of subtlety canst thou suppose

  Keen enough, wise and skilful as thou art,

  To cut the link of brotherhood, by which

  One common Maker bound me to the kind?

  True; I am no proficient, I confess,

  In arts like yours. I cannot call the swift

  And perilous lightnings from the angry clouds,

  And bid them hide themselves in the earth beneath;

  I cannot analyse the air, nor catch

  The parallax of yonder luminous point

  That seems half quenched in the immense abyss:

  Such powers I boast not — neither can I rest

  A silent witness of the headlong rage,

  Or heedless folly, by which thousands die,

  Bone of my bone, and kindred souls to mine.

  God never meant that man should scale the heavens

  By strides of human wisdom. In His works,

  Though wondrous, He commands us in His Word

  To seek Him rather where His mercy shines.

  The mind indeed, enlightened from above,

  Views Him in all; ascribes to the grand cause

  The grand effect; acknowledges with joy

  His manner, and with rapture tastes His style.

  But never yet did philosophic tube,

  That brings the planets home into the eye

  Of observation, and discovers, else

  Not visible, His family of worlds,

  Discover Him that rules them; such a veil

  Hangs over mortal eyes, blind from the birth,

  And dark in things divine. Full often too

  Our wayward intellect, the more we learn

  Of nature, overlooks her Author more;

  From instrumental causes proud to draw

  Conclusions retrograde, and mad mistake:

  But if His Word once teach us, shoot a ray

  Through all the heart’s dark chambers, and reveal

  Truths undiscerned but by that holy light,

  Then all is plain. Philosophy, baptised

  In the pure fountain of eternal love,

  Has eyes indeed; and, viewing all she sees

  As meant to indicate a God to man,

  Gives HIM His praise, and forfeits not her own.

  Learning has borne such fruit in other days

  On all her branches. Piety has found

  Friends in the friends of science, and true prayer

  Has flowed from lips wet with Castalian dews.

  Such was thy wisdom, Newton, childlike sage!

  Sagacious reader of the works of God,

  And in His Word sagacious. Such too thine,

  Milton, whose genius had angelic wings,

  And fed on manna. And such thine, in whom

  Our British Themis gloried with just cause,

  Immortal Hale! for deep discernment praised,

  And sound integrity not more, than famed

  For sanctity of manners undefiled.

  All flesh is grass, and all its glory fades

  Like the fair flower dishevelled in the wind;

  Riches have wings, and grandeur is a dream;

  The man we celebrate must find a tomb,

  And we that worship him, ignoble graves.

  Nothing is proof against the general curse

  Of vanity, that seizes all below.

  The only amaranthine flower on earth

  Is virtue; the only lasting treasure, truth.

  But what is truth? ’twas Pilate’s question put

  To truth itself, that deigned him no reply.

  And wherefore? will not God impart His light

  To them that ask it? — Freely— ’tis His joy,

  His glory, and His nature to impart.

  But to the proud, uncandid, insincere,

  Or negligent inquirer, not a spark.

  What’s that which brings contempt upon a book

  And him that writes it, though the style be neat,

  The method clear, and argument exact?

  That makes a minister in holy things

  The joy of many, and the dread of more,

  His name a theme for praise and for reproach? —

  That, while it gives us worth in God’s account,

  Depreciates and undoes us in our own?

  What pearl is it that rich men cannot buy,

  That learning is too proud to gather up,

  But which the poor and the despised of all

  Seek and obtain, and often find unsought?

  Tell me, and I will tell thee what is truth.

  Oh, friendly to the best pursuits of man,

  Friendly to thought, to virtue, and to peace,

  Domestic life in rural leisure passed!

  Few know thy value, and few taste thy sweets,

  Though many boast thy favours, and affect

  To understand and choose thee for their own.

  But foolish man foregoes his proper bliss,

  Even as his first progenitor, and quits,

  Though placed in paradise, for earth has still

  Some traces of her youthful beauty left,

  Substantial happiness for transient joy.

  Scenes formed for contemplation, and to nurse

  The growing seeds of wisdom; that suggest,

  By every pleasing image they present,

  Reflections such as meliorate the heart,

  Compose the passions, and exalt the mind;

  Scenes such as these, ’tis his supreme delight

  To fill with riot and defile with blood.


  Should some contagion, kind to the poor brutes

  We persecute, annihilate the tribes

  That draw the sportsman over hill and dale

  Fearless, and rapt away from all his cares;

  Should never game-fowl hatch her eggs again,

  Nor baited hook deceive the fish’s eye;

  Could pageantry, and dance, and feast, and song

  Be quelled in all our summer months’ retreats;

  How many self-deluded nymphs and swains,

  Who dream they have a taste for fields and groves,

  Would find them hideous nurseries of the spleen,

  And crowd the roads, impatient for the town!

  They love the country, and none else, who seek

  For their own sake its silence and its shade;

  Delights which who would leave, that has a heart

  Susceptible of pity, or a mind

  Cultured and capable of sober thought,

  For all the savage din of the swift pack,

  And clamours of the field? Detested sport,

  That owes its pleasures to another’s pain,

  That feeds upon the sobs and dying shrieks

  Of harmless nature, dumb, but yet endued

  With eloquence, that agonies inspire,

  Of silent tears and heart-distending sighs!

  Vain tears, alas! and sighs that never find

  A corresponding tone in jovial souls.

  Well — one at least is safe. One sheltered hare

  Has never heard the sanguinary yell

  Of cruel man, exulting in her woes.

  Innocent partner of my peaceful home,

  Whom ten long years’ experience of my care

  Has made at last familiar, she has lost

  Much of her vigilant instinctive dread,

  Not needful here, beneath a roof like mine.

  Yes — thou mayst eat thy bread, and lick the hand

  That feeds thee; thou mayst frolic on the floor

  At evening, and at night retire secure

  To thy straw-couch, and slumber unalarmed;

  For I have gained thy confidence, have pledged

  All that is human in me to protect

  Thine unsuspecting gratitude and love.

  If I survive thee I will dig thy grave,

  And when I place thee in it, sighing say,

  I knew at least one hare that had a friend.

  How various his employments, whom the world

  Calls idle, and who justly in return

  Esteems that busy world an idler, too!

  Friends, books, a garden, and perhaps his pen,

  Delightful industry enjoyed at home,

  And nature in her cultivated trim

  Dressed to his taste, inviting him abroad —

  Can he want occupation who has these?

  Will he be idle who has much to enjoy?