"The grassy sward, close cropped by nibbling sheep,
And skirted thick with intermixture firm
Of thorny boughs."
The old wild chase opens its glades, discovers its heaths, startles us
with its abrupt cries of birds, or plunges us into the gloom of thick,
overshadowing oaks. It is a fit haunt of the poet. Such are the haunts
of Cowper in this neighborhood. Amid these he led a secluded, but an
active and most important life. How many of those who bustle along in
the front of public life can boast of a ten-thousandth part of the
benefit to their fellow-men which was conferred, and for ages will be
conferred, by the loiterer of these woods and fields? In no man was his
own doctrine ever made more manifest, that
"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 ordained to fill."
He says of himself,
"I was a stricken deer, that left the herd
Long since. With many an arrow deep infixed
My panting side was charged, when I withdrew
To seek a tranquil death in distant shades.
There was I joined by one who had himself
Been hurt by the archers. In his side he bore,
And in his hands and feet, the cruel scars.
With gentle force soliciting the darts,
He drew them forth, and healed, and bade me live.
Since then, with few associates, in remote
And silent woods I wander, far from those
My former partners of the peopled scene,
With few associates, and not wishing more."
Thus he began; but soothed by the sweet freshness of nature,
strengthened by her peace, enlightened to the pitch of true wisdom by
her daily converse, spite of all his griefs and fears, he ended by
describing himself, in one of the noblest passages of modern poetry, as
the happy man.
"He is the happy man whose life e'en now
Shows somewhat of that happier life to come;
Who, doomed to an obscure but tranquil state,
Is pleased with it; and, were he free to choose,
Would make his fate his choice; whom peace, the fruit
Of virtue, and whom virtue, fruit of faith,
Prepare for happiness; bespeak him one
Content, indeed, to sojourn while he must
Below the skies, but having there his home.
The world o'erlooks him in her busy search
Of objects, more illustrious in her view;
And, occupied as earnestly as she,
Though more sublimely, he o'erlooks the world.
She scorns his pleasures, for she knows them not;
He seeks not hers, for he has proved them vain.
He can not skim the ground like summer birds
Pursuing golden flies; and such he deems
Her honors, her emoluments, her joys.
Therefore in contemplation is his bliss,
Whose power is such, that whom she lifts from earth
She makes familiar with a heaven unseen,
And shows him glories yet to be revealed.
Not slothful he, though seeming unemployed,
And censured oft as useless. Silent streams
Oft water fairest meadows, and the bird
That flutters least is longest on the wing."
_The Task_, Book vi.
Quitting these scenes in quest of health, both the poet and his dear
friend Mary Unwin died at Dereham, in Suffolk, she in 1796, and he in
1800. "They were lovely in their lives, and in death they are not
divided."