William Cowper

No dancing bear was so genteel
Or half so dégagé.
- "Of Himself", l. 31 (wr. 1752; pub. 1825)

Absence from whom we love is worse than death,
And frustrate hope severer than despair.
- "Hope, like the short-lived ray", l. 35 (wr. c. 1757; pub. 1825)

Damned below Judas; more abhorred than he was.
- "Hatred and vengeance, my eternal portion", st. 2 (wr. c. 1774; pub. 1816)

Man disobeys, and deity disowns me.
- "Hatred and vengeance, my eternal portion", st. 3 (wr. c. 1774; pub. 1816)

But oars alone can ne'er prevail
To reach the distant coast;
The breath of Heaven must swell the sail,
Or all the toil is lost.
- "Human Frailty", l. 21 (1779)

Oh! I could thresh his old jacket till I made his pension jingle in his pockets.
- Letter to the Rev. William Unwin (31 October 1779) on Dr. Johnson's criticism of Paradise Lost

Reasoning at every step he treads,
Man yet mistakes his way,
While meaner things, whom instinct leads,
Are rarely known to stray.
- "The Doves", l. 1 (1780)

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 Fable", l. 36 (1780)

'Tis Providence alone secures
In every change both mine and yours.
- "A Fable", Moral (1780)

Regions Caesar never knew
Thy posterity shall sway;
Where his eagles never flew,
None invincible as they.
- "Boadicea", st. 8 (1782)

Ruffians, pitiless as proud,
Heaven awards the vengeance due;
Empire is on us bestowed,
Shame and ruin wait for you.
- "Boadicea", st. 11 (1782)

Sweet stream that winds through yonder glade,
Apt emblem of a virtuous maid
Silent and chaste she steals along,
Far from the world's gay busy throng:
With gentle yet prevailing force,
Intent upon her destined course;
Graceful and useful all she does,
Blessing and blest where'er she goes;
Pure-bosom'd as that watery glass,
And Heaven reflected in her face.
- "To a Young Lady" (1782)

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?
- "Friendship", l. 19 (1782)

Thus neither the praise nor the blame is our own.
- "From a Letter to the Rev. Mr. Newton", l. 21 (1782)

Grief is itself a med'cine.
- "Charity", l. 159 (1782)

Canst thou, and honour’d with a Christian name,
Buy what is woman-born, and feel no shame?
Trade in the blood of innocence, and plead
Expedience as a warrant for the deed?
So may the wolf, whom famine has made bold
To quit the forest and invade the fold:
So may the ruffian, who with ghostly glide,
Dagger in hand, steals close to your bedside;
Not he, but his emergence forced the door,
He found it inconvenient to be poor.
- "Charity", l. 180 (1782)

When one that holds communion with the skies
Has fill'd his urn where these pure waters rise,
And once more mingles with us meaner things,
'Tis e'en as if an angel shook his wings.
- "Charity", l. 435 (1782)

True Charity, a plant divinely nurs'd.
- "Charity", l. 573 (1782)

Let Charity forgive me a mistake,
That zeal, not vanity, has chanced to make,
And spare the poet for his subject’s sake.
- "Charity", l. 634 (1782)

Thousands, careless of the damning sin,
Kiss the book's outside who ne'er look within.
- "Expostulation", l. 388 (1782)

The man that hails you Tom or Jack,
And proves, by thumping on your back,
His sense of your great merit,
Is such a friend that one had need
Be very much his friend indeed
To pardon or to bear it.
- "On Friendship", l. 169 (1782)

Men deal with life as children with their play,
Who first misuse, then cast their toys away.
- "Hope", l. 127 (1782)

Could he with reason murmur at his case,
Himself sole author of his own disgrace?
- "Hope", l. 316 (1782)

And differing judgments serve but to declare,
That truth lies somewhere, if we knew but where.
- "Hope", l. 423 (1782)

A knave, when tried on honesty's plain rule,
And, when by that of reason, a mere fool.
- "Hope" (1782)

Oh, fond attempt to give a deathless lot
To names ignoble, born to be forgot!
- "On Observing Some Names of Little Note Recorded in the Biographica Britannica" (1782)

There goes the parson, O illustrious spark!
And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk.
- "On Observing Some Names of Little Note Recorded in the Biographica Britannica" (1782)

He has no hope that never had a fear.
- "Truth", l. 298 (1782)

Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true,—
A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew.
- "Truth", l. 327 (1782)

The sounding jargon of the schools.
- "Truth", l. 367 (1782)

But what is man in his own proud esteem?
Hear him, himself the poet and the theme;
A monarch clothed with majesty and awe,
His mind his kingdom and his will his law.
- "Truth", l. 403 (1782)

Old Tiney, the surliest of his kind!
   Who, nursed with tender care,
And to domestic bounds confined,
   Was still a wild Jack hare.
Though duly from my hand he took
   His pittance every night,
He did it with a jealous look;
   And, when he could, would bite.
- "Epitaph on a Hare", sts. 2 and 3 (wr. 1783; pub. 1784)

Our severest winter, commonly called the spring.
- Letter to the Rev. William Unwin (8 June 1783)

I believe no man was ever scolded out of his sins.
- Letter to the Rev. John Newton (17 June 1783)

Mr. Grenville squeezed me by the hand again, kissed the ladies, and withdrew. He kissed likewise the maid in the kitchen, and seemed upon the whole a most loving, kissing, kind-hearted gentleman.
- Letter to the Rev. John Newton (29 March 1784)

The poplars are felled, farewell to the shade
And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade.
- "The Poplar-Field" (wr. 1784)

An honest man, close-buttoned to the chin,
Broadcloth without, and a warm heart within.
- "Epistle to Joseph Hill", l. 62 (1785)

But truths on which depends our main concern,
That 'tis our shame and mistery not to learn,
Shine by the side of every path we tread
With such a luster, he that runs may read.
- "Tirocinium", l. 77 (1785)
  Cf. Habakkuk 2:2

Public schools 'tis public folly feeds.
- "Tirocinium", l. 250 (1785)

The parson knows enough who knows a duke.
- "Tirocinium", l. 403 (1785)

Behold your bishop! well he plays his part,
Christian in name, and infidel in heart,
Ghostly in office, earthly in his plan,
A slave at court, elsewhere a lady’s man.
Dumb as a senator, and as a priest
A piece of mere church furniture at best.
- "Tirocinium", l. 421 (1785)

Tenants of life’s middle state,
Securely placed between the small and great.
- "Tirocinium", l. 807 (1785)

A worm is in the bud of youth,
And at the root of age.
- "Stanzas subjoined to a Bill of Mortality" (1787)

Toll for the brave —
The brave! that are no more;
All sunk beneath the wave,
Fast by their native shore!
- "On the Loss of the Royal George", st. 1 (wr. 1782; pub. 1791)

And still to love, though prest with ill,
In wintry age to feel no chill,
With me is to be lovely still,
My Mary!
- "To Mary", st. 11 (1791)

Visits are insatiable devourers of time, and fit only for those who, if they did not that, would do nothing.
- Letter to the Rev. John Johnson (29 September 1793)

My dog! what remedy remains,
Since, teach you all I can,
I see you, after all my pains,
So much resemble man!
- "On a Spaniel called Beau, killing a young bird (wr. 1793)

Beware of desp'rate steps! The darkest day
(Live till tomorrow) will have passed away.
- "The Needless Alarm", Moral, l. 132 (1794)

Misses! the tale that I relate
This lesson seems to carry —
Choose not alone a proper mate,
But proper time to marry.
- "Pairing Time Anticipated", Moral (c. 1794)

I shall not ask Jean Jacques Rousseau,
If birds confabulate or no.
- "Passing Time Anticipated" (1795)

Thy morning bounties ere I left my home,
The biscuit, or confectionary plum.
- "On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture out of Norfolk", l. 60 (1798)

Me howling winds drive devious, tempest-tossed,
Sails ripped, seams op'ning wide, and compass lost.
- "On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture out of Norfolk", l. 102 (1798)

Oh that those lips had language! Life has pass'd
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
- "On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture out of Norfolk" (1798)

The son of parents pass'd into the skies.
- "On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture out of Norfolk" (1798)

Misery still delights to trace
Its semblance in another's case.
- "The Castaway" (1799)

No voice divine the storm allay'd,
No light propitious shone;
When, snatch'd from all effectual aid,
We perish'd, each alone;
But I beneath a rougher sea,
And whelmed in deeper gulphs than he.
- "The Castaway", l. 61 (1799)

Olney Hymns (1779)

Oh! for a closer walk with God,
A calm and heav'nly frame;
A light to shine upon the road
That leads me to the Lamb!
- No. 1, "Walking With God", st. 1

What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void
The world can never fill.
- No. 1, "Walking With God", st. 3

And Satan trembles when he sees
The weakest saint upon his knees.
- No. 29, "Exhortation to Prayer"

God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.
- The first line is often paraphrased: God works in mysterious ways.
- No. 35, "Light Shining out of Darkness", st. 1

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill,
He treasures up his bright designs,
And works his sovereign will.
- No. 35, "Light Shining out of Darkness", st. 2

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread,
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.
- No. 35, "Light Shining out of Darkness", st. 3

Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.
- No. 35, "Light Shining out of Darkness", st. 4

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.
- No. 35, "Light Shining out of Darkness", st. 5

Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain;
God is his own interpreter,
And he will make it plain.
- No. 35, "Light Shining out of Darkness", st. 6

There is a fountain fill'd with blood
Drawn from Emmanuel's veins;
And sinners, plung'd beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.
- No. 79, "Praise for the Fountain Opened"

Hark, my soul! it is the Lord;
'Tis thy (Saviour, hear his word;
Jesus speaks, and speaks to thee:
"Say, poor sinner, lov'st thou me?"
- No. 118, "Lovest Thou Me?", st. 1

Table Talk (1782)

Glory, built
On selfish principles, is shame and guilt.
- Line 1

Is base in kind, and born to be a slave.
- Line 28

As if the world and they were hand and glove.
- Line 173

Admirals extolled for standing still,
Or doing nothing with a deal of skill.
- Line 192

Thus happiness depends, as Nature shows,
Less on exterior things than most suppose.
- Line 246

Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
That slaves, howe'er contented, never know.
- Line 260

Stamps God's own name upon a lie just made,
To turn a penny in the way of trade.
- Line 420 (Perjury)

I play with syllables and sport in song.
- Line 505

Manner is all in all, whate'er is writ,
The substitute for genius, sense, and wit.
- Line 542

Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appear'd,
And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard:
To carry nature lengths unknown before,
To give a Milton birth, ask'd ages more.
- Line 556

Elegant as simplicity, and warm
As ecstasy.
- Line 588

Low ambition and the thirst of praise.
- Line 591

But he (his musical finesse was such,
So nice his ear, so delicate his touch)
Made poetry a mere mechanic art,
And ev'ry warbler has his tune by heart.
- Line 652 (Pope)

Nature, exerting an unwearied power,
Forms, opens, and gives scent to every flower;
Spreads the fresh verdure of the field, and leads
The dancing Naiads through the dewy meads.
- Line 690

The Progress of Error (1782)

Lights of the world, and stars of human race.
- Line 97

Oh, laugh or mourn with me the rueful jest,
A cassock’d huntsman and a fiddling priest!
- Line 110

Himself a wanderer from the narrow way,
His silly sheep, what wonder if they stray?
- Line 118

Remorse, the fatal egg by Pleasure laid.
- Line 239

As creeping ivy clings to wood or stone,
And hides the ruin that it feeds upon;
So sophistry cleaves close to and protects
Sin’s rotten trunk, concealing its defects.
- Line 285

How much a dunce that has been sent to roam
Excels a dunce that has been kept at home.
- Line 415

How shall I speak thee, or thy power address,
Thou god of our idolatry, the Press?
By thee religion, liberty, and laws,
Exert their influence and advance their cause:
By thee worse plagues than Pharaoh’s land befell,
Diffused, make Earth the vestibule of Hell;
Thou fountain, at which drink the good and wise,
Thou ever-bubbling spring of endless lies;
Like Eden’s dread probationary tree,
Knowledge of good and evil is from thee!
- Line 464

No wild enthusiast ever yet could rest,
Till half mankind were like himself possess'd.
- Line 470

Laugh at all you trembled at before.
- Line 592

Conversation (1782)

'Tis hard if all is false that I advance,
A fool must now and then be right by chance.
- Line 96

He would not, with a peremptory tone,
Assert the nose upon his face his own.
- Line 121

A moral, sensible, and well-bred man
Will not affront me, and no other can.
- Line 193

A tale should be judicious, clear, succinct;
The language plain, and incidents well link’d;
Tell not as new what ev’ry body knows;
And, new or old, still hasten to a close.
- Line 235

The pipe, with solemn interposing puff,
Makes half a sentence at a time enough;
The dozing sages drop the drowsy strain,
Then pause, and puff—and speak, and pause again.
- Line 245

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.
- Line 251

I cannot talk with civet in the room,
A fine puss-gentleman that's all perfume.
- Line 283

The solemn fop; significant and budge;
A fool with judges, amongst fools a judge.
- Line 299

His wit invites you by his looks to come,
But when you knock it never is at home.
- Line 303

I pity bashful men, who feel the pain
Of fancied scorn and undeserved disdain,
And bear the marks upon a blushing face,
Of needless shame, and self-impos'd disgrace.
- Line 347

Our wasted oil unprofitably burns,
Like hidden lamps in old sepulchral urns.
- Line 357

That good diffused may more abundant grow.
- Line 443

But that disease when soberly defined
Is the false fire of an o'erheated mind.
- Line 667; of fanaticism

But Conversation, choose what theme we may,
And chiefly when religion leads the way,
Should flow, like waters after summer show'rs,
Not as if raised by mere mechanic powers.
- Line 703

Retirement (1782)

The disencumbered Atlas of the state.
- Line 394 (1782)

He likes the country, but in truth must own,
Most likes it, when he studies it in town.
- Line 573 (1782)

A business with an income at its heels
Furnishes always oil for its own wheels.
- Line 615

Absence of occupation is not rest,
A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.
- Line 623

An idler is a watch that wants both hands;
As useless when it goes as when it stands.
- Line 681

Built God a church, and laugh'd his word to scorn.
- Line 688

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.
- Line 691

Till authors hear at length, one general cry,
Tickle and entertain us, or we die!The loud demand from year to year the same,
Beggars invention and makes fancy lame.
- Line 707

I praise the Frenchman, his remark was shrewd —
How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude!
But grant me still a friend in my retreat
Whom I may whisper — solitude is sweet.
- Line 739 (Voltaire)

Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk (1782)

Selkirk was the inspiration for Defoe's Robinson Crusoe

I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute;
From the center all round to the sea
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
- Line 1

O solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms
Than reign in this horrible place.
- Line 5

I am out of humanity's reach.
I must finish my journey alone,
Never hear the sweet music of speech;
I start at the sound of my own.
- Line 9

Society friendship and love
Divinely bestow'd upon man,
O had I the wings of a dove
How soon I would taste you again!
- Line 17

Religion! what treasure untold
Resides in that heavenly word!
- Line 25

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.
- Line 37

There is mercy in every place,
And mercy, encouraging thought!
Gives even affliction a grace
And reconciles man to his lot.
- Line 53

But the sound of the church-going bell
These valleys and rocks never heard;
Ne'er sigh'd at the sound of a knell,
Or smiled when a Sabbath appear'd.
- Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

How fleet is a glance of the mind!
Compared with the speed of its flight
The tempest itself lags behind,
And the swift-winged arrows of light.
- Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

The Diverting History of John Gilpin (1785)

John Gilpin was a citizen
Of credit and renown,
A train-band captain eke was he,
Of famous London town.
- St. 1

My sister, and my sister’s child,
Myself, and children three,
Will fill the chaise; so you must ride
On horseback after we.
- St. 4

O'erjoyed was he to find
That, though on pleasure she was bent,
She had a frugal mind.
- St. 8

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.
- St. 28

A hat not much the worse for wear.
- St. 46

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!
- St. 63

The Negro's Complaint (1788)

Forced from home and all its pleasures
Afric's coast I left forlorn,
To increase a stranger's treasures
O'er the raging billows borne.
Men from England bought and sold me,
Paid my price in paltry gold;
But, though slave they have enrolled me,
Minds are never to be sold.
- Lines 1-8

Fleecy locks and black complexion
Cannot forfeit nature's claim;
Skins may differ, but affection
Dwells in white and black the same.
- Lines 13-16

Deem our nation brutes no longer,
Till some reason ye shall find
Worthier of regard and stronger
Than the colour of our kind.
- Lines 49-52

Prove that you have human feelings,
Ere you proudly question ours!
- Lines 55-56

The Yardley Oak (1791)

Survivor sole, and hardly such, of all
that once lived here
- Lines 1-2

It seems idolatry with some excuse,
When our forefather Druids in their oaks
Imagined sanctity.
- Lines 9-11

Thou wast a bauble once; a cup and ball,
Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay
Seeking her food, with ease might have purloined
The auburn nut that held thee, swallowing down
Thy yet close-folded latitude of boughs
And all thine embryo vastness at a gulp.
But fate thy growth decreed.
- Lines 18-23

So Fancy dreams. Disprove it, if ye can,
Ye reasoners broad awake, whose busy search
Of argument, employed too oft amiss,
Sifts half the pleasures of short life away!
- Lines 29-32

Translations

I will venture to assert, that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense of his original.
- The Iliad of Homer: translated into English blank verse (1791) preface

As when around the clear bright moon, the stars
Shine in full splendor, and the winds are hush'd,
The groves, the mountain-tops, the headland-heights
Stand all apparent, not a vapor streaks
The boundless blue, but ether open'd wide
All glitters, and the shepherd's heart is cheer'd.
- The Iliad of Homer: translated into English blank verse (1791) bk. 8, l. 643

My soul
Shall bear that also; for, by practice taught,
I have learned patience, having much endured.
- The Odyssey of Homer: translated into English blank verse (1791) bk. 5, l. 264

He that holds fast the golden mean,
And lives contentedly between
The little and the great,
Feels not the wants that pinch the poor,
Nor plagues that haunt the rich man's door.
- Translation of Horace, Odes, bk. 2, no. 10

There is a bird who by his coat,
And by the hoarseness of his note,
Might be supposed a crow.
- "The Jackdaw" (translation from Vincent Bourne)

He sees that this great roundabout
The world, with all its motley rout,
Church, army, physic, law,
Its customs and its businesses,
Is no concern at all of his,
And says—what says he?—Caw.
- "The Jackdaw" (translation from Vincent Bourne)

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Quotes reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

A kick that scarce would move a horse
May kill a sound divine.
- The Yearly Distress

And the tear that is wiped with a little address,
May be follow'd perhaps by a smile.
- The Rose

I shall not ask Jean Jacques Rousseau
If birds confabulate or no.
- Pairing Time Anticipated

The path of sorrow, and that path alone,
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.
- To an Afflicted Protestant Lady

For 'tis a truth well known to most,
That whatsoever thing is lost,
We seek it, ere it come to light,
In every cranny but the right.
- The Retired Cat

But strive still to be a man before your mother.
- Connoisseur. Motto of No. iii

Quotes

Olney Hymns (1779)

Table Talk (1782)

The Progress of Error (1782)

Conversation (1782)

Retirement (1782)

Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk (1782)

The Diverting History of John Gilpin (1785)

The Negro's Complaint (1788)

The Yardley Oak (1791)

Translations

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Misattributed

Quotes about Cowper

External links

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