William Cowper- Collected Poetical Works

by William Cowper

  Cowper certainly misread himself if he believed that ambition, even literary ambition, was a large element in his character. But having published, he felt a keen interest in the success of his publication. Yet he took its failure and the adverse criticism very calmly. With all his sensitiveness, from irritable and suspicious egotism, such as is the most common cause of moral madness, he was singularly free. In this respect his philosophy served him well.

  It may safely be said that the Moral Satires would have sunk into oblivion if they had not been buoyed up by The Task.

  CHAPTER V. THE TASK.

  Mrs. Unwin’s influence produced the Moral Satires. The Task was born of a more potent inspiration. One day Mrs. Jones, the wife of a neighbouring clergyman, came into Olney to shop, and with her came her sister, Lady Austen, the widow of a Baronet, a woman of the world, who had lived much in France, gay, sparkling and vivacious, but at the same time full of feeling even to overflowing. The apparition acted like magic on the recluse. He desired Mrs. Unwin to ask the two ladies to stay to tea, then shrank from joining the party which he had himself invited, ended by joining it, and, his shyness giving way with a rush, engaged in animated conversation with Lady Austen, and walked with her part of the way home. On her an equally great effect appears to have been produced. A warm friendship at once sprang up, and before long Lady Austen had verses addressed to her as Sister Anne. Her ladyship, on her part, was smitten with a great love of retirement, and at the same time with great admiration for Mr. Scott, the curate of Olney, as a preacher, and she resolved to fit up for herself “that part of our great building which is at present occupied by Dick Coleman, his wife and child, and a thousand rats.” That a woman of fashion, accustomed to French salons, should choose such an abode, with a pair of Puritans for her only society, seems to show that one of the Puritans at least must have possessed great powers of attraction. Better quarters were found for her in the Vicarage; and the private way between the gardens, which apparently had been closed since Newton’s departure, was opened again.

  Lady Austen’s presence evidently wrought on Cowper like an elixir: “From a scene of the most uninterrupted retirement,” he writes to Mrs. Unwin, “we have passed at once into a state of constant engagement. Not that our society is much multiplied; the addition of an individual has made all this difference. Lady Austen and we pass our days alternately at each other’s Chateau. In the morning I walk with one or other of the ladies, and in the evening wind thread. Thus did Hercules, and thus probably did Samson, and thus do I; and were both those heroes living, I should not fear to challenge them to a trial of skill in that business, or doubt to beat them both.” It was perhaps while he was winding thread that Lady Austen told him the story of John Gilpin. He lay awake at night laughing over it, and next morning produced the ballad. It soon became famous, and was recited by Henderson, a popular actor, on the stage, though, as its gentility was doubtful, its author withheld his name. He afterwards fancied that this wonderful piece of humour had been written in a mood of the deepest depression. Probably he had written it in an interval of high spirits between two such moods. Moreover he sometimes exaggerated his own misery. He will begin a letter with a de profundis, and towards the end forget his sorrows, glide into commonplace topics, and write about them in the ordinary strain. Lady Austen inspired John Gilpin. She inspired, it seems, the lines on the loss of the Royal George. She did more: she invited Cowper to try his hand at something considerable in blank verse. When he asked her for a subject, she was happier in her choice than the lady who had suggested the Progress of Error. 8he bade him take the sofa on which she was reclining, and which, sofas being then uncommon, was a more striking and suggestive object than it would be now. The right chord was struck; the subject was accepted; and The Sofa grew into The Task; the title of the song reminding us that it was “commanded by the fair.” As Paradise Lost is to militant Puritanism, so is The Task to the religious movement of its author’s time. To its character as the poem of a sect it no doubt owed and still owes much of its popularity. Not only did it give beautiful and effective expression to the sentiments of a large religious party, but it was about the only poetry that a strict Methodist or Evangelical could read; while to those whose worship was unritualistic and who were debarred by their principles from the theatre and the concert, anything in the way of art that was not illicit must have been eminently welcome. But The Task has merits of a more universal and enduring kind. Its author himself says of it:— “If the work cannot boast a regular plan (in which respect, however, I do not think it altogether indefensible), it may yet boast, that the reflections are naturally suggested always by the preceding passage, and that, except the fifth book, which is rather of a political aspect, the whole has one tendency, to discountenance the modern enthusiasm after a London life, and to recommend rural ease and leisure as friendly to the cause of piety and virtue.” A regular plan, assuredly, The Task has not. It rambles through a vast variety of subjects, religious, political, social, philosophical, and horticultural, with as little of method as its author used in taking his morning walks. Nor as Mr. Benham has shown, are the reflections, as a rule, naturally suggested by the preceding passage. From the use of a sofa by the gouty to those, who being free from gout, do not need sofas, — and so to country walks and country life is hardly a natural transition. It is hardly a natural transition from the ice palace built by a Russian despot, to despotism and politics in general. But if Cowper deceives himself in fancying that there is a plan or a close connexion of parts, he is right as to the existence of a pervading tendency. The praise of retirement and of country life as most friendly to piety and virtue, is the perpetual refrain of The Task, if not its definite theme. From this idea immediately now the best and the most popular passages: those which please apart from anything peculiar to a religious school; those which keep the poem alive; those which have found their way into the heart of the nation, and intensified the taste for rural and domestic happiness, to which they most winningly appeal. In these Cowper pours out his inmost feelings, with the liveliness of exhilaration, enhanced by contrast with previous misery. The pleasures of the country and of home, the walk, the garden, but above all the “intimate delights” of the winter evening, the snug parlour, with its close-drawn curtains shutting out the stormy night, the steaming and bubbling tea-urn, the cheerful circle, the book read aloud, the newspaper through which we look out into the unquiet world, are painted by the writer with a heartfelt enjoyment, which infects the reader. These are not the joys of a hero, nor are they the joys of an Alcaeus “singing amidst the clash of arms, or when he had moored on the wet shore his storm-tost barque.” But they are pure joys, and they present themselves in competition with those of Ranelagh and the Basset Table, which are not heroic or even masculine, any more than they are pure.

  The well-known passages at the opening of The Winter Evening, are the self-portraiture of a soul in bliss — such bliss as that soul could know — and the poet would have found it very difficult to depict to himself by the utmost effort of his religious imagination any paradise which he would really have enjoyed more.

  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.

  * * * *

  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?

  * * * *

  ’Tis pleasant through the loop-holes 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 injured 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 make 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 scatter’d hair with sleet like ashes fill’d,

  Thy breath congeal’d upon thy lips, thy cheeks

  Fringed with a beard made white with other snows

  Than those of age; thy forehead wrapt in clouds,

  A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne

  A sliding car indebted to no wheels,

  And 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 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 undisturb’d retirement, and the hours

  Of long uninterrupted evening know.

  The writer of The Task also deserves the crown which he has himself claimed as a close observer and truthful painter of nature. In this respect, he challenges comparison with Thomson. The range of Thomson is far wider, he paints nature in all her moods, Cowper only in a few and those the gentlest, though he has said of himself that “he was always an admirer of thunderstorms, even before he knew whose voice be heard in them, but especially of thunder rolling over the great waters.” The great waters he had not seen for many years; he had never, so far as we know, seen mountains, hardly even high hills; his only landscape was the flat country watered by the Ouse. On the other hand he is perfectly genuine, thoroughly English, entirely emancipated from false Arcadianism, the yoke of which still sits heavily upon Thomson, whose “muse” moreover is perpetually “wafting” him away from the country and the climate which he knows to countries and climates which he does not know, and which he describes in the style of a prize poem. Cowper’s landscapes, too, are peopled with the peasantry of England; Thomson’s, with Damons, Palaemons, and Musidoras, tricked out in the sentimental costume of the sham idyl. In Thomson, you always find the effort of the artist working up a description; in Cowper, you find no effort; the scene is simply mirrored on a mind of great sensibility and high pictorial power.

  And witness, dear companion of my walks,

  Whose arm this twentieth winter I perceive

  Fast lock’d in mine, with pleasure such as love,

  Confirm’d by long experience of thy worth

  And well-tried virtues, could alone inspire —

  Witness a joy that thou hast doubled long.

  Thou know’st my praise of nature most sincere,

  And that my raptures are not conjured up

  To serve occasions of poetic pomp,

  But genuine, and art partner of them all.

  How oft upon yon eminence our pace

  Has slacken’d to a pause, and we have borne

  The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,

  While Admiration, feeding at the eye,

  And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene!

  Thence with what pleasure have we just discerned

  The distant plough slow moving, and beside

  His labouring team that swerved not from the track,

  The sturdy swain diminish’d to a boy!

  Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain

  Of spacious meads, with cattle sprinkled o’er,

  Conducts the eye along his sinuous course

  Delighted. There, fast rooted in their bank,

  Stand, never overlook’d, our favourite elms,

  That screen the herdsman’s solitary hut;

  While far beyond, and overthwart the stream,

  That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale,

  The sloping land recedes into the clouds;

  Displaying on its varied side the grace

  Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower,

  Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells

  Just undulates upon the listening ear,

  Groves, heaths, and smoking villages, remote.

  Scenes must be beautiful, which, daily viewed,

  Please daily, and whose novelty survives

  Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years —

  Praise justly due to those that I describe.

  This is evidently genuine and spontaneous. We stand with Cowper and Mrs. Unwin on the hill in the ruffling wind, like them, scarcely conscious that it blows, and feed admiration at the eye upon the rich and thoroughly English champaign that is outspread below.

  Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds,

  Exhilarate the spirit, and restore

  The tone of languid Nature. Mighty winds,

  That sweep the skirt of some far-spreading wood

  Of ancient growth, make music not unlike

  The dash of Ocean on his winding shore,

  And lull the spirit while they nil the mind;

  Unnumber’d branches waving in the blast,

  And all their leaves fast fluttering, all at once.

  Nor less composure waits upon the roar

  Of distant floods, or on the softer voice

  Of neighbouring fountain, or of rills that slip

  Through the cleft rock, and chiming as they fall

  Upon loose pebbles, lose themselves at length

  In matted grass that with a livelier green

  Betrays the secret of their silent course.

  Nature inanimate employs sweet sounds,

  But animated nature sweeter still,

  To soothe and satisfy the human ear.

  Ten thousand warblers cheer the day, and one

  The livelong night: nor these alone, whose notes

  Nice-finger’d Art must emulate in vain,

  But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime

  In still-repeated circles, screaming loud,

  The jay, the pie, and e’en the boding owl

  That hails the rising moon, have charms for me.

  Sounds inharmonious in themselves and harsh,r />
  Yet heard in scenes where peace for ever reigns,

  And only there, please highly for their sake.

  Affection such as the last lines display for the inharmonious as well as the harmonious, for the uncomely, as well as the comely parts of nature has been made familiar by Wordsworth, but it was new in the time of Cowper. Let us compare a landscape painted by Pope in his Windsor forest, with the lines just quoted, and we shall see the difference between the art of Cowper, and that of the Augustan age.

  Here waving groves a checkered scene display,

  And part admit and part exclude the day,

  As some coy nymph her lover’s warm address

  Not quite indulges, nor can quite repress.

  There interspersed in lawns and opening glades

  The trees arise that share each other’s shades;

  Here in full light the russet plains extend,

  There wrapt in clouds, the bluish hills ascend,

  E’en the wild heath displays her purple dyes,

  And midst the desert fruitful fields arise,

  That crowned with tufted trees and springing corn.

  Like verdant isles the sable waste adorn.

  The low Berkshire hills wrapt in clouds on a sunny day; a sable desert in the neighbourhood of Windsor; fruitful fields arising in it, and crowned with tufted trees and springing corn — evidently Pope saw all this, not on an eminence, in the ruffling wind, but in his study with his back to the window, and the Georgics or a translation of them before him.