William Cowper- Collected Poetical Works

by William Cowper

  Advance it into notice, that, its worth

  Acknowledged, others may admire it too.

  I therefore recommend, though at the risk

  Of popular disgust, yet boldly still,

  The cause of piety and sacred truth

  And virtue, and those scenes which God ordained

  Should best secure them and promote them most;

  Scenes that I love, and with regret perceive

  Forsaken, or through folly not enjoyed.

  Pure is the nymph, though liberal of her smiles,

  And chaste, though unconfined, whom I extol.

  Not as the prince in Shushan, when he called,

  Vain-glorious of her charms, his Vashti forth,

  To grace the full pavilion. His design

  Was but to boast his own peculiar good,

  Which all might view with envy, none partake.

  My charmer is not mine alone; my sweets,

  And she that sweetens all my bitters, too,

  Nature, enchanting Nature, in whose form

  And lineaments divine I trace a hand

  That errs not, and find raptures still renewed,

  Is free to all men — universal prize.

  Strange that so fair a creature should yet want

  Admirers, and be destined to divide

  With meaner objects even the few she finds.

  Stript of her ornaments, her leaves and flowers,

  She loses all her influence. Cities then

  Attract us, and neglected Nature pines,

  Abandoned, as unworthy of our love.

  But are not wholesome airs, though unperfumed

  By roses, and clear suns, though scarcely felt,

  And groves, if unharmonious yet secure

  From clamour and whose very silence charms,

  To be preferred to smoke — to the eclipse

  That Metropolitan volcanoes make,

  Whose Stygian throats breathe darkness all day long,

  And to the stir of commerce, driving slow,

  And thundering loud with his ten thousand wheels?

  They would be, were not madness in the head

  And folly in the heart; were England now

  What England was, plain, hospitable, kind,

  And undebauched. But we have bid farewell

  To all the virtues of those better days,

  And all their honest pleasures. Mansions once

  Knew their own masters, and laborious hands

  That had survived the father, served the son.

  Now the legitimate and rightful lord

  Is but a transient guest, newly arrived

  And soon to be supplanted. He that saw

  His patrimonial timber cast its leaf,

  Sells the last scantling, and transfers the price

  To some shrewd sharper, ere it buds again.

  Estates are landscapes, gazed upon awhile,

  Then advertised, and auctioneered away.

  The country starves, and they that feed the o’er-charged

  And surfeited lewd town with her fair dues,

  By a just judgment strip and starve themselves.

  The wings that waft our riches out of sight

  Grow on the gamester’s elbows, and the alert

  And nimble motion of those restless joints,

  That never tire, soon fans them all away.

  Improvement too, the idol of the age,

  Is fed with many a victim. Lo! he comes —

  The omnipotent magician, Brown, appears.

  Down falls the venerable pile, the abode

  Of our forefathers, a grave whiskered race,

  But tasteless. Springs a palace in its stead,

  But in a distant spot; where more exposed

  It may enjoy the advantage of the North

  And aguish East, till time shall have transformed

  Those naked acres to a sheltering grove.

  He speaks. The lake in front becomes a lawn,

  Woods vanish, hills subside, and valleys rise,

  And streams, as if created for his use,

  Pursue the track of his directed wand

  Sinuous or straight, now rapid and now slow,

  Now murmuring soft, now roaring in cascades,

  Even as he bids. The enraptured owner smiles.

  ’Tis finished. And yet, finished as it seems,

  Still wants a grace, the loveliest it could show,

  A mine to satisfy the enormous cost.

  Drained to the last poor item of his wealth,

  He sighs, departs, and leaves the accomplished plan

  That he has touched and retouched, many a day

  Laboured, and many a night pursued in dreams,

  Just when it meets his hopes, and proves the heaven

  He wanted, for a wealthier to enjoy.

  And now perhaps the glorious hour is come,

  When having no stake left, no pledge to endear

  Her interests, or that gives her sacred cause

  A moment’s operation on his love,

  He burns with most intense and flagrant zeal

  To serve his country. Ministerial grace

  Deals him out money from the public chest,

  Or, if that mine be shut, some private purse

  Supplies his need with an usurious loan,

  To be refunded duly, when his vote,

  Well-managed, shall have earned its worthy price.

  Oh, innocent compared with arts like these,

  Crape and cocked pistol and the whistling ball

  Sent through the traveller’s temples! He that finds

  One drop of heaven’s sweet mercy in his cup,

  Can dig, beg, rot, and perish well-content,

  So he may wrap himself in honest rags

  At his last gasp; but could not for a world

  Fish up his dirty and dependent bread

  From pools and ditches of the commonwealth,

  Sordid and sickening at his own success.

  Ambition, avarice, penury incurred

  By endless riot, vanity, the lust

  Of pleasure and variety, despatch,

  As duly as the swallows disappear,

  The world of wandering knights and squires to town;

  London engulfs them all. The shark is there,

  And the shark’s prey; the spendthrift, and the leech

  That sucks him. There the sycophant, and he

  That with bare-headed and obsequious bows

  Begs a warm office, doomed to a cold jail

  And groat per diem if his patron frown.

  The levee swarms, as if in golden pomp

  Were charactered on every statesman’s door,

  ‘BATTERED AND BANKRUPT FORTUNES MENDED HERE.’

  These are the charms that sully and eclipse

  The charms of nature. ’Tis the cruel gripe

  That lean hard-handed poverty inflicts,

  The hope of better things, the chance to win,

  The wish to shine, the thirst to be amused,

  That, at the sound of Winter’s hoary wing,

  Unpeople all our counties of such herds

  Of fluttering, loitering, cringing, begging, loose

  And wanton vagrants, as make London, vast

  And boundless as it is, a crowded coop.

  Oh thou resort and mart of all the earth,

  Chequered with all complexions of mankind,

  And spotted with all crimes; in whom I see

  Much that I love, and more that I admire,

  And all that I abhor; thou freckled fair

  That pleases and yet shocks me, I can laugh

  And I can weep, can hope, and can despond,

  Feel wrath and pity when I think on thee!

  Ten righteous would have saved a city once,

  And thou hast many righteous. — Well for thee —

  That salt preserves thee; more corrupted else,

  And therefore more obnoxious at this hour

>   Than Sodom in her day had power to be,

  For whom God heard his Abram plead in vain.

  BOOK IV. THE WINTER EVENING.

  Hark! ’tis the twanging horn o’er yonder bridge,

  That with its wearisome but needful length

  Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon

  Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright; —

  He comes, the herald of a noisy world,

  With spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks,

  News from all nations lumbering at his back.

  True to his charge the close-packed load behind,

  Yet careless what he brings, his one concern

  Is to conduct it to the destined inn,

  And, having dropped the expected bag — pass on.

  He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch,

  Cold and yet cheerful: messenger of grief

  Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some;

  To him indifferent whether grief or joy.

  Houses in ashes, and the fall of stocks,

  Births, deaths, and marriages, epistles wet

  With tears that trickled down the writer’s cheeks,

  Fast as the periods from his fluent quill,

  Or charged with amorous sighs of absent swains,

  Or nymphs responsive, equally affect

  His horse and him, unconscious of them all.

  But oh, the important budget! ushered in

  With such heart-shaking music, who can say

  What are its tidings? have our troops awaked?

  Or do they still, as if with opium drugged,

  Snore to the murmurs of the Atlantic wave?

  Is India free? and does she wear her plumed

  And jewelled turban with a smile of peace,

  Or do we grind her still? The grand debate,

  The popular harangue, the tart reply,

  The logic and the wisdom and the wit

  And the loud laugh — I long to know them all;

  I burn to set the imprisoned wranglers free,

  And give them voice and utterance once again.

  Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,

  Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,

  And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn

  Throws up a steamy column, and the cups,

  That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,

  So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

  Not such his evening, who with shining face

  Sweats in the crowded theatre, and squeezed

  And bored with elbow-points through both his sides,

  Outscolds the ranting actor on the stage;

  Nor his, who patient stands till his feet throb

  And his head thumps, to feed upon the breath

  Of patriots bursting with heroic rage,

  Or placemen all tranquillity and smiles.

  This folio of four pages, happy work!

  Which not even critics criticise, that holds

  Inquisitive attention while I read

  Fast bound in chains of silence, which the fair,

  Though eloquent themselves, yet fear to break,

  What is it but a map of busy life,

  Its fluctuations and its vast concerns?

  Here runs the mountainous and craggy ridge

  That tempts ambition. On the summit, see,

  The seals of office glitter in his eyes;

  He climbs, he pants, he grasps them. At his heels,

  Close at his heels, a demagogue ascends,

  And with a dextrous jerk soon twists him down

  And wins them, but to lose them in his turn.

  Here rills of oily eloquence, in soft

  Meanders, lubricate the course they take;

  The modest speaker is ashamed and grieved

  To engross a moment’s notice, and yet begs,

  Begs a propitious ear for his poor thoughts,

  However trivial all that he conceives.

  Sweet bashfulness! it claims, at least, this praise,

  The dearth of information and good sense

  That it foretells us, always comes to pass.

  Cataracts of declamation thunder here,

  There forests of no meaning spread the page

  In which all comprehension wanders lost;

  While fields of pleasantry amuse us there,

  With merry descants on a nation’s woes.

  The rest appears a wilderness of strange

  But gay confusion; roses for the cheeks

  And lilies for the brows of faded age,

  Teeth for the toothless, ringlets for the bald,

  Heaven, earth, and ocean plundered of their sweets.

  Nectareous essences, Olympian dews,

  Sermons and city feasts and favourite airs,

  Ethereal journeys, submarine exploits,

  And Katterfelto with his hair on end

  At his own wonders, wondering for his bread.

  ’Tis pleasant through the loopholes of retreat

  To peep at such a world; to see the stir

  Of the great Babel and not feel the crowd;

  To hear the roar she sends through all her gates

  At a safe distance, where the dying sound

  Falls a soft murmur on the uninjured ear.

  Thus sitting and surveying thus at ease

  The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced

  To some secure and more than mortal height,

  That liberates and exempts me from them all.

  It turns submitted to my view, turns round

  With all its generations; I behold

  The tumult and am still. The sound of war

  Has lost its terrors ere it reaches me;

  Grieves, but alarms me not. I mourn the pride

  And avarice that makes man a wolf to man;

  Hear the faint echo of those brazen throats

  By which he speaks the language of his heart,

  And sigh, but never tremble at the sound.

  He travels and expatiates, as the bee

  From flower to flower so he from land to land;

  The manners, customs, policy of all

  Pay contribution to the store he gleans,

  He sucks intelligence in every clime,

  And spreads the honey of his deep research

  At his return — a rich repast for me.

  He travels and I too. I tread his deck,

  Ascend his topmast, through his peering eyes

  Discover countries, with a kindred heart

  Suffer his woes and share in his escapes;

  While fancy, like the finger of a clock,

  Runs the great circuit, and is still at home.

  Oh Winter, ruler of the inverted year,

  Thy scattered hair with sleet-like ashes filled,

  Thy breath congealed upon thy lips, thy cheeks

  Fringed with a beard made white with other snows

  Than those of age, thy forehead wrapped in clouds,

  A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne

  A sliding car indebted to no wheels,

  But urged by storms along its slippery way,

  I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem’st,

  And dreaded as thou art. Thou hold’st the sun

  A prisoner in the yet undawning East,

  Shortening his journey between morn and noon,

  And hurrying him, impatient of his stay,

  Down to the rosy west; but kindly still

  Compensating his loss with added hours

  Of social converse and instructive ease,

  And gathering at short notice in one group

  The family dispersed, and fixing thought

  Not less dispersed by daylight and its cares.

  I crown thee king of intimate delights,

  Fire-side enjoyments, home-born happiness,

  And all the comforts that the lowly roof

  Of undisturbed retirement, and the hours
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  Of long uninterrupted evening know.

  No rattling wheels stop short before these gates;

  No powdered pert proficients in the art

  Of sounding an alarm, assault these doors

  Till the street rings; no stationary steeds

  Cough their own knell, while heedless of the sound

  The silent circle fan themselves, and quake:

  But here the needle plies its busy task,

  The pattern grows, the well-depicted flower,

  Wrought patiently into the snowy lawn,

  Unfolds its bosom; buds and leaves and sprigs

  And curly tendrils, gracefully disposed,

  Follow the nimble finger of the fair;

  A wreath that cannot fade, of flowers that blow

  With most success when all besides decay.

  The poet’s or historian’s page, by one

  Made vocal for the amusement of the rest;

  The sprightly lyre, whose treasure of sweet sounds

  The touch from many a trembling chord shakes out;

  And the clear voice symphonious, yet distinct,

  And in the charming strife triumphant still,

  Beguile the night, and set a keener edge

  On female industry; the threaded steel

  Flies swiftly, and unfelt the task proceeds.

  The volume closed, the customary rites

  Of the last meal commence: a Roman meal,

  Such as the mistress of the world once found

  Delicious, when her patriots of high note,

  Perhaps by moonlight, at their humble doors,

  And under an old oak’s domestic shade,

  Enjoyed — spare feast! — a radish and an egg.

  Discourse ensues, not trivial, yet not dull,

  Nor such as with a frown forbids the play

  Of fancy, or proscribes the sound of mirth;

  Nor do we madly, like an impious world,

  Who deem religion frenzy, and the God

  That made them an intruder on their joys,

  Start at His awful name, or deem His praise

  A jarring note; themes of a graver tone

  Exciting oft our gratitude and love,

  While we retrace with memory’s pointing wand

  That calls the past to our exact review,

  The dangers we have scaped, the broken snare,

  The disappointed foe, deliverance found

  Unlooked for, life preserved and peace restored,

  Fruits of omnipotent eternal love: —

  Oh evenings worthy of the gods! exclaimed

  The Sabine bard. Oh evenings, I reply,

  More to be prized and coveted than yours,

  As more illumined and with nobler truths,

  That I, and mine, and those we love, enjoy.

  Is Winter hideous in a garb like this?