The squirrel here his hoard provides,
Aware of wintry storms;
And woodpeckers explore the sides
Of rugged oaks for worms.
The sheep here smooths the knotted thorn -
With frictions of her fleece;
And here I wander eve and morn,
Like her, a friend to peace.
Ah!-I could pity the exiled
From this secure retreat ;-
I would not lose it to be styled
The happiest of the great..
But thou canst taste no calm delight;
Thy pleasure is to show
Thy magnanimity in fight,
Thy prowess, therefore, go!
I care not whether east or north,
So I no more may find thee;
The angry Muse thus sings thee forth,
And claps the gate behind thee.
BY AN OLD SCHOOLFELLOW OF HIS AT WESTMINSTER
HASTINGS! I knew thee young, and of a mind,
While young, humane, conversable, and kind;
Nor can I well believe thee, gentle then,
Now grown a villain, and the worst of men:
But rather some suspect, who have oppressed
And worried thee, as not themselves the best
They best can judge a poet's worth,
Who oft themselves have known
The pangs of a poetic birth,
By labours of their own.
We therefore pleased extol thy song
Though various yet complete,
Rich in embellishment as strong,
And learned as 'tis sweet.
No envy mingles with our praise;
Though, could our hearts repine
At any poet's happier lays,
They would-they must at thine.
But we, in mutual bondage knit
Of friendship's closest tie,
Can gaze on even Darwin's wit
With an unjaundiced eye:
And deem the Bard, whoe'er he be,
And howsoever known,
Who would not twine a wreath for thee,
Unworthy of his own.
The allusion is to Hayley, who contributed a poem upon the same author. It has been inconsiderately said, that Cowper's praise of Darwin was only the tribute of courtesy; but we learn from his comments upon the "Loves of the Plants," in the Analytical Review, that he perfectly appreciated the peculiar powers of the writer. He calls the " descriptions luminous as language selected with the finest taste can make them ;" and meeting "the eye with a boldness of projection unattainable by any hand but that of a master;" and he particularly notices the beauty of the expression-the eye-tipt horns of the snail:" which an ordinary writer, he says, would wot have attained in half-a-dozen laboured couplets.
ON THE AUTHOR OF "LETTERS ON LITERATURE."1
THE Genius of th' Augustan age
His head among Rome's ruins rear'd,
And bursting with heroic rage,
When literary Heron appear'd,
"Thou hast," he cried, "like him of old,
Who set the Ephesian dome on fire,
By being scandalously bold,
Attain'd the mark of thy desire.
"And for traducing Virgil's name
Shalt share his merited reward;
A perpetuity of fame,
That rots, and stinks, and is abhorred."
CORRUPTELIS GALLICIS, UT FERTUR, LONDINI NUPER EXORTAM.
PERFIDA, crudelis, victa et lymphata furore,
Non armis, laurum Gallia fraude petit.
Venalem pretio plebem conducit, et urit
Undique privatas patriciasque domos.
Nequicquàm conata suâ, fœdissima sperat
Posse tamen nostrâ nos superare manu.
Gallia, vana struis! Precibus nunc utere! Vinces,
Nam mites timidis, supplicibusque sumus.
FALSE, cruel, disappointed, stung to the heart,
France quits the warrior's for the assassin's part,
To dirty hands a dirty bribe conveys,
Bids the low street and lofty palace blaze.
1 The author was John Pinkerton. Cowper wrote of these letters with great indignation to Newton, Nov. 5, 1785 :-" What enterprises will not an inordinate passion for fame suggest? It prompted one man to fire the temple of Ephesus; another, to fling himself into a volcano; and now has induced this wicked and unfortunate squire either to deny his own feelings, or to publish to all the world that he has no feelings at all."
Her sons too weak to vanquish us alone,
She hires the worst and basest of our own.
Kneel, France! a suppliant conquers us with ease,
We always spare a coward on his knees.
TO THE REV. WILLIAM BULL.
IF reading verse be your delight,
'Tis mine as much, or more, to write;
But what we would, so weak is man,
Lies oft remote from what we can.
For instance, at this very time
I feel a wish by cheerful rhyme
To soothe my friend, and, had I power,
To cheat him of an anxious hour;
Not meaning (for I must confess,
It were but folly to suppress)
His pleasure or his good alone,
But squinting partly at my own.
But though the sun is flaming high
In the centre of yon arch, the sky,
And he had once (and who but he?)
The name for setting genius free,
Yet whether poets of past days
Yielded him undeserved praise,
And he by no uncommon lot
Was famed for virtues he had not;
Or whether, which is like enough,
His Highness may have taken huff,
So seldom sought with invocation,
Since it has been the reigning fashion
To disregard his inspiration,
I seem no brighter in my wits,
For all the radiance he emits,
Than if I saw, through midnight vapour,
The glimmering of a farthing taper.
Oh for a succedaneum, then,
T'accelerate a creeping pen!
Oh for a ready succedaneum,
Quod caput, cercbrum, et cranium
Pondere liberet exoso,
Et morbo jam caliginoso!
'Tis here; this oval box well filled
With best tobacco, finely milled,
Beats all Anticyra's pretences
To disengage the encumbered senses.
Oh Nymph of transatlantic fame,
Where'er thy haunt, whate'er thy name,
Whether reposing on the side
Of Oroonoquo's spacious tide,
Or listening with delight not small
To Niagara's distant fall,
'Tis thine to cherish and to feed
The pungent nose-refreshing weed,
Which, whether pulverised it gain
A speedy passage to the brain,
Or whether, touched with fire, it rise
In circling eddies to the skies,
Does thought more quicken and refine
Than all the breath of all the Nine-
Forgive the bard, if bard he be,
Who once too wantonly made free,
To touch with a satiric wipe
That symbol of thy power, the pipe;
So may no blight infest thy plains,
And no unseasonable rains;
And so may smiling peace once more
Visit America's sad shore;'
And thou, secure from all alarms,
Of thundering drums and glittering arms,
Rove unconfined beneath the shade
Thy wide expanded leaves have made;
So may thy votaries increase,
And fumigation never cease.
May Newton with renewed delights
Perform thy odoriferous rites,
While clouds of incense half divine
Involve thy disappearing shrine;
And so may smoke-inhaling Bull
Be always filling, never full.
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