Quote

Some men make gain a fountain, whence proceeds A stream of liberal and heroic deeds The swell of pity, not to be confined Within the scanty limits of the mind.

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
Scanty
Within
Streams
Swell
Mind
Liberal
Proceeds
Make
Gain
Men
Pity
Whence
Deeds
Confined
Gains
Fountain
Trade
Stream
Limits
Heroic

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The innocent seldom find an uncomfortable pillow.
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Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair.
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Remorse begets reform.
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For when was public virtue to be found Where private was not?
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The path of sorrow, and that path alone, leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.
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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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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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A man renowned for repartee will seldom scruple to make free with friendship's finest feeling, will thrust a dagger at your breast, and say he wounded you in jest, by way of balm for healing.
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To trace in Nature's most minute design The signature and stamp of power divine. ... The Invisible in things scarce seen revealed, To whom an atom is an ample field.
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The man to solitude accustom'd long, Perceives in everything that lives a tongue Not animals alone, but shrubs and trees Have speech for him, and understood with ease, After long drought when rains abundant fall, He hears the herbs and flowers rejoicing all.
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Time, as he passes us, has a dove's wing, Unsoil'd, and swift, and of a silken sound.
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Hast thou not learnd what thou art often told, A truth still sacred, and believed of old, That no success attends on spears and swords Unblest, and that the battle is the Lords?
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Go, mark the matchless working of the power That shuts within the seed the future flower Bids these in elegance of form excel. In color these, and those delight the smell Sends nature forth, the daughter of the skies, To dance on earth, and charm all human eyes.
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Most satirists are indeed a public scourge Their mildest physic is a farrier's purge Their acrid temper turns, as soon as stirr'd, The milk of their good purpose all to curd. Their zeal begotten, as their works rehearse, By lean despair upon an empty purse.
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Absence of occupation is not rest.
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How soft the music of those village bells, Falling at interval upon the ear In cadence sweet now dying all away, Now pealing loud again, and louder still, Clear and sonorous, as the gale comes on! With easy force it opens all the cells Where Memory slept.
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Spare feast! a radish and an egg.
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How shall I speak thee, or thy power address Thou God of our idolatry, the Press. . . . . Like Eden's dead probationary tree, Knowledge of good and evil is from thee.
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Remorse, the fatal egg that pleasure laid.
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The kindest and the happiest pair Will find occasion to forbear And something, every day they live, To pity, and perhaps forgive.
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