* * * * *
When prevented by rains and floods from visiting the lady who suggested
“The Task,” Cowper beguiled the time by writing to her the following
lines, and afterwards printing them with his own hand. He sent a copy of
these verses, so printed, to his sister, accompanied by the subjoined
note written upon his typographical labours.
To watch the storms, and hear the sky
Give all the almanacks the lie;
To shake with cold, and see the plains
In autumn drown’d with wintry rains:
’Tis thus I spend my moments here,
And wish myself a Dutch mynheer;
I then should have no need of wit,
For lumpish Hollander unfit;
Nor should I then repine at mud,
Or meadows delug’d with a flood;
But in a bog live well content,
And find it just my element;
Should be a clod, and not a man,
Nor wish in vain for sister Anne,
With charitable aid to drag
My mind out of its proper quag;
Should have the genius of a boor,
And no ambition to have more.
My dear Sister,--You see my beginning; I do not know but in time I may
proceed to the printing of halfpenny ballads. Excuse the coarseness of
my paper; I wasted so much before I could accomplish any thing legible,
that I could not afford finer. I intend to employ an ingenious mechanic
of this town to make me a longer case, for you may observe that my lines
turn up their tails like Dutch mastiffs; so difficult do I find it to
make the two halves exactly coincide with each other.
We wait with impatience for the departure of this unseasonable flood. We
think of you, and talk of you; but we can do no more till the waters
subside. I do not think our correspondence should drop because we are
within a mile of each other; it is but an imaginary approximation, the
flood having in reality as effectually parted us, as if the British
Channel rolled between us.
Yours, my dear sister, with Mrs. U.’s best love,