looser and more diffuse, seldomer harsh or difficult than it is in some of his other compositions; above all, the doctrinal strain is pitched upon a lower key, and, without any essential point being given up, both morality and religion certainly assume a countenance and voice considerably less rueful and vindictive. But, although The Task has much occasional elevation and eloquence, and some sunny passages, it perhaps nowhere rises to the passionate force and vehemence to which Cowper had been carried by a more burning zeal in some of his earlier poems. Take, for instance, the following fine burst in that entitled Table-Talk:

Not only vice disposes and prepares

The mind, that slumbers sweetly in her snares,

To stoop to tyranny's usurped command,
And bend her polished neck beneath his hand
(A dire effect, by one of Nature's laws,
Unchangeably connected with its cause);
But Providence himself will intervene
To throw his dark displeasure o'er the scene.
All are his instruments; each form of war,
What burns at home, or threatens from afar,
Nature in arms, her elements at strife,
The storms that overset the joys of life,
Are but his rods to scourge a guilty land,

And waste it at the bidding of his hand.
He gives the word, and mutiny soon roars
In all her gates, and shakes her distant shores;
The standards of all nations are unfurled;
She has one foe, and that one foe the world:

And, if he doom that people with a frown,

And mark them with a seal of wrath pressed down,
Obduracy takes place; callous and tough

The reprobated race grows judgment-proof;

Earth shakes beneath them, and heaven wars above;
But nothing scares them from the course they love.

To the lascivious pipe, and wanton song,
That charm down fear, they frolic it along,

With mad rapidity and unconcern,

Down to the gulf from which is no return.
They trust in navies, and their navies fail-
God's curse can cast away ten thousand sail!
They trust in armies, and their courage dies;
In wisdom, wealth, in fortune, and in lies;
But all they trust in withers, as it must,

When He commands, in whom they place no trust.

Vengeance at last pours down upon their coast
A long-despised, but now victorious, host;
Tyranny sends the chain, that must abridge
The noble sweep of all their privilege ;
Gives liberty the last, the mortal shock;

Slips the slave's collar on, and snaps the lock.

And, even when it expresses itself in quite other forms, and with least of passionate excitement, the fervour which inspires these earlier poems occasionally produces something more brilliant or more graceful than is anywhere to be found in The Task. How skilfully and forcibly executed, for example, is the following moral delineation in that called Truth :-

The path to bliss abounds with many a snare;
Learning is one, and wit, however rare.
The Frenchman first in literary fame-

(Mention him, if you please. Voltaire?-The same)
With spirit, genius, eloquence, supplied,
Lived long, wrote much, laughed heartily, and died.
The Scripture was his jest-book, whence he drew
Bon mots to gall the Christian and the Jew;
An infidel in health; but what when sick?
Oh-then a text would touch him at the quick.
View him at Paris in his last career;
Surrounding throngs the demigod revere ;
Exalted on his pedestal of pride,

And fumed with frankincense on every side,

He begs their flattery with his latest breath,
And, smothered in 't at last, is praised to death.

Yon cottager, who weaves at her own door,
Pillow and bobbins all her little store;
Content though mean, and cheerful if not gay,
Shuffling her threads about the livelong day,
Just earns a scanty pittance, and at night
Lies down secure, her heart and pocket light;
She, for her humble sphere by nature fit,
Has little understanding, and no wit,
Receives no praise; but, though her lot be such,
(Toilsome and indigent) she renders much;
Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true-
A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew;
And in that charter reads with sparkling eyes
Her title to a treasure in the skies.

O happy peasant! O unhappy bard!
His the mere tinsel, hers the rich reward;

He praised perhaps for ages yet to come,
She never heard of half a mile from home;
He lost in errors his vain heart prefers,
She safe in the simplicity of hers.

Still more happily executed, and in a higher style of art, is the following version, so elaborately finished, and yet so severely simple, of the meeting of the two disciples with their divine Master on the road to Emmaus, in the piece entitled Conversation :

It happened on a solemn eventide,

Soon after He that was our surety died,
Two bosom friends, each pensively inclined,
The scene of all those sorrows left behind,
Sought their own village, busied as they went
In musings worthy of the great event:

They spake of him they loved, of him whose life,
Though blameless, had incurred perpetual strife,
Whose deeds had left, in spite of hostile arts,
A deep memorial graven on their hearts.
The recollection, like a vein of ore,

The farther traced, enriched them still the more;
They thought him, and they justly thought him, one
Sent to do more than he appeared to have done;
To exalt a people, and to place them high
Above all else; and wondered he should die.
Ere yet they brought their journey to an end,
A stranger joined them, courteous as a friend,
And asked them, with a kind, engaging air,
What their affliction was, and begged a share.
Informed, he gathered up the broken thread,
And, truth and wisdom gracing all he said,
Explained, illustrated, and searched so well
The tender theme on which they chose to dwell,
That, reaching home, The night, they said, is near;
We must not now be parted,-sojourn here.
The new acquaintance soon became a guest,
And, made so welcome at their simple feast,

He blessed the bread, but vanished at the word,
And left them both exclaiming, 'Twas the Lord!
Did not our hearts feel all he deigned to say?
Did not they burn within us by the way?

For one thing, Cowper's poetry, not organ-toned, or informed with any very rich or original music, any more than soaringly imaginative or gorgeously decorated, is of a style that requires

the sustaining aid of rhyme: in blank verse it is apt to overflow
in pools and shallows. And this is one among other reasons
why, after all, some of his short poems, which are nearly all in
rhyme, are perhaps what he has done best. His John Gilpin,
universally known and universally enjoyed by his countrymen,
young and old, educated and uneducated, and perhaps the only
English poem
of which this can be said, of course at once suggests
itself as standing alone in the collection of what he has left us
for whimsical conception and vigour of comic humour; but
there is a quieter exercise of the same talent, or at least of a
kindred sense of the ludicrous and sly power of giving it expres-
sion, in others of his shorter pieces. For tenderness and pathos,
again, nothing else that he has written, and not much that is
elsewhere to be found of the same kind in English poetry, can
be compared with his Lines on receiving his Mother's Picture :--

O that those lips had language! Life has passed
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine--thy own sweet smile I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me:
Voice only fails, else how distinct they say,
"Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!'
The meek intelligence of those clear eyes
(Blest be the art that can immortalize,
The art that baffles Time's gigantic claim
To quench it) here shines on me still the same.
Faithful remembrancer of one so dear,

O welcome guest, though unexpected here!
Who bidd'st me honour with an artless song,
Affectionate, a mother lost so long.

I will obey, not willingly alone,

But gladly, as the precept were her own:
And, while that face renews my filial grief,
Fancy shall weave a charm for my relief,
Shall steep me in Elysian reverie,
A momentary dream that thou art she.

My mother when I learned that thou wast dead,
Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed?
Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son,
Wretch even then, life's journey just begun?
Perhaps thou gav'st me, though unfelt, a kiss;
Perhaps a tear, if souls can melt in bliss-
Ah that maternal smile! it answers-Yes.
I heard the bell tolled on thy burial day,
I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away,

And, turning from my nursery window, drew
A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu!
But was it such ?-It was.-Where thou art gone,
Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown:
May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore,
The parting word shall pass my lips no more!
Thy maidens, grieved themselves at my concern,
Oft gave me promise of thy quick return.
What ardently I wished I long believed,
And, disappointed still, was still deceived;
By expectation every day beguiled,
Dupe of to-morrow even from a child,

Thus many a sad to-morrow came and went,
Till, all my stock of infant sorrow spent,
I learned at last submission to my lot,
But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot.

Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more,
Children not thine have trod my nursery floor;
And where the gardener Robin, day by day,
Drew me to school along the public way,
Delighted with my bauble coach, and wrapped
In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet-capped,
'Tis now become a history little known
That once we called the pastoral house our own.
Short-lived possession! but the record fair,
That memory keeps of all thy kindness there,
Still outlives many a storm, that has effaced

A thousand other themes less deeply traced.

Thy nightly visits to my chamber made,

That thou might'st know me safe and warmly laid; Thy morning bounties ere I left my home,

The biscuit, or confectionary plum;

The fragrant waters on my cheeks bestowed

By thy own hand, till fresh they shone and glowed :

All this, and, more endearing still than all,

Thy constant flow of love, that knew no fall,

Ne'er roughened by those cataracts and breaks,
That humour interposed too often makes;
All this still legible in memory's page,

And still to be so to my latest age,

Adds joy to duty, makes me glad to pay
Such honours to thee as my numbers may;

Perhaps a frail memorial, but sincere,

Not scorned in heaven, though little noticed here. Could Time, his flight reversed, restore the hours, When, playing with thy vesture's tissued flowers, The violet, the pink, and jessamine,

I pricked them into paper with a pin,