William Cowper- Collected Poetical Works

by William Cowper

  Must she perform the same kind office now?

  May she, and if offended heav’n be still

  Accessible and pray’r prevail, she will.

  ’Tis not however insolence and noise,

  The tempest of tumultuary joys,

  Nor is it yet despondence and dismay,

  Will win her visits, or engage her stay,

  Pray’r only, and the penitential tear,

  Can call her smiling down, and fix her here.

  But when a country, (one that I could name)

  In prostitution sinks the sense of shame,

  When infamous venality grown bold,

  Writes on his bosom, to be lett or sold;

  When perjury, that heav’n defying vice,

  Sells oaths by tale, and at the lowest price,

  Stamps God’s own name upon a lie just made,

  To turn a penny in the way of trade;

  When av’rice starves, and never hides his face,

  Two or three millions of the human race,

  And not a tongue enquires, how, where, or when,

  Though conscience will have twinges now and then;

  When profanation of the sacred cause

  In all its parts, times, ministry and laws,

  Bespeaks a land once christian, fall’n and lost

  In all that wars against that title most,

  What follows next let cities of great name,

  And regions long since desolate proclaim,

  Nineveh, Babylon, and antient Rome,

  Speak to the present times and times to come,

  They cry aloud in ev’ry careless ear,

  Stop, while ye may, suspend your mad career;

  O learn from our example and our fate,

  Learn wisdom and repentance e’er too late.

  Not only vice disposes and prepares

  The mind that slumbers sweetly in her snares,

  To stoop to tyranny’s usurp’d command,

  And bend her polish’d neck beneath his hand,

  (A dire effect, by one of nature’s laws

  Unchangeably connected with its cause)

  But providence himself will intervene

  To throw his dark displeasure o’er the scene.

  All are his instruments; each form of war,

  What burns at home, or threatens from afar,

  Nature in arms, her elements at strife,

  The storms that overset the joys of life,

  Are but his rods to scourge a guilty land,

  And waste it at the bidding of his hand.

  He gives the word, and mutiny soon roars

  In all her gates, and shakes her distant shores,

  The standards of all nations are unfurl’d,

  She has one foe, and that one foe, the world.

  And if he doom that people with a frown,

  And mark them with the seal of wrath, press’d down,

  Obduracy takes place; callous and tough

  The reprobated race grows judgment proof:

  Earth shakes beneath them, and heav’n roars above,

  But nothing scares them from the course they love;

  To the lascivious pipe and wanton song

  That charm down fear, they frolic it along,

  With mad rapidity and unconcern,

  Down to the gulph from which is no return.

  They trust in navies, and their navies fail,

  God’s curse can cast away ten thousand sail;

  They trust in armies, and their courage dies,

  In wisdom, wealth, in fortune, and in lies;

  But all they trust in, withers, as it must,

  When he commands, in whom they place no trust.

  Vengeance at last pours down upon their coast,

  A long despis’d, but now victorious host,

  Tyranny sends the chain that must abridge

  The noble sweep of all their privilege,

  Gives liberty the last, the mortal shock,

  Slips the slave’s collar on, and snaps the lock,

  A.

  Such lofty strains embellish what you teach,

  Mean you to prophecy, or but to preach?

  B.

  I know the mind that feels indeed the fire

  The muse imparts, and can command the lyre,

  Acts with a force, and kindles with a zeal,

  Whate’er the theme, that others never feel.

  If human woes her soft attention claim,

  A tender sympathy pervades the frame,

  She pours a sensibility divine

  Along the nerve of ev’ry feeling line.

  But if a deed not tamely to be borne,

  Fire indignation and a sense of scorn,

  The strings are swept with such a pow’r, so loud,

  The storm of music shakes th’ astonish’d crowd.

  So when remote futurity is brought

  Before the keen enquiry of her thought,

  A terrible sagacity informs

  The poet’s heart, he looks to distant storms,

  He hears the thunder e’er the tempest low’rs,

  And arm’d with strength surpassing human pow’rs,

  Seizes events as yet unknown to man,

  And darts his soul into the dawning plan.

  Hence, in a Roman mouth, the graceful name

  Of prophet and of poet was the same,

  Hence British poets too the priesthood shar’d,

  And ev’ry hallow’d druid was a bard.

  But no prophetic fires to me belong,

  I play with syllables, and sport in song.

  A.

  At Westminster, where little poets strive

  To set a distich upon six and five,

  Where discipline helps op’ning buds of sense,

  And makes his pupils proud with silver-pence,

  I was a poet too — but modern taste

  Is so refin’d and delicate and chaste,

  That verse, whatever fire the fancy warms,

  Without a creamy smoothness has no charms.

  Thus, all success depending on an ear,

  And thinking I might purchase it too dear,

  If sentiment were sacrific’d to sound,

  And truth cut short to make a period round,

  I judg’d a man of sense could scarce do worse,

  Than caper in the morris-dance of verse.

  B.

  Thus reputation is a spur to wit,

  And some wits flag through fear of losing it.

  Give me the line, that plows its stately course

  Like a proud swan, conq’ring the stream by force.

  That like some cottage beauty strikes the heart,

  Quite unindebted to the tricks of art.

  When labour and when dullness, club in hand,

  Like the two figures at St. Dunstan’s stand,

  Beating alternately, in measur’d time,

  The clock-work tintinabulum of rhime,

  Exact and regular the sounds will be,

  But such mere quarter-strokes are not for me.

  From him who rears a poem lank and long,

  To him who strains his all into a song,

  Perhaps some bonny Caledonian air,

  All birks and braes, though he was never there,

  Or having whelp’d a prologue with great pains,

  Feels himself spent, and fumbles for his brains;

  A prologue interdash’d with many a stroke,

  An art contriv’d to advertise a joke,

  So that the jest is clearly to be seen,

  Not in the words — but in the gap between,

  Manner is all in all, whate’er is writ,

  The substitute for genius, sense, and wit.

  To dally much with subjects mean and low,

  Proves that the mind is weak, or makes it so.

  Neglected talents rust into decay,

  And ev’ry effort ends in push-pin play,

  The man that means success, should soar above


  A soldier’s feather, or a lady’s glove,

  Else summoning the muse to such a theme,

  The fruit of all her labour is whipt-cream.

  As if an eagle flew aloft, and then —

  Stoop’d from his highest pitch to pounce a wren.

  As if the poet purposing to wed,

  Should carve himself a wife in gingerbread.

  Ages elaps’d e’er Homer’s lamp appear’d,

  And ages e’er the Mantuan swan was heard,

  To carry nature lengths unknown before,

  To give a Milton birth, ask’d ages more.

  Thus genius rose and set at order’d times,

  And shot a day-spring into distant climes,

  Ennobling ev’ry region that he chose,

  He sunk in Greece, in Italy he rose,

  And tedious years of Gothic darkness pass’d,

  Emerg’d all splendor in our isle at last.

  Thus lovely Halcyons dive into the main,

  Then show far off their shining plumes again.

  A.

  Is genius only found in epic lays?

  Prove this, and forfeit all pretence to praise.

  Make their heroic pow’rs your own at once,

  Or candidly confess yourself a dunce.

  B.

  These were the chief, each interval of night

  Was grac’d with many an undulating light;

  In less illustrious bards his beauty shone

  A meteor or a star, in these, the sun.

  The nightingale may claim the topmost bough,

  While the poor grasshopper must chirp below.

  Like him unnotic’d, I, and such as I,

  Spread little wings, and rather skip than fly,

  Perch’d on the meagre produce of the land,

  An ell or two of prospect we command,

  But never peep beyond the thorny bound

  Or oaken fence that hems the paddoc round.

  In Eden e’er yet innocence of heart

  Had faded, poetry was not an art;

  Language above all teaching, or if taught,

  Only by gratitude and glowing thought,

  Elegant as simplicity, and warm

  As exstasy, unmanacl’d by form,

  Not prompted as in our degen’rate days,

  By low ambition and the thirst of praise,

  Was natural as is the flowing stream,

  And yet magnificent, a God the theme.

  That theme on earth exhausted, though above

  ’Tis found as everlasting as his love,

  Man lavish’d all his thoughts on human things,

  The feats of heroes and the wrath of kings,

  But still while virtue kindled his delight,

  The song was moral, and so far was right.

  ’Twas thus till luxury seduc’d the mind,

  To joys less innocent, as less refin’d,

  Then genius danc’d a bacchanal, he crown’d

  The brimming goblet, seiz’d the thyrsus, bound

  His brows with ivy, rush’d into the field

  Of wild imagination, and there reel’d

  The victim of his own lascivious fires,

  And dizzy with delight, profan’d the sacred wires.

  Anacreon, Horace, play’d in Greece and Rome

  This Bedlam part; and, others nearer home,

  When Cromwell fought for pow’r, and while he reign’d

  The proud protector of the pow’r he gain’d,

  Religion harsh, intolerant, austere,

  Parent of manners like herself severe,

  Drew a rough copy of the Christian face

  Without the smile, the sweetness, or the grace;

  The dark and sullen humour of the time

  Judg’d ev’ry effort of the muse a crime;

  Verse in the finest mould of fancy cast,

  Was lumber in an age so void of taste:

  But when the second Charles assum’d the sway,

  And arts reviv’d beneath a softer day,

  Then like a bow long forc’d into a curve,

  The mind releas’d from too constrain’d a nerve,

  Flew to its first position with a spring

  That made the vaulted roofs of pleasure ring.

  His court, the dissolute and hateful school

  Of wantonness, where vice was taught by rule,

  Swarm’d with a scribbling herd as deep inlaid

  With brutal lust as ever Circe made.

  From these a long succession, in the rage

  Of rank obscenity debauch’d their age,

  Nor ceas’d, ‘till ever anxious to redress

  Th’ abuses of her sacred charge, the press,

  The muse instructed a well nurtur’d train

  Of abler votaries to cleanse the stain,

  And claim the palm for purity of song,

  That lewdness had usurp’d and worn so long.

  Then decent pleasantry and sterling sense

  That never gave nor would endure offence,

  Whipp’d out of sight with satyr just and keen,

  The puppy pack that had defil’d the scene.

  In front of these came Addison. In him

  Humour in holiday and sightly trim,

  Sublimity and attic taste combin’d,

  To polish, furnish, and delight the mind.

  Then Pope, as harmony itself exact,

  In verse well disciplin’d, complete, compact,

  Gave virtue and morality a grace

  That quite eclipsing pleasure’s painted face,

  Levied a tax of wonder and applause,

  Ev’n on the fools that trampl’d on their laws.

  But he (his musical finesse was such,

  So nice his ear, so delicate his touch)

  Made poetry a mere mechanic art,

  And ev’ry warbler has his tune by heart.

  Nature imparting her satyric gift,

  Her serious mirth, to Arbuthnot and Swist,

  With droll sobriety they rais’d a smile

  At folly’s cost, themselves unmov’d the while.

  That constellation set, the world in vain

  Must hope to look upon their like again.

  A.

  Are we then left

  B.

  Not wholly in the dark,

  Wit now and then, struck smartly, shows a spark,

  Sufficient to redeem the modern race

  From total night and absolute disgrace.

  While servile trick and imitative knack

  Confine the million in the beaten track,

  Perhaps some courser who disdains the road,

  Snuffs up the wind and flings himself abroad.

  Cotemporaries all surpass’d, see one,

  Short his career, indeed, but ably run.

  Churchill, himself unconscious of his pow’rs,

  In penury confum’d his idle hours,

  And like a scatter’d seed at random sown,

  Was left to spring by vigor of his own.

  Lifted at length by dignity of thought,

  And dint of genius to an affluent lot,

  He laid his head in luxury’s soft lap,

  And took too often there his easy nap.

  If brighter beams than all he threw not forth,

  ’Twas negligence in him, not want of worth.

  Surly and slovenly and bold and coarse,

  Too proud for art, and trusting in mere force,

  Spendthrift alike of money and of wit,

  Always at speed and never drawing bit,

  He struck the lyre in such a careless mood,

  And so disdain’d the rules he understood,

  The laurel seem’d to wait on his command,

  He snatch’d it rudely from the muses hand.

  Nature exerting an unwearied pow’r,

  Forms, opens and gives scent to ev’ry flow’r,

  Spreads the fresh verdure of the field, and leads

  The dancing Naiads
through the dewy meads,

  She fills profuse ten thousand little throats

  With music, modulating all their notes,

  And charms the woodland scenes and wilds unknown,

  With artless airs and concerts of her own;

  But seldom (as if fearful of expence)

  Vouchsafes to man a poet’s just pretence.

  Fervency, freedom, fluency of thought,

  Harmony, strength, words exquisitely sought,

  Fancy that from the bow that spans the sky,

  Brings colours dipt in heav’n that never die,

  A soul exalted above earth, a mind

  Skill’d in the characters that form mankind,

  And as the sun in rising beauty dress’d,

  Looks to the westward from the dappl’d east,

  And marks, whatever clouds may interpose,

  E’er yet his race begins, its glorious close,

  An eye like his to catch the distant goal,

  Or e’er the wheels of verse begin to roll,

  Like his to shed illuminating rays

  On ev’ry scene and subject it surveys,

  Thus grac’d the man asserts a poet’s name,

  And the world chearfully admits the claim.

  Pity! Religion has so seldom found

  A skilful guide into poetic ground,

  The flow’rs would spring where’er she deign’d to stray,

  And ev’ry muse attend her in her way.

  Virtue indeed meets many a rhiming friend,

  And many a compliment politely penn’d,

  But unattir’d in that becoming vest

  Religion weaves for her, and half undress’d,

  Stands in the desart shiv’ring and forlorn,

  A wint’ry figure, like a wither’d thorn.

  The shelves are full, all other themes are sped,

  Hackney’d and worn to the last flimsy thread,

  Satyr has long since done his best, and curst

  And loathsome ribaldry has done his worst,

  Fancy has sported all her pow’rs away

  In tales, in trifles, and in children’s play,

  And ’tis the sad complaint, and almost true,

  Whate’er we write, we bring forth nothing new.

  ‘Twere new indeed, to see a bard all fire,

  Touch’d with a coal from heav’n assume the lyre,

  And tell the world, still kindling as he sung,

  With more than mortal music on his tongue,

  That he who died below, and reigns above

  Inspires the song, and that his name is love.

  For after all, if merely to beguile

  By flowing numbers and a flow’ry stile,

  The taedium that the lazy rich endure,

  Which now and then sweet poetry may cure,

  Or if to see the name of idol self

  Stamp’d on the well-bound quarto, grace the shelf,