William Cowper (1731 – 1800)
English poet and hymnodist.
Pernicious weed! whose scent the fair annoys,
Unfriendly to society's chief joys,
Thy worst effect is banishing for hours
The sex whose presence civilizes ours.
Thus neither the praise nor the blame is our own.
Candid, and generous, and just,
Boys care but little whom they trust,
An error soon corrected—
For who but learns in riper years
That man, when smoothest he appears
Is most to be suspected?
My friends, do they now and then send
A wish or a thought after me?
O tell me I yet have a friend,
Though a friend I am never to see.
God made the country, and man made the town.
I believe no man was ever scolded out of his sins.
Visits are insatiable devourers of time, and fit only for those who, if they did not that, would do nothing.
Dream after dream ensues;
And still they dream that they shall still succeed;
And still are disappointed.
But war's a game, which, were their subjects wise,
Kings would not play at.
Variety 's the very spice of life.
No wild enthusiast ever yet could rest,
Till half mankind were like himself possess'd.
Toll for the brave —
The brave! that are no more;
All sunk beneath the wave,
Fast by their native shore!
Misery still delights to trace
Its semblance in another's case.
Domestic happiness, thou only bliss
Of Paradise that has survived the fall!
As dreadful as the Manichean god,
Adored through fear, strong only to destroy.
Detested sport,
That owes its pleasures to another's pain.
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.
A moral, sensible, and well-bred man
Will not affront me, and no other can.
Beware of desp'rate steps! The darkest day
(Live till tomorrow) will have passed away.
The earth was made so various, that the mind
Of desultory man, studious of change
And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.