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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=537923" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Task: Book VI. -- The Winter Walk at Noon</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;<br>And as the mind is pitch’d the ear is pleased<br>With melting airs, or martial, brisk, or grave:<br>Some chord in unison with what we hear<br>Is touch’d within us, and the heart replies.<br>How soft the music of those village bells,<br>Falling at intervals upon the ear<br>In cadence sweet, now dying all away,<br>Now pealing loud again, and louder still,<br>Clear and sonorous, as the gale comes on!<br>With easy force it opens all the cells<br>Where Memory slept. Wherever I have heard<br>A kindred melody, the scene recurs,<br>And with it all its pleasures and its pains.<br>Such comprehensive views the spirit takes,<br>That in a few short moments I retrace<br>(As in a map the voyager his course)<br>The windings of my way through many years.<br>Short as in retrospect the journey seems,<br>It seem’d not always short; the rugged path,<br>And prospect oft so dreary and forlorn,<br>Moved many a sigh at its disheartening length.<br>Yet, feeling present evils, while the past<br>Faintly impress the mind, or not at all,<br>How readily we wish time spent revoked,<br>That we might try the ground again, where once<br>(Through inexperience, as we now perceive)<br>We miss’d that happiness we might have found!<br>Some friend is gone, perhaps his son’s best friend,<br>A father, whose authority, in show<br>When most severe, and mustering all its force,<br>Was but the graver countenance of love:<br>Whose favour, like the clouds of spring, might lower,<br>And utter now and then an awful voice,<br>But had a blessing in its darkest frown,<br>Threatening at once and nourishing the plant.<br>We loved, but not enough, the gentle hand<br>That rear’d us. At a thoughtless age, allured<br>By every gilded folly, we renounced<br>His sheltering side, and wilfully forewent<br>That converse, which we now in vain regret.<br>How gladly would the man recall to life<br>The boy’s neglected sire! a mother too,<br>That softer friend, perhaps more gladly still,<br>Might he demand them at the gates of death.<br>Sorrow has, since they went, subdued and tamed<br>The playful humour; he could now endure<br>(Himself grown sober in the vale of tears)<br>And feel a parent’s presence no restraint.<br>But not to understand a treasure’s worth<br>Till time has stolen away the slighted good,<br>Is cause of half the poverty we feel,<br>And makes the world the wilderness it is.<br>The few that pray at all pray oft amiss,<br>And, seeking grace to improve the prize they hold,<br>Would urge a wiser suit than asking more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The night was winter in its roughest mood;<br>The morning sharp and clear. But now at noon<br>Upon the southern side of the slant hills,<br>And where the woods fence off the northern blast,<br>The season smiles, resigning all its rage,<br>And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue<br>Without a cloud, and white without a speck<br>The dazzling splendour of the scene below.<br>Again the harmony comes o’er the vale;<br>And through the trees I view the embattled tower<br>Whence all the music. I again perceive<br>The soothing influence of the wafted strains,<br>And settle in soft musings as I tread<br>The walk, still verdant under oaks and elms,<br>Whose outspread branches overarch the glade.<br>The roof, though moveable through all its length<br>As the wind sways it, has yet well sufficed,<br>And, intercepting in their silent fall<br>The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me.<br>No noise is here, or none that hinders thought.<br>The redbreast warbles still, but is content<br>With slender notes, and more than half suppress’d;<br>Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light<br>From spray to spray, where’er he rests he shakes<br>From many a twig the pendant drops of ice,<br>That tinkle in the wither’d leaves below.<br>Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft,<br>Charms more than silence. Meditation here<br>May think down hours to moments. Here the heart<br>May give a useful lesson to the head,<br>And Learning wiser grow without his books.<br>Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,<br>Have ofttimes no connexion. Knowledge dwells<br>In heads replete with thoughts of other men;<br>Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. <br>Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass,<br>The mere materials with which Wisdom builds,<br>Till smoothed and squared, and fitted to its place,<br>Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich.<br>Knowledge is proud that he has learn’d so much;<br>Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.<br>Books are not seldom talismans and spells,<br>By which the magic art of shrewder wits<br>Holds an unthinking multitude enthrall’d.<br>Some to the fascination of a name<br>Surrender judgment hoodwink’d. Some the style<br>Infatuates, and through labyrinth and wilds<br>Of error leads them, by a tune entranced.<br>While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear<br>The insupportable fatigue of thought,<br>And swallowing therefore without pause or choice<br>The total grist unsifted, husks and all.<br>But trees, and rivulets whose rapid course<br>Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer,<br>And sheepwalks populous with bleating lambs,<br>And lanes in which the primrose ere her time<br>Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root,<br>Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth,<br>Not shy, as in the world, and to be won<br>By slow solicitation, seize at once<br>The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What prodigies can power divine perform<br>More grand than it produces year by year,<br>And all in sight of inattentive man?<br>Familiar with the effect, we slight the cause,<br>And, in the constancy of nature’s course,<br>The regular return of genial months,<br>And renovation of a faded world,<br>See nought to wonder at. Should God again,<br>As once in Gibeon, interrupt the race<br>Of the undeviating and punctual sun,<br>How would the world admire! but speaks it less<br>An agency divine to make him know<br>His moment when to sink and when to rise,<br>Age after age, than to arrest his course?<br>All we behold is miracle; but, seen<br>So duly, all is miracle in vain.<br>Where now the vital energy that moved,<br>While summer was, the pure and subtle lymph<br>Through the imperceptible meandering veins<br>Of leaf and flower? It sleeps; and the icy touch<br>Of unprolific winter has impress’d <br>A cold stagnation on the intestine tide.<br>But let the months go round, a few short months,<br>And all shall be restored. These naked shoots,<br>Barren as lances, among which the wind<br>Makes wintry music, sighing as it goes,<br>Shall put their graceful foliage on again,<br>And, more aspiring, and with ampler spread,<br>Shall boast new charms, and more than they have lost.<br>Then each , in its peculiar honours clad,<br>Shall publish, even to the distant eye,<br>Its family and tribe. Laburnum, rich<br>In streaming gold; syringa, ivory pure;<br>The scentless and the scented rose; this red,<br>And of an humbler growth, the other tall,<br>And throwing up into the darkest gloom<br>Of neighbouring cypress, or more sable yew,<br>Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf<br>That the wind severs from the broken wave;<br>The lilac, various in array, now white,<br>Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set<br>With purple spikes pyramidal, as if,<br>Studious of ornament, yet unresolved<br>Which hue she most approved, she chose them all:<br>Copious of flowers the woodbine, pale and wan,<br>But well compensating her sickly looks<br>With never-cloying odours, early and late;<br>Hypericum all bloom, so thick a swarm<br>Of flowers, like flies clothing her slender rods,<br>That scarce a leaf appears; mezereon too,<br>Though leafless, well attired, and thick beset<br>With blushing wreaths, investing every spray;<br>Althæa with the purple eye; the broom,<br>Yellow and bright as bullion unalloy’d,<br>Her blossoms; and luxuriant above all<br>The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets,<br>The deep dark green of whose unvarnish’d leaf<br>Makes more conspicuous, and illumines more<br>The bright profusion of her scatter’d stars.—<br>These have been, and these shall be in their day;<br>And all this uniform, uncolour’d scene<br>Shall be dismantled of its fleecy load,<br>And flush into variety again.<br>From dearth to plenty, and from death to life,<br>Is Nature’s progress, when she lectures man<br>In heavenly truth; evincing, as she makes<br>The grand transition, that there lives and works<br>A soul in all things, and that soul is God.<br>The beauties of the wilderness are his, <br>That makes so gay the solitary place,<br>Where no eye sees them. And the fairer forms,<br>That cultivation glories in, are his.<br>He sets the bright procession on its way,<br>And marshals all the order of the year;<br>He marks the bounds which Winter may not pass,<br>And blunts his pointed fury; in its case,<br>Russet and rude, folds up the tender germ,<br>Uninjured, with inimitable art;<br>And, ere one flowery season fades and dies,<br>Designs the blooming wonders of the next.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Some say that, in the origin of things,<br>When all creation started into birth,<br>The infant elements received a law,<br>From which they swerve not since; that under force<br>Of that controlling ordinance they move,<br>And need not His immediate hand, who first<br>Prescribed their course, to regulate it now.<br>Thus dream they, and contrive to save a God<br>The incumbrance of his own concerns, and spare<br>The great Artificer of all that moves<br>The stress of a continual act, the pain<br>Of unremitted vigilance and care,<br>As too laborious and severe a task.<br>So man, the moth, is not afraid, it seems,<br>To span omnipotence, and measure might,<br>That knows no measure, by the scanty rule<br>And standard of his own, that is to-day,<br>And is not ere to-morrow’s sun go down.<br>But how should matter occupy a charge,<br>Dull as it is, and satisfy a law<br>So vast in its demands, unless impell’d<br>To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force,<br>And under pressure of some conscious cause?<br>The Lord of all, himself through all diffused,<br>Sustains and is the life of all that lives.<br>Nature is but a name for an effect,<br>Whose cause is God. He feeds the secret fire,<br>By which the mighty process is maintain’d,<br>Who sleeps not, is not weary; in whose sight<br>Slow circling ages are as transient days;<br>Whose work is without labour; whose designs<br>No flaw deforms, no difficulty thwarts;<br>And whose beneficence no charge exhausts.<br>Him blind antiquity profaned, not served,<br>With self-taught rites, and under various names,<br>Female and male, Pomona, Pales, Pan,<br>And Flora, and Vertumnus; peopling earth<br>With tutelary goddesses and gods<br>That were not; and commending as they would<br>To each some province, garden, field, or grove.<br>But all are under one. One spirit, His<br>Who wore the platted thorns with bleeding brows,<br>Rules universal nature. Not a flower<br>But shows some touch, in freckle, streak, or stain,<br>Of his unrivall’d pencil. He inspires<br>Their balmy odours, and imparts their hues,<br>And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes,<br>In grains as countless as the seaside sands,<br>The forms with which he sprinkles all the earth.<br>Happy who walks with him! whom what he finds<br>Of flavour or of scent in fruit or flower,<br>Or what he views of beautiful or grand<br>In nature, from the broad majestic oak<br>To the green blade that twinkles in the sun,<br>Prompts with remembrance of a present God.<br>His presence, who made all so fair, perceived<br>Makes all still fairer. As with him no scene<br>Is dreary, so with him all seasons please.<br>Though winter had been none, had man been true,<br>And earth be punish’d for its tenant’s sake,<br>Yet not in vengeance; as this smiling sky,<br>So soon succeeding such an angry night,<br>And these dissolving snows, and this clear stream<br>Recovering fast its liquid music, prove.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Who then, that has a mind well strung and tuned<br>To contemplation, and within his reach<br>A scene so friendly to his favourite task,<br>Would waste attention at the chequer’d board,<br>His host of wooden warriors to and fro<br>Marching and countermarching, with an eye<br>As fix’d as marble, with a forehead ridged<br>And furrow’d into storms, and with a hand<br>Trembling, as if eternity were hung <br>In balance on his conduct of a pin?<br>Nor envies he aught more their idle sport,<br>Who pant with application misapplied<br>To trivial joys, and pushing ivory balls<br>Across a velvet level, feel a joy<br>Akin to rapture, when the bauble finds<br>Its destined goal of difficult access.<br>Nor deems he wiser him, who gives his noon<br>To miss, the mercer’s plague, from shop to shop<br>Wandering, and littering with unfolded silks<br>The polish’d counter, and approving none,<br>Or promising with smiles to call again.<br>Nor him who, by his vanity seduced,<br>And soothed into a dream that he discerns<br>The difference of a Guido from a daub,<br>Frequents the crowded auction: station’d there<br>As duly as the Langford of the show,<br>With glass at eye, and catalogue in hand,<br>And tongue accomplish’d in the fulsome cant<br>And pedantry that coxcombs learn with ease:<br>Oft as the price-deciding hammer falls,<br>He notes it in his book, then raps his box,<br>Swears ‘tis a bargain, rails at his hard fate<br>That he has let it pass—but never bids.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here unmolested, through whatever sign<br>The sun proceeds, I wander. Neither mist,<br>Nor freezing sky nor sultry, checking me,<br>Nor stranger intermeddling with my joy.<br>E’en in the spring and playtime of the year,<br>That calls the unwonted villager abroad<br>With all her little ones, a sportive train,<br>To gather kingcups in the yellow mead,<br>And prink their hair with daisies, or to pick<br>A cheap but wholesome salad from the brook,<br>These shades are all my own. The timorous hare,<br>Grown so familiar with her frequent guest,<br>Scarce shuns me; and the stockdove unalarm’d<br>Sits cooing in the pine-tree, nor suspends<br>His long love-ditty for my near approach.<br>Drawn from his refuge in some lonely elm,<br>That age or injury has hollow’d deep,<br>Where, on his bed of wool and matted leaves,<br>He has outslept the winter, ventures forth<br>To frisk awhile, and bask in the warm sun,<br>The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play:<br>He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird,<br>Ascends the neighboring beech; there whisks his brush,<br>And perks his ears, and stamps, and cries aloud,<br>With all the prettiness of feign’d alarm,<br>And anger insignificantly fierce.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The heart is hard in nature, and unfit<br>For human fellowship, as being void<br>Of sympathy, and therefore dead alike<br>To love and friendship both, that is not pleased<br>With sight of animals enjoying life,<br>Nor feels their happiness augment his own.<br>The bounding fawn, that darts across the glade<br>When none pursues, through mere delight of heart,<br>And spirits buoyant with excess of glee;<br>The horse as wanton and almost as fleet,<br>That skims the spacious meadow at full speed,<br>Then stops and snorts, and, throwing high his heels,<br>Starts to the voluntary race again;<br>The very kine that gambol at high noon,<br>The total herd receiving first from one<br>That leads the dance a summons to be gay,<br>Though wild their strange vagaries and uncouth<br>Their efforts, yet resolved with one consent<br>To give such act and utterance as they may<br>To ecstacy too big to be suppress’d;—<br>These, and a thousand images of bliss,<br>With which kind Nature graces every scene,<br>Where cruel man defeats not her design,<br>Impart to the benevolent, who wish<br>All that are capable of pleasure pleased,<br>A far superior happiness to theirs,<br>The comfort of a reasonable joy.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Man scarce had risen, obedient to His call<br>Who form’d him from the dust, his future grave,<br>When he was crown’d as never king was since.<br>God set the diadem upon his head,<br>And angel choirs attended. Wondering stood<br>The new-made monarch, while before him pass’d,<br>All happy, and all perfect in their kind,<br>The creatures, summon’d from their various haunts<br>To see their sovereign, and confess his sway.<br>Vast was his empire, absolute his power,<br>Or bounded only by a law, whose force<br>‘Twas his sublimest privilege to feel<br>And own, the law of universal love.<br>He ruled with meekness, they obey’d with joy;<br>No cruel purpose lurk’d within his heart,<br>And no distrust of his intent in theirs.<br>So Eden was a scene of harmless sport,<br>Where kindness on his part, who ruled the whole,<br>Begat a tranquil confidence in all,<br>And fear as yet was not, nor cause for fear,<br>But sin marr’d all; and the revolt of man,<br>That source of evils not exhausted yet,<br>Was punish’d with revolt of his from him.<br>Garden of God, how terrible the change<br>Thy groves and lawns then witness’d! Every heart,<br>Each animal, of every name, conceived<br>A jealousy and an instinctive fear,<br>And, conscious of some danger, either fled<br>Precipitate the loathed abode of man,<br>Or growl’d defiance in such angry sort,<br>As taught him too to tremble in his turn.<br>Thus harmony and family accord<br>Were driven from Paradise; and in that hour<br>The seeds of cruelty, that since have swell’d<br>To such gigantic and enormous growth,<br>Were sown in human nature’s fruitful soil.<br>Hence date the persecution and the pain<br>That man inflicts on all inferior kinds,<br>Regardless of their plaints. To make him sport,<br>To gratify the frenzy of his wrath,<br>Or his base gluttony, are causes good<br>And just in his account, why bird and beast<br>Should suffer torture, and the streams be dyed<br>With blood of their inhabitants impaled.<br>Earth groans beneath the burden of a war<br>Waged with defenceless innocence, while he,<br>Not satisfied to prey on all around,<br>Adds tenfold bitterness to death by pangs<br>Needless, and first torments ere he devours.<br>Now happiest they that occupy the scenes<br>The most remote from his abhorr’d resort,<br>Whom once, as delegate of God on earth,<br>They fear’d, and as his perfect image loved.<br>The wilderness is theirs, with all its caves,<br>Its hollow glens, its thickets, and its plains,<br>Unvisited by man. There they are free,<br>And howl and roar as likes them, uncontroll’d;<br>Nor ask his leave to slumber or to play.<br>Woe to the tyrant, if he dare intrude<br>Within the confines of their wild domain!<br>The lion tells him—I am monarch here!<br>And, if he spare him, spares him on the terms<br>Of royal mercy, and through generous scorn<br>To rend a victim trembling at his foot.<br>In measure, as by force of instinct drawn,<br>Or by necessity constrain’d, they live<br>Dependent upon man; those in his fields,<br>These at his crib, and some beneath his roof;<br>They prove too often at how dear a rate <br>He sells protection. Witness at his foot<br>The spaniel dying for some venial fault,<br>Under dissection of the knotted scourge;<br>Witness the patient ox, with stripes and yells<br>Driven to the slaughter, goaded, as he runs,<br>To madness; while the savage at his heels<br>Laughs at the frantic sufferer’s fury, spent<br>Upon the guiltless passenger o’erthrown.<br>He too is witness, noblest of the train<br>That wait on man, the flight-performing horse:<br>With unsuspecting readiness he takes<br>His murderer on his back, and, push’d all day,<br>With bleeding sides and flanks that heave for life,<br>To the far-distant goal, arrives and dies.<br>So little mercy shows who needs so much!<br>Does law, so jealous in the cause of man,<br>Denounce no doom on the delinquent? None.<br>He lives, and o’er his brimming beaker boasts<br>(As if barbarity were high desert)<br>The inglorious feat, and clamorous in praise<br>Of the poor brute, seems wisely to suppose<br>The honours of his matchless horse his own.<br>But many a crime deem’d innocent on earth<br>Is register’d in heaven; and these no doubt<br>Have each their record, with a curse annex’d.<br>Man may dismiss compassion from his heart,<br>But God will never. When he charged the Jew<br>To assist his foe’s down-fallen beast to rise;<br>And when the bush-exploring boy that seized<br>The young, to let the parent bird go free;<br>Proved he not plainly that his meaner works<br>Are yet his care, and have an interest all,<br>All, in the universal Father’s love?<br>On Noah, and in him on all mankind,<br>The charter was conferr’d, by which we hold<br>The flesh of animals in fee, and claim<br>O’er all we feed on power of life and death.<br>But read the instrument, and mark it well:<br>The oppression of a tyrannous control<br>Can find no warrant there. Feed then, and yield<br>Thanks for thy food. Carnivorous, through sin,<br>Feed on the slain, but spare the living brute!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Governor of all, himself to all<br>So bountiful, in whose attentive ear<br>The unfledged raven and the lion’s whelp<br>Plead not in vain for pity on the pangs<br>Of hunger unassuaged, has interposed,<br>Not seldom, his avenging arm, to smite<br>The injurious trampler upon Nature’s law,<br>That claims forbearance even for a brute.<br>He hates the hardness of a Balaam’s heart;<br>And, prophet as he was, he might not strike<br>The blameless animal, without rebuke,<br>On which he rode. Her opportune offence<br>Saved him, or the unrelenting seer had died.<br>He sees that human equity is slack<br>To interfere, though in so just a cause;<br>And makes the task his own. Inspiring dumb<br>And helpless victims with a sense so keen<br>Of injury, with such knowledge of their strength,<br>And such sagacity to take revenge,<br>That oft the beast has seem’d to judge the man.<br>An ancient, not a legendary tale,<br>By one of sound intelligence rehearsed<br>(If such who plead for Providence may seem<br>In modern eyes), shall make the doctrine clear.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Where England, stretch’d towards the setting sun,<br>Narrow and long, o’erlooks the western wave,<br>Dwelt young Misagathus; a scorner he<br>Of God and goodness, atheist in ostent,<br>Vicious in act, in temper savage-fierce.<br>He journey’d; and his chance was as he went<br>To join a traveller, of far different note,<br>Evander, famed for piety, for years<br>Deserving honour, but for wisdom more.<br>Fame had not left the venerable man<br>A stranger to the manners of the youth,<br>Whose face too was familiar to his view.<br>Their way was on the margin of the land,<br>O’er the green summit of the rocks, whose base<br>Beats back the roaring surge, scarce heard so high.<br>The charity that warm’d his heart was moved<br>At sight of the man monster. With a smile,<br>Gentle and affable, and full of grace,<br>As fearful of offending whom he wish’d <br>Much to persuade, he plied his ear with truths<br>Not harshly thunder’d forth, or rudely press’d,<br>But, like his purpose, gracious, kind, and sweet.<br>“And doest thou dream,” the impenetrable man<br>Exclaimed, “that me the lullabies of age,<br>And fantasies of dotards such as thou,<br>Can cheat, or move a moment’s fear in me?<br>Mark now the proof I give thee, that the brave<br>Need no such aids as superstition lends,<br>To steel their hearts against the dread of death.”<br>He spoke, and to the precipice at hand<br>Push’d with a madman’s fury. Fancy shrinks,<br>And the blood thrills and curdles at the thought<br>Of such a gulf as he design’d his grave.<br>But though the felon on his back could dare<br>The dreadful leap, more rational, his steed<br>Declined the death, and wheeling swiftly round,<br>Or e’er his hoof had press’d the crumbling verge,<br>Baffled his rider, saved against his will.<br>The frenzy of the brain may be redress’d<br>By medicine well applied, but without grace<br>The heart’s insanity admits no cure.<br>Enraged the more by what might have reform’d <br>His horrible intent, again he sought<br>Destruction, with a zeal to be destroy’d,<br>With sounding whip, and rowels dyed in blood.<br>But still in vain. The Providence, that meant<br>A longer date to the far nobler beast,<br>Spared yet again the ignobler for his sake.<br>And now his prowess proved, and his sincere<br>Incurable obduracy evinced,<br>His rage grew cool: and pleased perhaps to have earn’d <br>So cheaply the renown of that attempt,<br>With looks of some complacence he resumed<br>His road, deriding much the blank amaze<br>Of good Evander, still where he was left<br>Fix’d motionless, and petrified with dread.<br>So on they fared. Discourse on other themes<br>Ensuing seem’d to obliterate the past;<br>And tamer far for so much fury shown <br>(As in the course of rash and fiery men),<br>The rude companion smiled, as if transform’d.<br>But ‘twas a transient calm. A storm was near,<br>An unsuspected storm. His hour was come.<br>The impious challenger of power divine<br>Was now to learn that Heaven, though slow to wrath,<br>Is never with impunity defied.<br>His horse, as he had caught his master’s mood,<br>Snorting, and starting into sudden rage,<br>Unbidden, and not now to be controll’d,<br>Rush’d to the cliff, and, having reach’d it, stood.<br>At once the shock unseated him: he flew<br>Sheer o’er the craggy barrier; and, immersed <br>Deep in the flood, found, when he sought it not,<br>The death he had deserved, and died alone.<br>So God wrought double justice; made the fool <br>The victim of his own tremendous choice,<br>And taught a brute the way to safe revenge.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I would not enter on my list of friends<br>(Though graced with polish’d manners and fine sense,<br>Yet wanting sensibility) the man<br>Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.<br>An inadvertent step may crush the snail<br>That crawls at evening in the public path:<br>But he that has humanity, forewarn’d,<br>Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.<br>The creeping vermin, loathsome to the sight,<br>And charged perhaps with venom, that intrudes,<br>A visitor unwelcome, into scenes<br>Sacred to neatness and repose, the alcove,<br>The chamber, or refectory, may die:<br>A necessary act incurs no blame.<br>Not so when, held within their proper bounds,<br>And guiltless of offence, they range the air,<br>Or take their pastime in the spacious field:<br>There they are privileged; and he that hunts<br>Or harms them there is guilty of a wrong,<br>Disturbs the economy of Nature’s realm,<br>Who, when she form’d, design’d them an abode.<br>The sum is this. If man’s convenience, health,<br>Or safety interfere, his rights and claims<br>Are paramount, and must extinguish theirs.<br>Else they are all—the meanest things that are,<br>As free to live, and to enjoy that life,<br>As God was free to form them at the first,<br>Who in his sovereign wisdom made them all.<br>Ye therefore, who love mercy, teach your sons<br>To love it too. The spring-time of our years<br>Is soon dishonour’d and defiled in most<br>By budding ills, that ask a prudent hand<br>To check them. But, alas! none sooner shoots,<br>If unrestrain’d, into luxuriant growth,<br>Than cruelty, most devilish of them all.<br>Mercy to him that shows it is the rule<br>And righteous limitation of its act,<br>By which Heaven moves in pardoning guilty man;<br>And he that shows none, being ripe in years,<br>And conscious of the outrage he commits,<br>Shall seek it, and not find it, in his turn.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Distinguish’d much by reason, and still more<br>By our capacity of grace divine,<br>From creatures that exist but for our sake,<br>Which, having served us, perish, we are held<br>Accountable; and God, some future day,<br>Will reckon with us roundly for the abuse<br>Of what he deems no mean or trivial trust.<br>Superior as we are, they yet depend<br>Not more on human help than we on theirs.<br>Their strength, or speed, or vigilance, were given<br>In aid of our defects. In some are found<br>Such teachable and apprehensive parts,<br>That man’s attainments in his own concerns,<br>Match’d with the expertness of the brutes in theirs,<br>Are ofttimes vanquish’d and thrown far behind.<br>Some show that nice sagacity of smell,<br>And read with such discernment, in the port<br>And figure of the man, his secret aim,<br>That oft we owe our safety to a skill<br>We could not teach, and must despair to learn.<br>But learn we might, if not too proud to stoop<br>To quadruped instructors, many a good<br>And useful quality, and virtue, too,<br>Rarely exemplified among ourselves—<br>Attachment never to be wean’d or changed<br>By any change of fortune; proof alike<br>Against unkindness, absence, and neglect;<br>Fidelity, that neither bribe nor threat<br>Can move or warp; and gratitude for small<br>And trivial favours, lasting as the life<br>And glistening even in the dying eye.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Man praises man. Desert in arts or arms<br>Wins public honour; and ten thousand sit<br>Patiently present at a sacred song,<br>Commemoration -mad; content to hear<br>(O wonderful effect of music’s power!)<br>Messiah’s eulogy for Handel’s sake.<br>But less, methinks, than sacrilege might serve<br>(For was it less, what heathen would have dared<br>To strip Jove’s statue of his oaken wreath,<br>And hang it up in honour of a man?)—<br>Much less might serve, when all that we design<br>Is but to gratify an itching ear,<br>And give the day to a musician’s praise.<br>Remember Handel? Who, that was not born<br>Deaf as the dead to harmony, forgets,<br>Or can, the more than Homer of his age?<br>Yes—we remember him; and while we praise <br>A talent so divine, remember too<br>That His most holy book, from whom it came,<br>Was never meant, was never used before,<br>To buckram out the memory of a man.<br>But hush!—the muse perhaps is too severe;<br>And, with a gravity beyond the size<br>And measure of the offence, rebukes a deed<br>Less impious than absurd, and owing more<br>To want of judgment than to wrong design.<br>So in the chapel of old Ely House,<br>When wandering Charles, who meant to be the third,<br>Had fled from William, and the news was fresh,<br>The simple clerk, but loyal, did announce,<br>And eke did rear right merrily, two staves, <br>Sung to the praise and glory of King George!<br>—Man praises man; and Garrick’s memory next,<br>When time hath somewhat mellow’d it, and made<br>The idol of our worship while he lived<br>The god of our idolatry once more,<br>Shall have its altar; and the world shall go<br>In pilgrimage to bow before his shrine.<br>The theatre, too small, shall suffocate<br>Its squeezed contents, and more than it admits<br>Shall sigh at their exclusion, and return<br>Ungratified: for there some noble lord<br>Shall stuff his shoulders with king Richard’s bunch,<br>Or wrap himself in Hamlet’s inky cloak,<br>And strut, and storm, and straddle, stamp, and stare,<br>To show the world how Garrick did not act—<br>For Garrick was a worshipper himself;<br>He drew the liturgy, and framed the rites<br>And solemn ceremonial of the day,<br>And call’d the world to worship on the banks<br>Of Avon, famed in song. Ah, pleasant proof<br>That piety has still in human hearts<br>Some place, a spark or two not yet extinct.<br>The mulberry-tree was hung with blooming wreaths;<br>The mulberry-tree stood centre of the dance;<br>The mulberry-tree was hymn’d with dulcet airs;<br>And from his touchwood trunk the mulberry-tree<br>Supplied such relics as devotion holds<br>Still sacred, and preserves with pious care.<br>So ‘twas a hallow’d time: decorum reign’d,<br>And mirth without offence. No few return’d,<br>Doubtless much edified, and all refresh’d.<br>—Man praises man. The rabble, all alive,<br>From tippling benches, cellars, stalls, and styes,<br>Swarm in the streets. The statesman of the day,<br>A pompous and slow-moving pageant, comes.<br>Some shout him, and some hang upon his car,<br>To gaze in his eyes, and bless him. Maidens wave<br>Their kerchiefs, and old women weep for joy;<br>While others, not so satisfied, unhorse<br>The gilded equipage, and turning loose<br>His steeds, usurp a place they well deserve.<br>Why? what has charm’d them? Hath he saved the state?<br>No. Doth he purpose its salvation? No.<br>Enchanting novelty, that moon at full,<br>That finds out every crevice of the head<br>That is not sound and perfect, hath in theirs<br>Wrought this disturbance. But the wane is near,<br>And his own cattle must suffice him soon.<br>Thus idly do we waste the breath of praise,<br>And dedicate a tribute, in its use<br>And just direction sacred, to a thing<br>Doom’d to the dust, or lodged already there.<br>Encomium in old time was poets’ work!<br>But poets, having lavishly long since<br>Exhausted all materials of the art,<br>The task now falls into the public hand;<br>And I, contented with an humble theme,<br>Have pour’d my stream of panegyric down<br>The vale of Nature, where it creeps and winds<br>Among her lovely works with a secure<br>And unambitious course, reflecting clear,<br>If not the virtues, yet the worth, of brutes.<br>And I am recompensed, and deem the toils<br>Of poetry not lost, if verse of mine<br>May stand between an animal and woe,<br>And teach one tyrant pity for his drudge.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The groans of Nature in this nether world,<br>Which Heaven has heard for ages, have an end.<br>Foretold by prophets, and by poets sung,<br>Whose fire was kindled at the prophets’ lamp,<br>The time of rest, the promised Sabbath, comes.<br>Six thousand years of sorrow have well nigh<br>Fulfill’d their tardy and disastrous course<br>Over a sinful world; and what remains<br>Of this tempestuous state of human things<br>Is merely as the working of a sea<br>Before a calm, that rocks itself to rest:<br>For He, whose car the winds are, and the clouds<br>The dust that waits upon his sultry march,<br>When sin hath moved him, and his wrath is hot,<br>Shall visit earth in mercy; shall descend<br>Propitious in his chariot paved with love;<br>And what his storms have blasted and defaced<br>For man’s revolt, shall with a smile repair.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Sweet is the harp of prophecy; too sweet<br>Not to be wrong’d by a mere mortal touch:<br>Nor can the wonders it records be sung<br>To meaner music, and not suffer loss.<br>But when a poet, or when one like me,<br>Happy to rove among poetic flowers,<br>Though poor in skill to rear them, lights at last<br>On some fair theme, some theme divinely fair,<br>Such is the impulse and the spur he feels,<br>To give it praise proportion’d to its worth,<br>That not to attempt it, arduous as he deems<br>The labour, were a task more arduous still.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O scenes surpassing fable, and yet true,<br>Scenes of accomplish’d bliss! which who can see,<br>Though but in distant prospect, and not feel<br>His soul refresh’d with foretaste of the joy?<br>Rivers of gladness water all the earth,<br>And clothe all climes with beauty; the reproach<br>Of barrenness is past. The fruitful field<br>Laughs with abundance; and the land, once lean,<br>Or fertile only in its own disgrace,<br>Exults to see its thistly curse repeal’d.<br>The various seasons woven into one,<br>And that one season an eternal spring,<br>The garden fears no blight, and needs no fence,<br>For there is none to covet, all are full.<br>The lion, and the libbard, and the bear<br>Graze with the fearless flocks; all bask at noon<br>Together, or all gambol in the shade<br>Of the same grove, and drink one common stream.<br>Antipathies are none. No foe to man<br>Lurks in the serpent now: the mother sees,<br>And smiles to see, her infant’s playful hand<br>Stretch’d forth to dally with the crested worm,<br>To stroke his azure neck, or to receive<br>The lambent homage of his arrowy tongue.<br>All creatures worship man, and all mankind<br>One Lord, one Father. Error has no place;<br>That creeping pestilence is driven away;<br>The breath of heaven has chased it. In the heart<br>No passion touches a discordant string,<br>But all is harmony and love. Disease<br>Is not: the pure and uncontaminate blood<br>Holds it due course, nor fears the frost of age.<br>One song employs all nations; and all cry,<br>“Worthy the Lamb, for he was slain for us!”<br>The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks<br>Shout to each other, and the mountain tops<br>From distant mountains catch the flying joy;<br>Till, nation after nation taught the strain,<br>Earth rolls the rapturous Hosannah round.<br>Behold the measure of the promise fill’d;<br>See Salem built, the labour of a God;<br>Bright as a sun, the sacred city shines;<br>All kingdoms and all princes of the earth<br>Flock to that light; the glory of all lands<br>Flows into her; unbounded is her joy,<br>And endless her increase. Thy rams are there,<br>Nebaioth, and the flocks of Kedar there;<br>The looms of Ormus, and the mines of Ind,<br>And Saba’s spicy groves, pay tribute there.<br>Praise in all her gates: upon her walls,<br>And in her streets, and in her spacious courts,<br>Is heard salvation. Eastern Java there<br>Kneels with the native of the farthest west;<br>And Æthiopia spreads abroad the hand,<br>And worships. Her report has travell’d forth<br>Into all lands. From every clime they come<br>To see thy beauty and to share thy joy,<br>O Sion! an assembly such as earth<br>Saw never, such as Heaven stoops down to see.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thus heavenward all things tend. For all were once<br>Perfect, and all must be at length restored.<br>So God has greatly purposed; who would else<br>In his dishonour’d works himself endure<br>Dishonour, and be wrong’d without redress.<br>Haste, then, and wheel away a shatter’d world,<br>Ye slow-revolving seasons! we would see<br>(A sight to which our eyes are strangers yet)<br>A world that does not dread and hate his law<br>And suffer for its crime; would learn how fair<br>The creature is that God pronounces good,<br>How pleasant in itself what pleases him.<br>Here every drop of honey hides a sting;<br>Worms wind themselves into our sweetest flowers;<br>And e’en the joy that haply some poor heart<br>Derives from heaven, pure as the fountain is,<br>Is sullied in the stream, taking a taint<br>From touch of human lips, at best impure.<br>O for a world in principle as chaste<br>As this is gross and selfish! over which<br>Custom and prejudice shall bear no sway,<br>That govern all things here, shouldering aside<br>The meek and modest Truth, and forcing her<br>To seek a refuge from the tongue of Strife<br>In nooks obscure, far from the ways of men:<br>Where Violence shall never lift the sword,<br>Nor Cunning justify the proud man’s wrong,<br>Leaving the poor no remedy but tears:<br>Where he, that fills an office, shall esteem<br>The occasion it presents of doing good<br>More than the perquisite: where Law shall speak<br>Seldom, and never but as Wisdom prompts<br>And Equity; not jealous more to guard<br>A worthless form, than to decide aright:—<br>Where Fashion shall not sanctify abuse,<br>Nor smooth Good-breeding (supplemental grace)<br>With lean performance ape the work of Love!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Come then, and, added to thy many crowns,<br>Receive yet one, the crown of all the earth,<br>Thou who alone art worthy! It was thine<br>By ancient covenant, ere Nature’s birth;<br>And thou hast made it thine by purchase since,<br>And overpaid its value with thy blood.<br>Thy saints proclaim thee king; and in their hearts <br>Thy title is engraven with a pen<br>Dipp’d in the fountain of eternal love.<br>Thy saints proclaim thee king; and thy delay<br>Gives courage to their foes, who, could they see<br>The dawn of thy last advent, long desired,<br>Would creep into the bowels of the hills,<br>And flee for safety to the falling rocks.<br>The very spirit of the world is tired<br>Of its own taunting question, ask’d so long,<br>“Where is the promise of your Lord’s approach?”<br>The infidel has shot his bolts away,<br>Till, his exhausted quiver yielding none,<br>He gleans the blunted shafts that have recoil’d,<br>And aims them at the shield of Truth again.<br>The veil is rent, rent too by priestly hands,<br>That hides divinity from mortal eyes;<br>And all the mysteries to faith proposed,<br>Insulted and traduced, are cast aside,<br>As useless, to the moles and to the bats.<br>They now are deem’d the faithful, and are praised,<br>Who, constant only in rejecting thee,<br>Deny thy Godhead with a martyr’s zeal,<br>And quit their office for their error’s sake.<br>Blind, and in love with darkness! yet e’en these<br>Worthy, compared with sycophants, who kneel<br>Thy name adoring, and then preach thee man!<br>So fares thy church. But how thy church may fare<br>The world takes little thought. Who will may preach,<br>And what they will. All pastors are alike<br>To wandering sheep, resolved to follow none.<br>Two gods divide them all—Pleasure and Gain:<br>For these they live, they sacrifice to these,<br>And in their service wage perpetual war<br>With Conscience and with thee. Lust in their hearts<br>And mischief in their hands, they roam the earth<br>To prey upon each other: stubborn, fierce,<br>High-minded, foaming out their own disgrace.<br>Thy prophets speak of such; and, noting down<br>The features of the last degenerate times,<br>Exhibit every lineament of these.<br>Come then, and, added to thy many crowns,<br>Receive yet one, as radiant as the rest,<br>Due to thy last and most effectual work,<br>Thy word fulfill’d, the conquest of a world!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He is the happy man whose life e’en now<br>Shows somewhat of that happier life to come;<br>Who, doom’d to an obscure but tranquil state,<br>Is pleased with it, and, were he free to choose,<br>Would make his fate his choice; whom peace, the fruit<br>Of virtue, and whom virtue, fruit of faith,<br>Prepare for happiness; bespeak him one<br>Content indeed to sojourn while he must<br>Below the skies, but having there his home.<br>The world o’erlooks him in her busy search<br>Of objects, more illustrious in her view;<br>And, occupied as earnestly as she,<br>Though more sublimely, he o’erlooks the world.<br>She scorns his pleasures, for she knows them not;<br>He seeks not hers, for he has proved them vain.<br>He cannot skim the ground like summer birds<br>Pursuing gilded flies; and such he deems<br>Her honours, her emoluments, her joys.<br>Therefore in Contemplation is his bliss,<br>Whose power is such, that whom she lifts from earth<br>She makes familiar with a heaven unseen,<br>And shows him glories yet to be reveal’d.<br>Not slothful he, though seeming unemploy’d,<br>And censured oft as useless. Stillest streams<br>Oft water fairest meadows, and the bird<br>That flutters least is longest on the wing.<br>Ask him, indeed, what trophies he has raised,<br>Or what achievements of immortal fame<br>He purposes, and he shall answer—None.<br>His warfare is within. There, unfatigued,<br>His fervent spirit labours. There he fights,<br>And there obtains fresh triumphs o’er himself,<br>And never-withering wreaths, compared with which<br>The laurels that a Cæsar reaps are weeds.<br>Perhaps the self-approving haughty world,<br>That as she sweeps him with her whistling silks<br>Scarce deigns to notice him, or, if she see,<br>Deems him a cipher in the works of God,<br>Receives advantage from his noiseless hours,<br>Of which she little dreams. Perhaps she owes<br>Her sunshine and her rain, her blooming spring<br>And plenteous harvest, to the prayer he makes,<br>When, Isaac-like, the solitary saint<br>Walks forth to meditate at even-tide,<br>And think on her who thinks not for herself.<br>Forgive him, then, thou bustler in concerns<br>Of little worth, an idler in the best,<br>If, author of no mischief and some good,<br>He seek his proper happiness by means<br>That may advance, but cannot hinder, thine.<br>Nor, though he tread the secret path of life,<br>Engage no notice, and enjoy much ease,<br>Account him an encumbrance on the state,<br>Receiving benefits, and rendering none.<br>His sphere, though humble, if that humble sphere<br>Shine with his fair example, and though small<br>His influence, if that influence all be spent <br>In soothing sorrow and in quenching strife,<br>In aiding helpless indigence, in works<br>From which at least a grateful few derive<br>Some taste of comfort in a world of woe;<br>Then let the supercilious great confess<br>He serves his country, recompenses well<br>The state, beneath the shadow of whose vine<br>He sits secure, and in the scale of life<br>Holds no ignoble, though a slighted, place.<br>The man, whose virtues are more felt than seen,<br>Must drop indeed the hope of public praise;<br>But he may boast, what few that win it can,<br>That, if his country stand not by his skill,<br>At least his follies have not wrought her fall.<br>Polite Refinement offers him in vain<br>Her golden tube, through which a sensual world<br>Draws gross impurity, and likes it well,<br>The neat conveyance hiding all the offence.<br>Not that he peevishly rejects a mode<br>Because that world adopts it. If it bear<br>The stamp and clear impression of good sense,<br>And be not costly more than of true worth,<br>He puts it on, and, for decorum sake,<br>Can wear it e’en as gracefully as she.<br>She judges of refinement by the eye,<br>He by the test of conscience, and a heart<br>Not soon deceived; aware that what is base<br>No polish can make sterling; and that vice,<br>Though well perfumed and elegantly dress’d,<br>Like an unburied carcass trick’d with flowers<br>Is but a garnish’d nuisance, fitter far<br>For cleanly riddance than for fair attire.<br>So life glides smoothly and by stealth away,<br>More golden than that age of fabled gold<br>Renown’d in ancient song; not vex’d with care<br>Or stain’d with guilt, beneficent, approved<br>Of God and man, and peaceful in its end.<br>So glide my life away! and so, at last,<br>My share of duties decently fulfill’d,<br>May some disease, not tardy to perform<br>Its destined office, yet with gentle stroke,<br>Dismiss me weary to a safe retreat,<br>Beneath the turf that I have often trod.<br>It shall not grieve me then that once, when call’d<br>To dress a Sofa with the flowers of verse,<br>I play’d awhile, obedient to the fair,<br>With that light task; but soon, to please her more,<br>Whom flowers alone I knew would little please,<br>Let fall the unfinish’d wreath, and roved for fruit;<br>Roved far, and gather’d much: some harsh, ‘tis true,<br>Pick’d from the thorns and briars of reproof,<br>But wholesome, well-digested; grateful some<br>To palates that can taste immortal truth;<br>Insipid else, and sure to be despised.<br>But all is in His hand, whose praise I seek.<br>In vain the poet sings, and the world hears,<br>If he regard not, though divine the theme.<br>‘Tis not in artful measures, in the chime<br>And idle tinkling of a minstrel’s lyre,<br>To charm His ear, whose eye is on the heart;<br>Whose frown can disappoint the proudest strain,<br>Whose approbation — prosper even mine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=William+Cowper">William Cowper</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=537923" data-title="The Task: Book VI. -- The Winter Walk at Noon de William Cowper" data-description="There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
And as the mind is pitch’d the ear is pleased
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 t..."></div>
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