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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.

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
Country
Daily
Must
Whose
Long
Scene
Years
View
Please
Survives
Views
Scrutiny
Knowledge
Novelty
Beautiful
Scenes

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She that asks Her dear five hundred friends, contemns them all, And hates their coming.
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Mountains interposed Make enemies of nations, who had else Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
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Necessity invented stools, Convenience next suggested elbow-chairs, And luxury the accomplish'd Sofa last.
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Misses! the tale that I relate This lesson seems to carry-- Choose not alone a proper mate, But proper time to marry.
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When I thinkof my own native land, In a moment I seem to be there But alas! recollection at hand Soon hurries me back to despair.
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Man disavows, and Deity disowns me: hell might afford my miseries a shelter therefore hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all bolted against me.
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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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Blest be the art that can immortalize,--the art that baffles time's tyrannic claim to quench it.
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Laugh at all you trembled at before.
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Oh, popular applause! what heart of man Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms? The wisest and the best feel urgent need Of all their caution in thy gentlest gales But swell'd into a gust--who then, alas! With all his canvas set, and inexpert, And therefore, heedless, can withstand thy power?
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I am out of humanity's reach.I must finish my journey alone,Never hear the sweet music of speechI start at the sound of my own.
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He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, And all are slaves besides.
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He that attends to his interior self, That has a heart, and keeps it has a mind That hungers, and supplies it and who seeks A social, not a dissipated life, Has business.
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Reasoning at every step he treads, Man yet mistakes his way, Whilst meaner things, whom instinct leads, Are rarely known to stray.
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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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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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Unmissed but by his dogs and by his groom.
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A fretful temper will divide the closest knot that may be tied, by ceaseless sharp corrosion a temper passionate and fierce may suddenly your joys disperse at one immense explosion.
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Twere better to be born a stone Of ruder shape, and feeling none, Than with a tenderness like mine And sensibilities so fine! Ah, hapless wretch! condemn'd to dwell Forever in my native shell, Ordained to move when others please, Not for my own content or ease But toss'd and buffeted about, Now in the water and now out.
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Glory, built on selfish principles, is shame and guilt.
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