William Cowper (1731 – 1800)
English poet and hymnodist.
O Popular Applause! what heart of man
Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms?
Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumor of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more.
Praise enough
To fill the ambition of a private man,
That Chatham's language was his mother tongue.
While fancy, like the finger of a clock,
Runs the great circuit, and is still at home.
The dogs did bark, the children screamed,
Up flew the windows all;
And every soul cried out, "Well done!"
As loud as he could bawl.
What is it but a map of busy life,
Its fluctuations, and its vast concerns?
Remorse, the fatal egg by Pleasure laid.
Made poetry a mere mechanic art.
Philologists, who chase
A panting syllable through time and space,
Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark
To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's ark.
The still small voice is wanted.
There is a pleasure in poetic pains
Which only poets know.
Now let us sing — Long live the king,
And Gilpin, long live he;
And, when he next doth ride abroad,
May I be there to see!
Fate steals along with silent tread,
Found oftenest in what least we dread,
Frowns in the storm with angry brow,
But in the sunshine strikes the blow.
A hat not much the worse for wear.
Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
That slaves, howe'er contented, never know.
Whoe'er was edified, themselves were not.
Built God a church, and laugh'd his word to scorn.
'Tis hard if all is false that I advance,
A fool must now and then be right by chance.
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.
Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain;
God is his own interpreter,
And he will make it plain.