William Cowper- Collected Poetical Works

by William Cowper

  And no condition of this changeful life

  So manifold in cares, whose every day

  Brings its own evil with it, makes it less.

  For he has wings that neither sickness, pain,

  Nor penury, can cripple or confine.

  No nook so narrow but he spreads them there

  With ease, and is at large. The oppressor holds

  His body bound, but knows not what a range

  His spirit takes, unconscious of a chain;

  And that to bind him is a vain attempt,

  Whom God delights in, and in whom He dwells.

  Acquaint thyself with God if thou wouldst taste

  His works. Admitted once to His embrace,

  Thou shalt perceive that thou wast blind before;

  Thine eye shall be instructed, and thine heart,

  Made pure, shall relish, with divine delight

  Till then unfelt, what hands divine have wrought.

  Brutes graze the mountain-top with faces prone,

  And eyes intent upon the scanty herb

  It yields them; or, recumbent on its brow,

  Ruminate, heedless of the scene outspread

  Beneath, beyond, and stretching far away

  From inland regions to the distant main.

  Man views it and admires, but rests content

  With what he views. The landscape has his praise,

  But not its Author. Unconcerned who formed

  The paradise he sees, he finds it such,

  And such well pleased to find it, asks no more.

  Not so the mind that has been touched from heaven,

  And in the school of sacred wisdom taught

  To read His wonders, in whose thought the world,

  Fair as it is, existed ere it was.

  Nor for its own sake merely, but for His

  Much more who fashioned it, he gives it praise;

  Praise that from earth resulting as it ought

  To earth’s acknowledged Sovereign, finds at once

  Its only just proprietor in Him.

  The soul that sees Him, or receives sublimed

  New faculties or learns at least to employ

  More worthily the powers she owned before;

  Discerns in all things what, with stupid gaze

  Of ignorance, till then she overlooked,

  A ray of heavenly light gilding all forms

  Terrestrial, in the vast and the minute

  The unambiguous footsteps of the God

  Who gives its lustre to an insect’s wing

  And wheels His throne upon the rolling worlds.

  Much conversant with heaven, she often holds

  With those fair ministers of light to man

  That fill the skies nightly with silent pomp

  Sweet conference; inquires what strains were they

  With which heaven rang, when every star, in haste

  To gratulate the new-created earth,

  Sent forth a voice, and all the sons of God

  Shouted for joy.— “Tell me, ye shining hosts

  That navigate a sea that knows no storms,

  Beneath a vault unsullied with a cloud,

  If from your elevation, whence ye view

  Distinctly scenes invisible to man

  And systems of whose birth no tidings yet

  Have reached this nether world, ye spy a race

  Favoured as ours, transgressors from the womb

  And hasting to a grave, yet doomed to rise

  And to possess a brighter heaven than yours?

  As one who, long detained on foreign shores,

  Pants to return, and when he sees afar

  His country’s weather-bleached and battered rocks,

  From the green wave emerging, darts an eye

  Radiant with joy towards the happy land;

  So I with animated hopes behold,

  And many an aching wish, your beamy fires,

  That show like beacons in the blue abyss,

  Ordained to guide the embodied spirit home

  From toilsome life to never-ending rest.

  Love kindles as I gaze. I feel desires

  That give assurance of their own success,

  And that, infused from heaven, must thither tend.”

  So reads he Nature whom the lamp of truth

  Illuminates. Thy lamp, mysterious Word!

  Which whoso sees, no longer wanders lost

  With intellect bemazed in endless doubt,

  But runs the road of wisdom. Thou hast built,

  With means that were not till by Thee employed,

  Worlds that had never been, hadst Thou in strength

  Been less, or less benevolent than strong.

  They are Thy witnesses, who speak Thy power

  And goodness infinite, but speak in ears

  That hear not, or receive not their report.

  In vain Thy creatures testify of Thee

  Till Thou proclaim Thyself. Theirs is indeed

  A teaching voice; but ’tis the praise of Thine

  That whom it teaches it makes prompt to learn,

  And with the boon gives talents for its use.

  Till Thou art heard, imaginations vain

  Possess the heart, and fables, false as hell,

  Yet deemed oracular, lure down to death

  The uninformed and heedless souls of men.

  We give to chance, blind chance, ourselves as blind,

  The glory of Thy work, which yet appears

  Perfect and unimpeachable of blame,

  Challenging human scrutiny, and proved

  Then skilful most when most severely judged.

  But chance is not; or is not where Thou reign’st:

  Thy providence forbids that fickle power

  (If power she be that works but to confound)

  To mix her wild vagaries with Thy laws.

  Yet thus we dote, refusing, while we can,

  Instruction, and inventing to ourselves

  Gods such as guilt makes welcome — gods that sleep,

  Or disregard our follies, or that sit

  Amused spectators of this bustling stage.

  Thee we reject, unable to abide

  Thy purity, till pure as Thou art pure,

  Made such by Thee, we love Thee for that cause

  For which we shunned and hated Thee before.

  Then we are free: then liberty, like day,

  Breaks on the soul, and by a flash from heaven

  Fires all the faculties with glorious joy.

  A voice is heard that mortal ears hear not

  Till Thou hast touched them; ’tis the voice of song,

  A loud Hosanna sent from all Thy works,

  Which he that hears it with a shout repeats,

  And adds his rapture to the general praise.

  In that blest moment, Nature, throwing wide

  Her veil opaque, discloses with a smile

  The Author of her beauties, who, retired

  Behind His own creation, works unseen

  By the impure, and hears His power denied.

  Thou art the source and centre of all minds,

  Their only point of rest, eternal Word!

  From Thee departing, they are lost and rove

  At random, without honour, hope, or peace.

  From Thee is all that soothes the life of man,

  His high endeavour, and his glad success,

  His strength to suffer, and his will to serve.

  But, oh, Thou Bounteous Giver of all good,

  Thou art of all Thy gifts Thyself the crown!

  Give what Thou canst, without Thee we are poor,

  And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.

  BOOK VI. THE WINTER WALK AT NOON.

  There is in souls a sympathy with sounds,

  And as the mind is pitched the ear is pleased

  With melting airs or martial, brisk or grave;

  Some chord in unison with what we hear

 
; Is touched within us, and the heart replies.

  How soft the music of those village bells

  Falling at intervals upon the ear

  In cadence sweet, now dying all away,

  Now pealing loud again, and louder still,

  Clear and sonorous as the gale comes on.

  With easy force it opens all the cells

  Where memory slept. Wherever I have heard

  A kindred melody, the scene recurs,

  And with it all its pleasures and its pains.

  Such comprehensive views the spirit takes,

  That in a few short moments I retrace

  (As in a map the voyager his course)

  The windings of my way through many years.

  Short as in retrospect the journey seems,

  It seemed not always short; the rugged path,

  And prospect oft so dreary and forlorn,

  Moved many a sigh at its disheartening length.

  Yet feeling present evils, while the past

  Faintly impress the mind, or not at all,

  How readily we wish time spent revoked,

  That we might try the ground again, where once

  (Through inexperience as we now perceive)

  We missed that happiness we might have found.

  Some friend is gone, perhaps his son’s best friend

  A father, whose authority, in show

  When most severe, and mustering all its force,

  Was but the graver countenance of love;

  Whose favour, like the clouds of spring, might lower,

  And utter now and then an awful voice,

  But had a blessing in its darkest frown,

  Threatening at once and nourishing the plant.

  We loved, but not enough, the gentle hand

  That reared us. At a thoughtless age allured

  By every gilded folly, we renounced

  His sheltering side, and wilfully forewent

  That converse which we now in vain regret.

  How gladly would the man recall to life

  The boy’s neglected sire! a mother too,

  That softer friend, perhaps more gladly still,

  Might he demand them at the gates of death.

  Sorrow has since they went subdued and tamed

  The playful humour; he could now endure

  (Himself grown sober in the vale of tears)

  And feel a parent’s presence no restraint.

  But not to understand a treasure’s worth

  Till time has stolen away the slighted good,

  Is cause of half the poverty we feel,

  And makes the world the wilderness it is.

  The few that pray at all, pray oft amiss,

  And, seeking grace to improve the prize they hold,

  Would urge a wiser suit than asking more.

  The night was winter in his roughest mood,

  The morning sharp and clear; but now at noon

  Upon the southern side of the slant hills,

  And where the woods fence off the northern blast,

  The season smiles, resigning all its rage,

  And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue

  Without a cloud, and white without a speck

  The dazzling splendour of the scene below.

  Again the harmony comes o’er the vale,

  And through the trees I view the embattled tower

  Whence all the music. I again perceive

  The soothing influence of the wafted strains,

  And settle in soft musings, as I tread

  The walk still verdant under oaks and elms,

  Whose outspread branches overarch the glade.

  The roof, though movable through all its length,

  As the wind sways it, has yet well sufficed,

  And, intercepting in their silent fall

  The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me.

  No noise is here, or none that hinders thought:

  The redbreast warbles still, but is content

  With slender notes and more than half suppressed.

  Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light

  From spray to spray, where’er he rests he shakes

  From many a twig the pendant drops of ice,

  That tinkle in the withered leaves below.

  Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft,

  Charms more than silence. Meditation here

  May think down hours to moments. Here the heart

  May give an useful lesson to the head,

  And learning wiser grow without his books.

  Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one,

  Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells

  In heads replete with thoughts of other men;

  Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.

  Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass,

  The mere materials with which wisdom builds,

  Till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place,

  Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich.

  Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much,

  Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.

  Books are not seldom talismans and spells

  By which the magic art of shrewder wits

  Holds an unthinking multitude enthralled.

  Some to the fascination of a name

  Surrender judgment hoodwinked. Some the style

  Infatuates, and, through labyrinths and wilds

  Of error, leads them by a tune entranced.

  While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear

  The insupportable fatigue of thought,

  And swallowing therefore without pause or choice

  The total grist unsifted, husks and all.

  But trees, and rivulets whose rapid course

  Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer,

  And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs,

  And lanes, in which the primrose ere her time

  Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root,

  Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth,

  Not shy as in the world, and to be won

  By slow solicitation, seize at once

  The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.

  What prodigies can power divine perform

  More grand than it produces year by year,

  And all in sight of inattentive man?

  Familiar with the effect we slight the cause,

  And in the constancy of Nature’s course,

  The regular return of genial months,

  And renovation of a faded world,

  See nought to wonder at. Should God again,

  As once in Gibeon, interrupt the race

  Of the undeviating and punctual sun,

  How would the world admire! but speaks it less

  An agency divine, to make him know

  His moment when to sink and when to rise

  Age after age, than to arrest his course?

  All we behold is miracle: but, seen

  So duly, all is miracle in vain.

  Where now the vital energy that moved,

  While summer was, the pure and subtle lymph

  Through the imperceptible meandering veins

  Of leaf and flower? It sleeps: and the icy touch

  Of unprolific winter has impressed

  A cold stagnation on the intestine tide.

  But let the months go round, a few short months,

  And all shall be restored. These naked shoots,

  Barren as lances, among which the wind

  Makes wintry music, sighing as it goes,

  Shall put their graceful foliage on again,

  And more aspiring and with ampler spread

  Shall boast new charms, and more than they have lost.

  Then, each in its peculiar honours clad,

  Shall publish even to the distant eye

  Its family and tribe. Laburnum rich

  In streaming gold; syringa ivory pure;

/>   The scented and the scentless rose; this red

  And of a humbler growth, the other tall,

  And throwing up into the darkest gloom

  Of neighbouring cypress, or more sable yew,

  Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf

  That the wind severs from the broken wave;

  The lilac various in array, now white,

  Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set

  With purple spikes pyramidal, as if

  Studious of ornament, yet unresolved

  Which hue she most approved, she chose them all;

  Copious of flowers the woodbine, pale and wan,

  But well compensating their sickly looks

  With never-cloying odours, early and late;

  Hypericum all bloom, so thick a swarm

  Of flowers like flies, clothing her slender rods,

  That scarce a leaf appears; mezereon too,

  Though leafless, well attired, and thick beset

  With blushing wreaths investing every spray;

  Althaea with the purple eye; the broom,

  Yellow and bright as bullion unalloyed

  Her blossoms; and luxuriant above all

  The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets,

  The deep dark green of whose unvarnished leaf

  Makes more conspicuous, and illumines more

  The bright profusion of her scattered stars. —

  These have been, and these shall be in their day,

  And all this uniform uncoloured scene

  Shall be dismantled of its fleecy load,

  And flush into variety again.

  From dearth to plenty, and from death to life,

  Is Nature’s progress when she lectures man

  In heavenly truth; evincing, as she makes

  The grand transition, that there lives and works

  A soul in all things, and that soul is God.

  The beauties of the wilderness are His,

  That make so gay the solitary place

  Where no eye sees them. And the fairer forms

  That cultivation glories in, are His.

  He sets the bright procession on its way,

  And marshals all the order of the year.

  He marks the bounds which Winter may not pass,

  And blunts his pointed fury. In its case,

  Russet and rude, folds up the tender germ

  Uninjured, with inimitable art,

  And, ere one flowery season fades and dies,

  Designs the blooming wonders of the next.

  Some say that in the origin of things,

  When all creation started into birth,

  The infant elements received a law

  From which they swerve not since; that under force

  Of that controlling ordinance they move,

  And need not His immediate hand, who first