Selections from the Poetical Works of William Cowper

Whom I may whisper, solitude is sweet.
Yet neither these delights, nor aught beside
That appetite can ask, or wealth provide,
Can save us always from a tedious day,
Or shine the dulness of still life away;
Divine communion, carefully enjoyed,
Or sought with energy, must fill the void.
O sacred art, to which alone life owes
Its happiest seasons, and a peaceful close,
Scorned in a world, indebted to that scorn
For evils daily felt, and hardly borne, -

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750

Not knowing thee, we reap with bleeding hands
Flowers of rank odour upon thorny lands,
And, while experience cautions us in vain,
Grasp seeming happiness, and find it pain.
Despondence, self-deserted in her grief,
Lost by abandoning her own relief;
Murmuring and ungrateful Discontent,
That scorns afflictions mercifully meant,

755

760

Those humours tart as wines upon the fret,

Which idleness and weariness beget;

These and a thousand plagues that haunt the breast,

Fond of the phantom of an earthly rest,

Divine communion chases, as the day

765

Drives to their dens the obedient beasts of prey.

See Judah's promised king, bereft of all,

Driven out an exile from the face of Saul.

To distant caves the lonely wanderer flies,

To seek that peace a tyrant's frown denies.

770

Hear the sweet accents of his tuneful voice,

Hear him, o'erwhelmed with sorrow, yet rejoice;

No womanish or wailing grief has part,

No, not a moment, in his royal heart;
'Tis manly music, such as martyrs make,

775

Suffering with gladness for a Saviour's sake:
His soul exults, hope animates his lays,
The sense of mercy kindles into praise,
And wilds, familiar with the lion's roar,

Ring with ecstatic sounds unheard before: 'Tis love like his that can alone defeat The foes of man, or make a desert sweet.

780

Religion does not censure or exclude Unnumbered pleasures harmlessly pursued; To study culture, and with artful toil

785

To meliorate and tame the stubborn soil;

To give dissimilar yet fruitful lands

The grain, or herb, or plant, that each demands;

To cherish virtue in an humble state,

And share the joys your bounty may create;

790

To mark the matchless workings of the power

That shuts within its seed the future flower,
Bids these in elegance of form excel,

In colour these, and those delight the smell,
Sends Nature forth, the daughter of the skies,
To dance on Earth, and charm all human eyes;
To teach the canvas innocent deceit,
Or lay the landscape on the snowy sheet
These, these are arts, pursued without a crime,
That leave no stain upon the wing of Time.
Me poetry (or rather notes that aim
Feebly and faintly at poetic fame)

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Employs, shut out from more important views,
Fast by the banks of the slow-winding Ouse;
Content if thus sequestered I may raise
A monitor's, though not a poet's praise,
And while I teach an art too little known,

To close life wisely, may not waste my own.

805

THE NIGHTINGALE AND GLOW-WORM.

183

THE NIGHTINGALE AND GLOW-WORM.

A NIGHTINGALE, that all day long
Had cheered the village with his song,
Nor yet at eve his note suspended,
Nor yet when eventide was ended,
Began to feel, as well he might,
The keen demands of appetite;
When, looking eagerly around,

He spied far off, upon the ground,
A something shining in the dark,
And knew the glow-worm by his spark;
So stooping down from hawthorn top,
He thought to put him in his crop.
The worm, aware of his intent,
Harangued him thus, right eloquent-
"Did you admire my lamp," quoth he,
"As much as I your minstrelsy,
You would abhor to do me wrong,
As much as I to spoil your song;
For 'twas the self-same Power divine
Taught you to sing and me to shine;▸
That you with music, I with light,
Might beautify, and cheer the night.”
The songster heard his short oration,
And, warbling out his approbation,
Released him, as my story tells,
And found a supper somewhere else.

Respecting, in each other's case,

The gifts of nature and of grace.

Those Christians best deserve the name
Who studiously make peace their aim;
Peace both the duty and the prize

Of him that creeps and him that flies.

REPORT OF AN ADJUDGED CASE.

NOT TO BE FOUND IN ANY OF THE BOOKS.

BETWEEN Nose and Eyes a strange contest arose,
The spectacles set them unhappily wrong;
The point in dispute was, as all the world knows,
To which the said spectacles ought to belong.

So Tongue was the lawyer, and argued the cause
With a great deal of skill, and a wig full of learning;
While Chief Baron Ear sat to balance the laws,

So famed for his talent in nicely discerning.

"In behalf of the Nose it will quickly appear,

And your lordship," he said, "will undoubtedly find, That the Nose has had spectacles always in wear, Which amounts to possession time out of mind.”

ΙΟ

Then holding the spectacles up to the court

"Your lordship observes they are made with a straddle,

As wide as the ridge of the Nose is; in short,

Designed to sit close to it, just like a saddle.

९९

Again, would your lordship a moment suppose ('Tis a case that has happened, and may be again,) That the visage or countenance had not a Nose,

Pray who would, or who could, wear spectacles then?

"On the whole it appears, and my argument shows,
With a reasoning the court will never condemn,
That the spectacles plainly were made for the Nose,
And the Nose was as plainly intended for them.”

Then shifting his side, as a lawyer knows how,

He pleaded again in behalf of the Eyes:
But what were his arguments few people know,
For the court did not think they were equally wise.

So his lordship decreed with a grave solemn tone,
Decisive and clear, without one if or but
That, whenever the Nose put his spectacles on,
By daylight or candlelight - Eyes should be shut!

O Salerne Lille Fold)

yaufel, soutely humor - [Nightengale