Should feel that itching, and that tingling,
With all my purpose intermingling,
To your intrinsic merit true,
When call’d t’ address myself to you.
Mysterious are his ways, whose power
Brings forth that unexpected hour, 30
When minds, that never met before,
Shall meet, unite, and part no more:
It is th’ allotment of the skies,
The hand of the Supremely Wise,
That guides and governs our affections,
And plans and orders our connexions;
Directs us in our distant road,
And marks the bounds of our abode.
Thus we were settled when you found us,
Peasants and children all around us, 40
Not dreaming of so dear a friend,
Deep in the abyss of Silver-End.
Thus Martha, e’en against her will,
Perch’d on the top of yonder hill;
And you, though you must needs prefer
The fairer scenes of sweet Sancerre ‘,
Are come from distant Loire, to choose
A cottage on the banks of Ouse.
This page of Providence, quite new,
And now just op’ning to our view, 50
Employs our present thoughts and pains,
To guess, and spell, what it contains:
But day by day, and year by year,
Will make the dark ænigma clear;
And furnish us, perhaps, at last,
Like other scenes already past,
With proof, that we, and our affairs
Are part of a Jehovah’s cares;
For God unfolds, by slow degrees,
The purport of his deep decrees; 60
Sheds every hour a clearer light
In aid of our defective sight;
And spreads, at length, before the soul,
A beautiful and perfect whole,
Which busy man’s inventive brain
Toils to anticipate in vain.
Say, Anna, had you never known
The beauties of a rose full-blown,
Could you, tho’ luminous your eye,
By looking on the bud, descry, 70
Or guess, with a prophetic power,
The future splendour of the flower?
Just so th’ Omnipotent, who turns
The system of a world’s concerns,
From mere minutiae can educe
Events of most important use;
And bid a dawning sky display
The blaze of a meridian day.
The works of man tend, one and all,
As needs they must, from great to small; 80
And vanity absorbs at length
The monuments of human strength.
But who can tell how vast the plan
Which this day’s incident began?
Too small perhaps the slight occasion
For our dim-sighted observation;
It passed unnotic’d, as the bird
That cleaves the yielding air unheard,
And yet may prove, when understood,
A harbinger of endless good. 90
Not that I deem, or mean to call
Friendship, a blessing cheap, or small:
But merely to remark, that ours,
Like some of nature’s sweetest flow’rs,
Rose from a seed of tiny size,
That seem’d to promise no such prize:
A transient visit intervening,
And made almost without a meaning,
(Hardly th’ effect of inclination,
Much less of pleasing expectation) 100
Produc’d a friendship, then begun,
That has cemented us in one;
And plac’d it in our power to prove,
By long fidelity and love,
That Solomon has wisely spoken;
“A three-fold cord is not soon broken.”
TO MISS CREUZÉ ON HER BIRTHDAY
[Written Nov., 1780 (?); see notes: (MS. in British Museum). Published by Hayley, 1803.]
How many between East and West
Disgrace their parent earth,
Whose deeds constrain us to detest
The day that gave them birth!
Not so, when Stella’s natal morn
Revolving months restore,
We can rejoice that She was born,
And wish her born once more. 8
THE FLATTING MILL
[Written Dec. 20, 1781. Published by Johnson, 1815. There is a copy among the Ash MSS.]
When a bar of pure silver or ingot of gold
Is sent to be flatted or wrought into length.
It is pass’d between cylinders often, and roll’d
In an engine of utmost mechanical strength.
Thus tortur’d and squeezed, at last it appears,
Like à loose heap of ribbon, a glittering show,
Like music it tinkles and rings in your ears,
And warm’d by the pressure is all in a glow. 8
This process achiev’d, it is doom’d to sustain
The thump after thump of a gold-beater’s mallet,
And at last is of service in sickness or pain
To cover a pill from a delicate palate.
Alas for the poet! who dares undertake
To urge reformation of national ill,
His head and his heart are both likely to ache 15
With the double employment of mallet and mill.
If he wish to instruct, he must learn to delight,
Smooth ductile and even his fancy must flow,
Must tinkle and glitter, like gold to the sight,
And catch in its progress a sensible glow.
After all, he must beat it as thin and as fine
As the leaf that enfolds what an invalid swallows,
For truth is unwelcome however divine,
And unless you adorn it, a nausea follows. 24
TO THE REV. MR. NEWTON, RECTOR OF ST. MARY, WOOLNOTH
[Written May 28, 1782. Published by Johnson, 1815.]
Says the pipe to the snuff-box, I can’t understand
What the ladies and gentlemen see in your face,
That you are in fashion all over the land,
And I am so much fallen into disgrace.
Do but see what a pretty contemplative air
I give to the company — pray do but note ’em —
You would think that the wise men of Greece were all there,
Or, at least, would suppose them the wise men of Gotham. 8
My breath is as sweet as the breath of blown roses,
While you are a nuisance where’er you appear;
There is nothing but sniv’ling and blowing of noses,
Such a noise as turns any man’s stomach to hear.
Then lifting his lid in a delicate way,
Andop’ning his mouth with a smile quite engaging,
The box in reply was heard plainly to say,
What a silly dispute is this we are waging! 16
If you have a little of merit to claim,
You may thank the sweet-smelling Virginian weed,
And I, if I seem to deserve any blame,
The before-mention’d drug in apology plead.
Thus neither the praise nor the blame is our own,
No room for a sneer, much less a cachinnus,
We are vehicles, not of tobacco alone, 23
But of any thing else they may choose to put in us.
TO THE REV. WILLIAM BULL
[Written June 22, 1782. Published by Johnson, 1824.]
MY DEAR FRIEND,
If reading verse be your delight,
’Tis mine as much, or more, to write;
But what we would, so weak is man,
Lies oft remote from what we can.
For instance, at this very time
I feel a wish, by cheerful rhyme
To sooth my friend, and,
had I pow’r,
To cheat him of an anxious hour;
Not meaning (for I must confess,
It were but folly to suppress.) 10
His pleasure, or his good alone,
But squinting partly at my own.
But though the sun is flaming high
I’ th’ centre of you arch, the sky,
And he had once (and who but he?)
The name for setting genius free,
Yet whether poets of past days
Yielded him undeserved praise,
And he by no uncommon lot
Was fam’d for virtues he had not; 20
Or whether, which is like enough,
His Highness may have taken huff,
So seldom sought with invocation,
Since it has been the reigning fashion
To disregard his inspiration,
I seem no brighter in my wits
For all the radiance he emits,
Than if I saw, through midnight vapour,
The glimm’ring of a farthing taper.
Oh for a succedaneum, then, 30
T’ accelerate a creeping pen!
Oh for a ready succedaneum,
Quod caput, cerebrum, et cranium
Pondéré liberet exoso,
Et morbo jam caliginoso!
’Tis here; this oval box well fill’d
With best tobacco, finely mill’d,
Beats all Anticyra’s pretences
To disengage th’ encumber’d senses.
Oh Nymph of Transatlantic fame, 40
Where’er thine haunt, whate’er thy name,
Whether reposing on the side
Of Oroonoquo’s spacious tide,
Or list’ning with delight not small
To Niagara’s distant fall,
’Tis thine to cherish and to feed
The pungent nose-refreshing weed,
Which, whether pulveriz’d it gain
A speedy passage to the brain,
Or whether, touch’d with fire, it rise 50
In circling eddies to the skies,
Does thought more quicken and refine
Than all the breath of all the Nine —
Forgive the Bard, if Bard he be,
Who once too wantonly made free,
To touch with a satiric wipe
That symbol of thy power, the pipe;
So may no blight infest thy plains,
And no unseasonable rains,
And so may smiling Peace once more 60
Visit America’s sad shore;
And thou, secure from all alarms
Of thund’ring drums, and glitt’ring arms,
Rove unconfin’d beneath the shade
Thy wide expanded leaves have made;
So may thy votaries increase,
And fumigation never cease.
May Newton with renew’d delights
Perform thy odorif’rous rites,
While clouds of incense half divine 70
Involve thy disappearing shrine;
And so may smoke-inhaling Bull
Be always filling, never full.
THE COLUBRIAD
[Written Aug., 1782. Published by Hayley, 1806.]
Close by the threshold of a door nail’d fast
Three kittens sat: each kitten look’d aghast.
I, passing swift and inattentive by,
At the three kittens cast a careless eye;
Not much concern’d to know what they did there,
Not deeming kittens worth a poet’s care.
But presently a loud and furious hiss
Caused me to stop, and to exclaim — what’s this?
When, lo! upon the threshold met my view,
With head erect, and eyes of fiery hue, 10
A viper, long as Count de Grasse’s queue.
Forth from his head his forked tongue he throws,
Darting it full against a kitten’s nose;
Who having never seen in field or house
The like, sat still and silent, as a mouse:
Only, projecting with attention due
Her whisker’d face, she ask’d him — who are you?
On to the hall went I, with pace not slow,
But swift as lightning, for a long Dutch hoe;
With which well arm’d I hasten’d to the spot, 20
To find the viper. But I found him not,
And, turning up the leaves and shrubs around,
Found only, that he was not to be found.
But still the kittens, sitting as before,
Sat watching close the bottom of the door.
I hope — said I — the villain I would kill
Has slipt between the door and the door’s sill;
And if I make despatch, and follow hard,
No doubt but I shall find him in the yard: —
For long ere now it should have been rehears’d, 30
’Twas in the garden that I found him first.
E’en there I found him; there the full-grown cat
His head with velvet paw did gently pat,
As curious as the kittens erst had been
To learn what this phenomenon might mean.
Fill’d with heroic ardour at the sight,
And fearing every moment he would bite,
And rob our household of our only cat
That was of age to combat with a rat,
With out-stretch’d hoe I slew him at the door, 40
And taught him NEVER TO COME THERE NO MORE.
TO LADY AUSTEN, WRITTEN IN RAINY WEATHER
[Written Aug. 12, 1782. Published by Hayley, 1803.]
To watch the storms, and hear the sky
Give all our almanacks the lie;
To shake with cold, and see the plains
In autumn drown’d with wintry rains;
’Tis thus I spend my moments here,
And wish myself a Dutch mynheer;
I then should have no need of wit;
For lumpish Hollander unfit!
Nor should I then repine at mud,
Or meadows delug’d with a flood; 10
But in a bog live well content,
And find it just my element:
Should be a clod, and not a man,
Nor wish in vain for Sister Ann,
With charitable aid to drag
My mind out of its proper quag;
Should have the genius of a boor,
And no ambition to have more.
THE DISTRESSED TRAVELLERS OR, LABOUR IN VAIN
An excellent New Song to a Tune never sung before.
[Written Aug., 1782 (?). Published in The Monthly Magazine, Jan., 1808],
I SING of a journey to Clifton
We would have perform’d if we could,
Without cart or barrow to lift on
Poor Mary and me thro’ the mud.
Sle sla slud,
Stuck in the mud;
Oh it is pretty to wade through a flood! 7
So away we went, slipping and sliding,
Hop, hop, à la mode de deux frogs,
’Tis near as good walking as riding,
When ladies are dress’d in their clogs.
Wheels, no doubt,
Go briskly about,
But they clatter and rattle, and make such a rout!
She. “Well! now I protest it is charming; 15
How finely the weather improves!
That cloud, though, is rather alarming,
How slowly and stately it moves!”
He. “Pshaw! nevermind,
’Tis not in the wind,
We are travelling south and shall leave it behind.”
She. “I am glad we are come for an airing, 22
For folks may be pounded and penn’d,
Until they grow rusty, not caring
To stir half a mile to an end.”
He. “The longer we stay,
The longer we may;
It’s a folly to think about weather o
r way.” 28
She. ‘But now I begin to be frighted;
If I fall, what a way I should roll!
I am glad that the bridge was indicted, —
Stop! stop! I am sunk in a hole!”
He. Nay, never care!
’Tis a common affair;
You’ll not be the last that will set a foot there.” 35
She. “Let me breathe now a little, and ponder
On what it were better to do;
That terrible lane I see yonder,
I think we shall never get through.”
He. “So think I: —
But, by the bye,
We never shall know, if we never should try.” 42
She. “But should we get there, how shall we get home?
What a terrible deal of bad road we have past!
Slipping and sliding; and if we should come
To a difficult stile, I am ruin’d at last!
Oh this lane!
Now it is plain
That struggling and striving is labour in vain.” 49
He. “Stick fast there while I go and look—”
She. “Don’t go away, for fear I should fall!”
He. “I have examin’d it every nook,
And what you have here is a sample of all.
Come, wheel round,
The dirt we have found
Would be an estate at a farthing a pound.” 56
Now, sister Anne, the guitar-you must take,
Set it, and sing it, and make it a song;
I have varied the verse for variety’s sake,
And cut it off short — because it was long.
’Tis hobbling and lame,
Which critics won’t blame,
For the sense and the sound, they say, should be the same. 63
ON THE LOSS OF THE ROYAL GEORGE
WRITTEN WHEN THE NEWS ARRIVED, BY DESIRE OF LADY AUSTEN, WHO WANTED WORDS TO THE MARCH IN SCIPIO.
[Written Sept. (?), 1782. Published by Hayley, 1803. The MSS. of both the English and the Latin poems are in the British Museum.]
Toll for the brave —
The brave! that are no more:
All sunk beneath the wave,
Fast by their native shore.
Eight hundred of the brave,
William Cowper- Collected Poetical Works Page 47
