Loves with such earnestness, were fully gone!
For passion, sanctified, will centre all

Its warm hopes in a chosen one! Not dead,
Nor e'er abolish'd, as some idly talk;
Impostors, or base carles, who never knew
Man's dearest charities. And passions ever
Shake with most potent stirrings the sublime
And pregnant minds, which wield with mightiest
skill

The multitudinous elements of life.

But if that one forsake the soul which twin'd
So many warm endearments round its choice,
The world will seem a very wilderness!

ΤΟ

A YOUNG MAN,

ATTACHED TO THE SPORTS OF THE FIELD.

Detested sport,

That owes its pleasure to another's pain;
That feeds upon the sobs and dying shrieks
Of harmless nature, dumb, but yet endued
With eloquence that agonies inspire
Of silent tears, and heart-distending sighs;
Vain tears, alas! and sighs that never find
A corresponding tone in jovial souls.

COWPER'S TASK.

1798...

Он

stay thy hand-thou hast a power to kill But none to bring forth life! Impressive truth, Sounding to wisdom like a warning voice, And teaching that our feebleness to work The least good thing, should guard us tremblingly From aught that looks like evil; lest we wrench From her retired seat the better soul,

The sense which God hath lent us, which that

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100n,

Sees not polluted with a slumbering eye;
But vexes him that sets his gift at nought
With aweful darkness, and a fearful wandering!

Thou seest athwart this grove of trembling trees, Trembling and glistening with the morning light, Thou seest yon lavrock rise !-to the great sun He seems to hasten :-save the burning orb That lives above, nought but this little bird Varies the mighty solitude of Heaven! Art thou assur'd the Almighty doth not speak To that same little bird?—that morning's glories Are not discourses of his watchful love

Gladd'ning this innocent creature? Could'st thou seek

To stop his song of gratulation, quench

His sense of joy, and all those living powers
That dance so cheerly in him? They serve Heaven
Who love his works! and they most feel a God
Who hold each bodily sense a holy thing,
Communicating measurably to all
The influxes of that eternal Spirit

Whose countenance to man are day-light hues,
And sky, and sea, and forests, lakes, and hills,
And lightnings, thunders, and prodigious storms,
And suns, and all the company of worlds!