WILLIAM COWPER. 1731-1800. THE TASK. United yet divided, twain at once. So sit two kings of Brentford on one throne.* Book i. The Sofa. Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds Exhilarate the spirit, and restore The tone of languid Nature. The earth was made so various, that the mind Ibid. Ibid. God made the country, and man made the Ibid.† O for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Ibid. Book ii. The Timepiece. Mountains interposed Make enemies of nations, who had else, Like kindred drops, been mingled into one. Ibid. * Two Kings of Brentford, from Buckingham's play of the rehearsal. † Cf. Cowley, page 137. Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging-place of wayfaring men.-Jeremiah ix. 2. I would not have a slave to till my ground, Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs Ibid. England, with all thy faults I love thee still, Ibid. Presume to lay their hand upon the ark Ibid. To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes Ibid. Praise enough To fill the ambition of a private man, That Chatham's language was his mother-tongue. There is a pleasure in poetic pains Which only poets know. Ibid. Ibid. *Servi peregrini, ut primum Galliæ fines penetraverint eodem momento liberi sunt. — Bodinus. Liber i. c. 5. † Be England what she will, With all her faults she is my country still. Churchill. The Farewell. Reading what they never wrote Just fifteen minutes, huddle up their work, Domestic Happiness, thou only bliss Of Paradise that hast survived the fall! How various his employments whom the world Ibid. Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too. Ibid. * "He has spent all his life in letting down empty buckets into empty wells; and he is frittering away his age in trying to draw them up again.". Memoirs of Sydney Smith. I burn to set the imprisoned wranglers free, Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, And Katerfelto, with his hair on end Ibid. At his own wonders, wondering for his bread. 'T is 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. Ibid. While fancy, like the finger of a clock, Runs the great circuit, and is still at home. Ibid. O Winter, ruler of the inverted year. Ibid. With spots quadrangular of diamond form, Sidney, warbler of poetic prose. Ibid. Ibid. * [Tar-water] is of a nature so mild and benign and proportioned to the human constitution, as to warm without heating, to cheer but not inebriate. - BISHOP BERKELEY. Siris, par. 217. The Frenchman's darling.* Book iv. Winter Evening. But war's a game which, were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at. Book v. Winter Morning Walk. The beggarly last doit. Ibid. With filial confidence inspired, Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye, As dreadful as the Manichean god, Ibid. Adored through fear, strong only to destroy, Ibid. He is the freeman whom the truth makes free. There is in souls a sympathy with sounds; In cadence sweet.. Ibid. Book vi. Winter Walk at Noon. Here the heart May give a useful lesson to the head, And Learning wiser grow without his books. Ibid. *'T was Cowper who gave this now common name to the Mignonette. |