Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness,1
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,

Might never reach me more.

The Task. Book ii. The Timepiece, Line 1.

Mountains interposed

Make enemies of nations who had else,
Like kindred drops, been mingled into one.

I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earn’d.

Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free!
They touch our country, and their shackles fall.2

Line 17.

Line 29.

Line 40.

Fast-anchor'd isle.

Line 151.

England, with all thy faults I love thee still,
My country! 3

Line 206.

Presume to lay their hand upon the ark

Of her magnificent and awful cause.

Line 231.

1 Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging-place of wayfaring men! Jeremiah ix. 2.

Oh that the desert were my dwelling-place! - BYRON: Childe Harold, canto iv. stanza 177.

2 Servi peregrini, ut primum Galliæ fines penetraverint eodem momento liberi sunt (Foreign slaves, as soon as they come within the limits of Gaul, that moment they are free). — BODINUS: Liber i. c. 5.

Lord Campbell ("Lives of the Chief Justices," vol. ii. p. 418) says that "Lord Mansfield first established the grand doctrine that the air of England is too pure to be breathed by a slave." The words attributed to Lord Mansfield, however, are not found in his judgment. They are in Hargrave's argument, May 14, 1772, where he speaks of England as "a soil whose air is deemed too pure for slaves to breathe in." — LOFFT : Reports, p. 2.

8 See Churchill, page 413.

Praise enough

To fill the ambition of a private man,

That Chatham's language was his mother tongue.
The Task. Book ii. The Timepiece, Line 235.

There is a pleasure in poetic pains

Which only poets know.1

Transforms old print

To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes
Of gallery critics by a thousand arts.

Reading what they never wrote,

Just fifteen minutes, huddle up their work,
And with a well-bred whisper close the scene.

Whoe'er was edified, themselves were not.

Variety 's the very spice of life.2

She that asks

Her dear five hundred friends.

His head,

Not yet by time completely silver'd o'er,
Bespoke him past the bounds of freakish youth,
But strong for service still, and unimpair'd.

Domestic happiness, thou only bliss.

Of Paradise that has survived the fall!

Line 285.

Line 363.

Line 411.

Line 444.

Line 606.

Line 642.

Line 702.

Book iii. The Garden. Line 41.

Great contest follows, and much learned dust.

From reveries so airy, from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,

Line 161.

And growing old in drawing nothing up.3

Line 188.

1 See Dryden, page 277.

and

2 No pleasure endures unseasoned by variety. - PUB. SYRUS: Maxim 406. 8 He has spent all his life in letting down buckets into empty wells; he is frittering away his age in trying to draw them up again. - Lady Holland's Memoir of Sydney Smith, vol. i. p. 259.

How various his employments whom the world
Calls idle, and who justly in return

Esteems that busy world an idler too!

The Task. Book iii. The Garden, Line 352.

Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too.
I burn to set the imprison'd wranglers free,
And give them voice and utterance once again.
Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups
That cheer but not inebriate1 wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

Line 566.

Book iv. The Winter Evening. Line 34.

At his own wonders, wondering for his bread.
"T is pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat,
To peep at such a world, — to see the stir
Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd.
While fancy, like the finger of a clock,
Runs the great circuit, and is still at home.

Line 86.

Line 118.

O Winter, ruler of the inverted year! 2

With spots quadrangular of diamond form,
Ensanguined hearts, clubs typical of strife,
And spades, the emblems of untimely graves.

In indolent vacuity of thought.

It seems the part of wisdom.

Line 120.

Line 217.

Line 297.

Line 336.

Line 478.

All learned, and all drunk!

1 See Bishop Berkeley, page 312.

2 See Thomson, page 356.

Gloriously drunk, obey the important call.

The Task. Book iv. The Winter Evening, Line 510.

Those golden times

And those Arcadian scenes that Maro sings,
And Sidney, warbler of poetic prose.

The Frenchman's darling.1

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.
Silently as a dream the fabric rose,

No sound of hammer or of saw was there.2

Line 514.

Line 765.

Line 788.

Book v. The Winter Morning Walk. Line 144.

But war's a game which were their subjects wise
Kings would not play at.

Line 187.

The beggarly last doit.

Line 316.

As dreadful as the Manichean god,

Adored through fear, strong only to destroy.

Line 444.

He is the freeman whom the truth makes free.

Line 733.

With filial confidence inspired,

Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye,
And smiling say, My Father made them all!

Line 745.

Give what thou canst, without Thee we are poor;
And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.

There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
And as the mind is pitch'd the ear is pleased

Line 905.

1 It was Cowper who gave this now common name to the mignonette.
2 No hammers fell, no ponderous axes rung;
Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.

HEBER: Palestine.

So that there was neither hammer nor axe, nor any tool of iron heard in the house while it was in building.

1 Kings vi. 7.

With melting airs or martial, brisk or grave;
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touch'd within us, and the heart replies.
How soft the music of those village bells
Falling at intervals upon the ear

In cadence sweet!

The Task. Book ri. Winter Walk at Noon. Line 1.

Here the heart

May give a useful lesson to the head,

And Learning wiser grow without his books.

Line 85.

Knowledge is proud that he has learn'd so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.

Books are not seldom talismans and spells.

Line 96.

Some to the fascination of a name
Surrender judgment hoodwink'd.

I would not enter on my list of friends

Line 101.

(Though graced with polish'd manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility) the man

Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.

An honest man, close-button'd to the chin,
Broadcloth without, and a warm heart within.

Line 560.

Epistle to Joseph Hill.

Shine by the side of every path we tread
With such a lustre, he that runs may read.1

Tirocinium. Line 79.

What peaceful hours I once enjoy'd!
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void
The world can never fill.

And Satan trembles when he sees
The weakest saint upon his knees.

Walking with God.

Exhortation to Prayer.

1 Write the vision, and make it plain, upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. - Habakkuk ii. 2.

He that runs may read. - TENNYSON: The Flower.