William Cowper- Collected Poetical Works

by William Cowper

  Earth yields them naught: the imprisoned worm is safe

  Beneath the frozen clod; all seeds of herbs

  Lie covered close, and berry-bearing thorns

  That feed the thrush (whatever some suppose),

  Afford the smaller minstrel no supply.

  The long-protracted rigour of the year

  Thins all their numerous flocks. In chinks and holes

  Ten thousand seek an unmolested end,

  As instinct prompts, self-buried ere they die.

  The very rooks and daws forsake the fields,

  Where neither grub nor root nor earth-nut now

  Repays their labour more; and perched aloft

  By the way-side, or stalking in the path,

  Lean pensioners upon the traveller’s track,

  Pick up their nauseous dole, though sweet to them,

  Of voided pulse, or half-digested grain.

  The streams are lost amid the splendid blank,

  O’erwhelming all distinction. On the flood

  Indurated and fixed the snowy weight

  Lies undissolved, while silently beneath

  And unperceived the current steals away;

  Not so where, scornful of a check, it leaps

  The mill-dam, dashes on the restless wheel,

  And wantons in the pebbly gulf below.

  No frost can bind it there. Its utmost force

  Can but arrest the light and smoky mist

  That in its fall the liquid sheet throws wide.

  And see where it has hung the embroidered banks

  With forms so various, that no powers of art,

  The pencil, or the pen, may trace the scene!

  Here glittering turrets rise, upbearing high

  (Fantastic misarrangement) on the roof

  Large growth of what may seem the sparkling trees

  And shrubs of fairy land. The crystal drops

  That trickle down the branches, fast congealed,

  Shoot into pillars of pellucid length

  And prop the pile they but adorned before.

  Here grotto within grotto safe defies

  The sunbeam. There imbossed and fretted wild,

  The growing wonder takes a thousand shapes

  Capricious, in which fancy seeks in vain

  The likeness of some object seen before.

  Thus nature works as if to mock at art,

  And in defiance of her rival powers;

  By these fortuitous and random strokes

  Performing such inimitable feats,

  As she with all her rules can never reach.

  Less worthy of applause though more admired,

  Because a novelty, the work of man,

  Imperial mistress of the fur-clad Russ,

  Thy most magnificent and mighty freak,

  The wonder of the North. No forest fell

  When thou wouldst build; no quarry sent its stores

  To enrich thy walls; but thou didst hew the floods,

  And make thy marble of the glassy wave.

  In such a palace Aristaeus found

  Cyrene, when he bore the plaintive tale

  Of his lost bees to her maternal ear.

  In such a palace poetry might place

  The armoury of winter, where his troops,

  The gloomy clouds, find weapons, arrowy sleet,

  Skin-piercing volley, blossom-bruising hail,

  And snow that often blinds the traveller’s course,

  And wraps him in an unexpected tomb.

  Silently as a dream the fabric rose.

  No sound of hammer or of saw was there.

  Ice upon ice, the well-adjusted parts

  Were soon conjoined, nor other cement asked

  Than water interfused to make them one.

  Lamps gracefully disposed, and of all hues,

  Illumined every side. A watery light

  Gleamed through the clear transparency, that seemed

  Another moon new-risen, or meteor fallen

  From heaven to earth, of lambent flame serene.

  So stood the brittle prodigy, though smooth

  And slippery the materials, yet frost-bound

  Firm as a rock. Nor wanted aught within

  That royal residence might well befit,

  For grandeur or for use. Long wavy wreaths

  Of flowers, that feared no enemy but warmth,

  Blushed on the panels. Mirror needed none

  Where all was vitreous, but in order due

  Convivial table and commodious seat

  (What seemed at least commodious seat) were there,

  Sofa and couch and high-built throne august.

  The same lubricity was found in all,

  And all was moist to the warm touch; a scene

  Of evanescent glory, once a stream,

  And soon to slide into a stream again.

  Alas, ’twas but a mortifying stroke

  Of undesigned severity, that glanced

  (Made by a monarch) on her own estate,

  On human grandeur and the courts of kings

  ’Twas transient in its nature, as in show

  ’Twas durable; as worthless, as it seemed

  Intrinsically precious; to the foot

  Treacherous and false; it smiled, and it was cold.

  Great princes have great playthings. Some have played

  At hewing mountains into men, and some

  At building human wonders mountain high.

  Some have amused the dull sad years of life

  (Life spent in indolence, and therefore sad)

  With schemes of monumental fame, and sought

  By pyramids and mausoleum pomp,

  Short-lived themselves, to immortalise their bones.

  Some seek diversion in the tented field,

  And make the sorrows of mankind their sport.

  But war’s a game which, were their subjects wise,

  Kings should not play at. Nations would do well

  To extort their truncheons from the puny hands

  Of heroes whose infirm and baby minds

  Are gratified with mischief, and who spoil,

  Because men suffer it, their toy the world.

  When Babel was confounded, and the great

  Confederacy of projectors wild and vain

  Was split into diversity of tongues,

  Then, as a shepherd separates his flock,

  These to the upland, to the valley those,

  God drave asunder and assigned their lot

  To all the nations. Ample was the boon

  He gave them, in its distribution fair

  And equal, and he bade them dwell in peace.

  Peace was a while their care. They ploughed and sowed,

  And reaped their plenty without grudge or strife,

  But violence can never longer sleep

  Than human passions please. In every heart

  Are sown the sparks that kindle fiery war,

  Occasion needs but fan them, and they blaze.

  Cain had already shed a brother’s blood:

  The Deluge washed it out; but left unquenched

  The seeds of murder in the breast of man.

  Soon, by a righteous judgment, in the line

  Of his descending progeny was found

  The first artificer of death; the shrewd

  Contriver who first sweated at the forge,

  And forced the blunt and yet unblooded steel

  To a keen edge, and made it bright for war.

  Him Tubal named, the Vulcan of old times,

  The sword and falchion their inventor claim,

  And the first smith was the first murderer’s son.

  His art survived the waters; and ere long,

  When man was multiplied and spread abroad

  In tribes and clans, and had begun to call

  These meadows and that range of hills his own,

  The tasted sweets of property begat

  Desire of more; and ind
ustry in some

  To improve and cultivate their just demesne,

  Made others covet what they saw so fair.

  Thus wars began on earth. These fought for spoil,

  And those in self-defence. Savage at first

  The onset, and irregular. At length

  One eminent above the rest, for strength,

  For stratagem, or courage, or for all,

  Was chosen leader. Him they served in war,

  And him in peace for sake of warlike deeds

  Reverenced no less. Who could with him compare?

  Or who so worthy to control themselves

  As he, whose prowess had subdued their foes?

  Thus war, affording field for the display

  Of virtue, made one chief, whom times of peace,

  Which have their exigencies too, and call

  For skill in government, at length made king.

  King was a name too proud for man to wear

  With modesty and meekness, and the crown,

  So dazzling in their eyes who set it on,

  Was sure to intoxicate the brows it bound.

  It is the abject property of most,

  That being parcel of the common mass,

  And destitute of means to raise themselves,

  They sink and settle lower than they need.

  They know not what it is to feel within

  A comprehensive faculty, that grasps

  Great purposes with ease, that turns and wields,

  Almost without an effort, plans too vast

  For their conception, which they cannot move.

  Conscious of impotence they soon grow drunk

  With gazing, when they see an able man

  Step forth to notice; and besotted thus

  Build him a pedestal and say — Stand there,

  And be our admiration and our praise.

  They roll themselves before him in the dust,

  Then most deserving in their own account

  When most extravagant in his applause,

  As if exalting him they raised themselves.

  Thus by degrees, self-cheated of their sound

  And sober judgment that he is but man,

  They demi-deify and fume him so

  That in due season he forgets it too.

  Inflated and astrut with self-conceit

  He gulps the windy diet, and ere long,

  Adopting their mistake, profoundly thinks

  The world was made in vain if not for him.

  Thenceforth they are his cattle: drudges, born

  To bear his burdens, drawing in his gears,

  And sweating in his service. His caprice

  Becomes the soul that animates them all.

  He deems a thousand, or ten thousand lives,

  Spent in the purchase of renown for him

  An easy reckoning, and they think the same.

  Thus kings were first invented, and thus kings

  Were burnished into heroes, and became

  The arbiters of this terraqueous swamp;

  Storks among frogs, that have but croaked and died.

  Strange that such folly, as lifts bloated man

  To eminence fit only for a god,

  Should ever drivel out of human lips,

  Even in the cradled weakness of the world!

  Still stranger much, that when at length mankind

  Had reached the sinewy firmness of their youth,

  And could discriminate and argue well

  On subjects more mysterious, they were yet

  Babes in the cause of freedom, and should fear

  And quake before the gods themselves had made.

  But above measure strange, that neither proof

  Of sad experience, nor examples set

  By some whose patriot virtue has prevailed,

  Can even now, when they are grown mature

  In wisdom, and with philosophic deeps

  Familiar, serve to emancipate the rest!

  Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone

  To reverence what is ancient, and can plead

  A course of long observance for its use,

  That even servitude, the worst of ills,

  Because delivered down from sire to son,

  Is kept and guarded as a sacred thing.

  But is it fit, or can it bear the shock

  Of rational discussion, that a man,

  Compounded and made up like other men

  Of elements tumultuous, in whom lust

  And folly in as ample measure meet,

  As in the bosoms of the slaves he rules,

  Should be a despot absolute, and boast

  Himself the only freeman of his land?

  Should when he pleases, and on whom he will,

  Wage war, with any or with no pretence

  Of provocation given, or wrong sustained,

  And force the beggarly last doit, by means

  That his own humour dictates, from the clutch

  Of poverty, that thus he may procure

  His thousands, weary of penurious life,

  A splendid opportunity to die?

  Say ye, who (with less prudence than of old

  Jotham ascribed to his assembled trees

  In politic convention) put your trust

  I’ th’ shadow of a bramble, and recline

  In fancied peace beneath his dangerous branch,

  Rejoice in him and celebrate his sway,

  Where find ye passive fortitude? Whence springs

  Your self-denying zeal that holds it good

  To stroke the prickly grievance, and to hang

  His thorns with streamers of continual praise?

  We too are friends to loyalty; we love

  The king who loves the law, respects his bounds.

  And reigns content within them; him we serve

  Freely and with delight, who leaves us free;

  But recollecting still that he is man,

  We trust him not too far. King though he be,

  And king in England, too, he may be weak

  And vain enough to be ambitious still,

  May exercise amiss his proper powers,

  Or covet more than freemen choose to grant:

  Beyond that mark is treason. He is ours,

  To administer, to guard, to adorn the state,

  But not to warp or change it. We are his,

  To serve him nobly in the common cause

  True to the death, but not to be his slaves.

  Mark now the difference, ye that boast your love

  Of kings, between your loyalty and ours.

  We love the man; the paltry pageant you:

  We the chief patron of the commonwealth;

  You the regardless author of its woes:

  We, for the sake of liberty, a king;

  You chains and bondage for a tyrant’s sake.

  Our love is principle, and has its root

  In reason, is judicious, manly, free;

  Yours, a blind instinct, crouches to the rod,

  And licks the foot that treads it in the dust.

  Were kingship as true treasure as it seems,

  Sterling, and worthy of a wise man’s wish,

  I would not be a king to be beloved

  Causeless, and daubed with undiscerning praise,

  Where love is more attachment to the throne,

  Not to the man who fills it as he ought.

  Whose freedom is by sufferance, and at will

  Of a superior, he is never free.

  Who lives, and is not weary of a life

  Exposed to manacles, deserves them well.

  The state that strives for liberty, though foiled

  And forced to abandon what she bravely sought,

  Deserves at least applause for her attempt,

  And pity for her loss. But that’s a cause

  Not often unsuccessful; power usurped

  Is weakness when opposed; conscious of wrong,

  �
�Tis pusillanimous and prone to flight.

  But slaves that once conceive the glowing thought

  Of freedom, in that hope itself possess

  All that the contest calls for; spirit, strength,

  The scorn of danger, and united hearts,

  The surest presage of the good they seek. *

  * The author hopes that he shall not be censured for unnecessary warmth upon so interesting a subject. He is aware that it is become almost fashionable to stigmatise such sentiments as no better than empty declamation. But it is an ill symptom, and peculiar to modern times. — C.

  Then shame to manhood, and opprobrious more

  To France than all her losses and defeats,

  Old or of later date, by sea or land,

  Her house of bondage worse than that of old

  Which God avenged on Pharaoh — the Bastille!

  Ye horrid towers, the abode of broken hearts,

  Ye dungeons and ye cages of despair,

  That monarchs have supplied from age to age

  With music such as suits their sovereign ears,

  The sighs and groans of miserable men!

  There’s not an English heart that would not leap

  To hear that ye were fallen at last, to know

  That even our enemies, so oft employed

  In forging chains for us, themselves were free.

  For he that values liberty, confines

  His zeal for her predominance within

  No narrow bounds; her cause engages him

  Wherever pleaded. ’Tis the cause of man.

  There dwell the most forlorn of humankind,

  Immured though unaccused, condemned untried,

  Cruelly spared, and hopeless of escape.

  There, like the visionary emblem seen

  By him of Babylon, life stands a stump,

  And filleted about with hoops of brass,

  Still lives, though all its pleasant boughs are gone.

  To count the hour bell and expect no change;

  And ever as the sullen sound is heard,

  Still to reflect that though a joyless note

  To him whose moments all have one dull pace,

  Ten thousand rovers in the world at large

  Account it music; that it summons some

  To theatre, or jocund feast, or ball;

  The wearied hireling finds it a release

  From labour, and the lover, that has chid

  Its long delay, feels every welcome stroke

  Upon his heart-strings trembling with delight; —

  To fly for refuge from distracting thought

  To such amusements as ingenious woe

  Contrives, hard-shifting and without her tools; —

  To read engraven on the mouldy walls,

  In staggering types, his predecessor’s tale,

  A sad memorial, and subjoin his own; —