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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.

William Cowper

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William Cowper
Age: 68 †
Born: 1731
Born: November 26
Died: 1800
Died: April 25
Hymnwriter
Poet
Poet Lawyer
Translator
Writer
Berkhamsted
Hertfordshire
Nature
Length
Lengths
Give
Unknown
Swan
Giving
Appear
Homer
Carry
Swans
Birth
Milton
Heard
Lamp
Asks
Lamps
Age
Ages
Elapsed

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No tree in all the grove but has its charms, Though each its hue peculiar.
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Good sense, good health, good conscience, and good fame,--all these belong to virtue, and all prove that virtue has a title to your love.
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They love the country, and none else, who seek For their own sake its silence and its shade. Delights which who would leave, that has a heart Susceptible of pity, or a mind Cultured and capable of sober thought.
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Scenes must be beautiful which daily view'd Please daily, and whose novelty survives Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years.
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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.
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The man that hails you Tom or Jack, and proves by thumps upon your back how he esteems your merit, is such a friend, that one had need be very much his friend indeed to pardon or to bear it.
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But slaves that once conceive the glowing thought Of freedom, in that hope itself possess All that the contest calls for spirit, strength, The scorn of danger, and united hearts, The surest presage of the good they seek.
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The still small voice is wanted.
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Domestic happiness, thou only bliss Of paradise that has surviv'd the fall!
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Gardening imparts an organic perspective on the passage of time.
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How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude! But grant me still a friend in my retreat, whom I may whisper, solitude is sweet.
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In a fleshly tomb, I am buried above ground.
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The Frenchman, easy, debonair, and brisk, Give him his lass, his fiddle, and his frisk, Is always happy, reign whoever may, And laughs the sense of mis'ry far away.
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I would not have a slave to till my ground, To carry me, to fan me while I sleep, And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd.
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Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.
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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 employ'd In letting fall the curtain of repose On bird and beast, the other charged for man With sweet oblivion of the cares of day.
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Lived in his saddle, loved the chase, the course, And always, ere he mounted, kiss'd his horse.
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He finds his fellow guilty of a skin Not color'd like his own, and having pow'r T' enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
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Pleasure admitted in undue degree, enslaves the will, nor leaves the judgment free.
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Religion! what treasure untold resides in that heavenly word!
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