Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. III. The Eighteenth Century: Addison to Blake

William Cowper (1731–1800)

Extracts from the Task: Early Love of the Country and of Poetry

BUT slighted as it is, and by the great

Abandoned, and, which still I more regret,

Infected with the manners and the modes

It knew not once, the country wins me still.

I never framed a wish, or formed a plan,

That flattered me with hopes of earthly bliss,

But there I laid the scene. There early strayed

My fancy, ere yet liberty of choice

Had found me, or the hope of being free.

My very dreams were rural, rural too

The firstborn efforts of my youthful muse,

Sportive, and jingling her poetic bells

Ere yet her ear was mistress of their powers.

No bard could please me but whose lyre was tuned

To Nature’s praises. Heroes and their feats

Fatigued me, never weary of the pipe

Of Tityrus, assembling, as he sang,

The rustic throng beneath his favourite beech.

Then Milton had indeed a poet’s charms:

New to my taste, his Paradise surpassed

The struggling efforts of my boyish tongue

To speak its excellence; I danced for joy.

I marvelled much that, at so ripe an age

As twice seven years, his beauties had then first

Engaged my wonder, and admiring still,

And still admiring, with regret supposed

The joy half lost because not sooner found.

Thee too, enamoured of the life I loved,

Pathetic in its praise, in its pursuit

Determined, and possessing it at last

With transports such as favoured lovers feel,

I studied, prized, and wished that I had known,

Ingenious Cowley! and though now reclaimed

By modern lights from an erroneous taste,

I cannot but lament thy splendid wit

Entangled in the cobwebs of the schools;

I still revere thee, courtly though retired,

Though stretched at ease in Chertsey’s silent bowers,

Not unemployed, and finding rich amends

For a lost world in solitude and verse.