The boorish driver leaning o'er his team
Vociferous and impatient of delay."
A specimen of more imaginative and distinctly poetical description is the well-known passage on Evening, in writing which Cowper would seem to have had Collins in his mind.*
Come, Evening, once again, season of peace;
Return, sweet Evening, and continue long !
Methinks I see thee in the streaky west,
With matron-step slow-moving, while the Night
Treads on thy sweeping train; one hand employed
In letting fall the curtain of repose
On bird and beast, the other charged for man
With sweet oblivion of the cares of day;
Not sumptuously adorned, nor needing aid,
Like homely-featured Night, of clustering gems!
A star or two just twinkling on thy brow
Suffices thee; save that the moon is thine
No less than hers, not worn indeed on high
With ostentatious pageantry, but set
With modest grandeur in thy purple zone,
Resplendent less, but of an ampler round."
[The Winter Evening, 243-258.]
Beyond this line Cowper does not go, and had no idea of going; he never thinks of lending a soul to material nature as Wordsworth and Shelley do. He is the poetic counterpart of Gainsborough, as the great descriptive poets of a later and more spiritual day are the counterparts of Turner.
COWPER, in English Men of Letters (1880).
COWPER'S GRAVE.+
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1809-1861).
It is a place where poets crowned may feel the heart's decaying-
It is a place where happy saints may weep amid their praying:
Yet let the grief and humbleness, as low as silence, languish!
Earth surely now may give her calm to whom she gave her anguish.
* Probably also Milton's Penseroso, 31 sqq.; and perhaps Paradise Lost, iv. 598, "Now came still evening on," etc.
+ Cowper lies buried in St. Edmund's Chapel, Dereham Church, Co. Norfolk.
O poets! from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless singing!
O Christians! at your cross of hope a hopeless bard was clinging!
O men! this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling,
Groaned inly while he taught you peace, and died while ye were
smiling!
And now, what time ye all may read through dimming tears his story,
How discord on the music fell, and darkness on the glory;
And how when, one by one, sweet sounds and wandering lights departed,
He wore no less a loving face because so broken-hearted:
He shall be strong to sanctify the poet's high vocation,
And bow the meekest Christian down in meeker adoration;
Nor ever shall he be, in praise, by wise or good forsaken,
Named softly as the household name of one whom God hath taken.
With quiet sadness and no gloom I learn to think upon him,
With meekness that is gratefulness to God whose heaven hath won him
Who suffered once the madness-cloud to His own love to blind him, But gently led the blind along where breath and bird could find him,
And wrought within his shattered brain such quick poetic senses
As hills have language for, and stars, harmonious influences!
The pulse of dew upon the grass kept his within its number,
And silent shadows from the trees refreshed him like a slumber.
Wild timid hares were drawn from woods to share his home-caresses,
Uplooking to his human eyes with sylvan tendernesses;
The very world, by God's constraint, from falsehood's ways removing,
Its women and its men became beside him true and loving.
But while in blindness he remained unconscious of the guiding,
And things provided came without the sweet sense of providing,
He testified this solemn truth though frenzy desolated—
Nor man nor nature satisfy, whom only God created!
Like a sick child that knoweth not his mother whilst she blesses
And drops upon his burning brow the coolness of her kisses;
That turns his fevered eyes around-"My mother! where's my
mother?"—
As if such tender words and looks could come from any other!-
The fever gone, with leaps of heart he sees her bending o'er him, Her face all pale from watchful love, the unweary love she bore him!
Thus woke the poet from the dream his life's long fever gave him, Beneath those deep pathetic Eyes, which closed in death to save him!
Thus? oh, not thus! no type of earth could image that awaking,
Wherein he scarcely heard the chant of seraphs round him breaking,
Or felt the new immortal throb of soul from body parted,
But felt those Eyes alone, and knew, "My Saviour!-not deserted!"
Deserted! who hath dreamt that when the cross in darkness rested Upon the victim's hidden face no love was manifested?
What frantic hands outstretched have e'er the atoning drops averted? What tears have washed them from the soul, that one should be deserted?
Deserted! God could separate from his own essence rather,
And Adam's sins have swept between the righteous Son and Father;
Yea, once, Immanuel's orphaned cry his universe hath shaken-
It went up single, echoless-" My God, I am forsaken!”
It went up from the Holy's lips amid his lost creation,
That of the lost no son should use those words of desolation;
That earth's worst frenzies, marring hope, should mar not hope's fruition;
And I on Cowper's grave should see his rapture in a vision!
LANDSCAPES FROM THE "LIGHT OF ASIA."
EDWIN ARNOLD (b. 1832).
["The Light of Asia" (1880), Mr. Arnold's longest poem, takes for its subject Prince Gautama, who lived B.C. 543 and became the Buddha of Eastern mythology. In the first year of publication, "The Light of Asia" ran through nineteen editions.]
1. Springtide in Hindostan.
On another day the king said, "Come,
Sweet son! and see the pleasaunce of the spring,
And how the fruitful earth is wooed to yield
Its riches to the reaper: how my realm-
Which shall be thine when the pile flames for me—
Feeds all its mouths and keeps the king's chest filled.
Fair is the season with new leaves, bright blooms,
Green grass, and cries of plough-time." So they rode
Into a land of wells and gardens, where,
All up and down the rich red loam, the steers
Strained their strong shoulders in the creaking yoke
Dragging the ploughs; the fat soil rose and rolled
In smooth dark waves back from the plough; who drove
Planted both feet upon the leaping share
To make the furrow deep; among the palms
The tinkle of the rippling water rang,
And where it ran the glad earth 'broidered it
With balsams and the spears of lemon-grass.
Elsewhere were sowers who went forth to sow;
And all the jungle laughed with nesting songs,
And all the thickets rustled with small life
Of lizard, bee, beetle, and creeping things,
Pleased at the spring-time. In the mango-sprays
The sun-birds flashed; alone at his green forge
Toiled the loud coppersmith; bee-eaters hawked
Chasing the purple butterflies; beneath,
Striped squirrels raced, the mynas perked and picked,
The niue brown sisters chattered in the thorn,
The pied fish-tiger hung above the pool,
The egrets stalked among the buffaloes,
The kites sailed circles in the golden air;
About the painted temple peacocks flew,
The blue doves cooed from every well, far off
The village drums beat for some marriage-feast:
All things spoke peace and plenty, and the prince
Saw and rejoiced. But, looking deep, he saw
The thorns which grow upon this rose of life;
How the swart peasant sweated for his wage,
Toiling for leave to live; and how he urged
The great-eyed oxen through the flaming hours,
Goading their velvet flanks: then marked he, too,
How lizard fed on ant, and snake on him,
And kite on both; and how the fish-hawk robbed
The fish-tiger of that which it had seized;
The shrike chasing the bulbul, which did chase
The jewelled butterflies; till everywhere
Each slew a slayer and in turn was slain,
Life living upon death.
2. A Woodland Picture.
As he passed into its ample shade,
Cloistered with columned drooping stems, and roofed
With vaults of glistening green, the conscious earth
Worshipped with waving grass and sudden flush
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