William Cowper - The Task (1785)

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'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.

William Cowper
His head,
Not yet by time completely silvered o'er,
Bespoke him past the bounds of freakish youth,
But strong for service still, and unimpaired.

William Cowper
I would not enter on my list of friends,
(Though graced with polish'd manners and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility) the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
An inadvertent step may crush the snail
That crawls at evening in the public path;
But he that has humanity, forewarn'd,
Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.

William Cowper
Some must be great. Great offices will have
Great talents. And God gives to every man
The virtue, temper, understanding, taste,
That lifts him into life, and lets him fall
Just in the niche he was ordain'd to fill.

William Cowper
Thus first necessity invented stools,
Convenience next suggested elbow-chairs,
And luxury the accomplished sofa last.

William Cowper
Ye therefore who love mercy, teach your sons to love it, too.

William Cowper
Doing good,
Disinterested good, is not our trade.

William Cowper
I crown thee king of intimate delights,
Fire-side enjoyments, home-born happiness.

William Cowper
There is a pleasure in poetic pains
Which only poets know.

William Cowper
There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
And as the mind is pitched the ear is pleased
With melting airs or martial, brisk, or grave:
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touched within us, and the heart replies.
How soft the music of those village bells
Falling at intervals upon the ear
In cadence sweet!

William Cowper
The earth was made so various, that the mind
Of desultory man, studious of change
And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.

William Cowper
Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too.

William Cowper
Not a flower
But shows some touch, in freckle, streak or stain,
Of his unrivall'd pencil.

William Cowper
Reading what they never wrote,
Just fifteen minutes, huddle up their work,
And with a well-bred whisper close the scene.

William Cowper
I was a stricken deer that left the herd
Long since.

William Cowper
How various his employments whom the world
Calls idle, and who justly in return
Esteems that busy world an idler too!

William Cowper
Knowledge is proud that he has learn'd so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.

William Cowper
I burn to set the imprison'd 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.

William Cowper
Presume to lay their hand upon the ark
Of her magnificent and awful cause.

William Cowper
God made the country, and man made the town.

William Cowper
While fancy, like the finger of a clock,
Runs the great circuit, and is still at home.

William Cowper
England, with all thy faults, I love thee still—
My country! and, while yet a nook is left
Where English minds and manners may be found,
Shall be constrained to love thee.

William Cowper
Defend me, therefore, common sense, say I,
From reveries so airy, from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up!

William Cowper
And Katerfelto, with his hair on end
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.

William Cowper
Here the heart
May give a useful lesson to the head,
And Learning wiser grow without his books.

William Cowper
Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,
Have oft-times no connexion, Knowledge dwells
in heads replete with thoughts of other men,
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.

William Cowper
But war's a game, which, were their subjects wise,
Kings would not play at.

William Cowper
Domestic happiness, thou only bliss
Of Paradise that has survived the fall!

William Cowper
Happy the man who sees a God employed in all the good and ills that checker life.

William Cowper
With filial confidence inspired,
Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye,
And smiling say, My Father made them all!

William Cowper