For could I view nor them nor thee,
What sight worth seeing could I see?
The sun would rise in vain for me,
Partakers of thy sad decline,
Thy hands their little force resign;
Yet gently prest, press gently mine,
My Mary!
Such feebleness of limbs thou provest,
That now at every step thou movest
Upheld by two, yet still thou lovest,
And still to love, though prest with ill,
In wintry age to feel no chill,
With me is to be lovely still,
But, ah! by constant heed I know,
How oft the sadness that I show,
Transforms thy smiles to looks of wo,
My Mary!
And should my future lot be cast
With much resemblance of the past,
Thy worn-out heart will break at last,
MORTUARY STANZAS FOR 1793.
De sacris autem hæc sit una sententia, ut conserventur.
But let us all concur in this one sentiment, that things sacred be inviolate.
He lives, who lives to God alone,
And all are dead beside;
For other source than God is none
Whence life can be supplied.
To live to God is to requite
His love as best we may;
To make his precepts our delight,
His promises our stay.
But life, within a narrow ring
Of giddy joys comprised,
Is falsely named, and no such thing,
But rather death disguised.
Can life in them deserve the name,
Who only live to prove
For what poor toys they can disclaim
An endless life above?
Who, much diseased, yet nothing feel,
Much menaced, nothing dread;
Have wounds, which only God can heal,
Yet never ask his aid?
Who deem his house a useless place,
Faith, want of common sense;
And ardour in the Christian race,
A hypocrite's pretence ?
Who trample order; and the day,
Which God asserts his own,
Dishonour with unhallow'd play,
And worship chance alone?
If scorn of God's commands, impress'd
On word and deed, imply
The better part of man unbless'd
With life that cannot die :
Such want it, and that want, uncured
Till man resigns his breath, Speaks him a criminal, assured Of everlasting death.
Sad period to a pleasant course!
Yet so will God repay
Sabbaths profaned without remorse,
And mercy cast away.
SEEN FLOATING IN THE GERMAN OCEAN.
[This poem, suggested by a circumstance which had some time before been read to the poet, from the Norwich newspaper, without his seeming to notice it, was first written in Latin, on the 11th, and afterwards translated into English on the 19th March, 1799.]
WHAT portents, from what distant region, ride,
Unseen till now in ours, the astonish'd tide?
In ages past, old Proteus, with his droves
Of sea-calves, sought the mountains and the groves;
But now, descending whence of late they stood,
Themselves the mountains seem to rove the flood.
Dire times were they, full charged with human woes;
And these, scarce less calamitous than those.
What view we now? More wondrous still! Behold!
Like burnish'd brass they shine, or beaten gold;
And all around the pearl's pure splendour show,
And all around the ruby's fiery glow.
Come they from India, where the burning earth,
All bounteous, gives her richest treasures birth ;.
And where the costly gems, that beam around
The brows of mightiest potentates, are found?
No. Never such a countless dazzling store
Had left, unseen, the Ganges' peopled shore.
Rapacious hands, and ever-watchful eyes,
Should sooner far have mark'd and seized the prize.
Whence sprang they then? Ejected have they come
From Ves'vius', or from Etna's burning womb?
Thus shine they self-illumed, or but display
The borrow'd splendours of a cloudless day?
With borrow'd beams they shine. The gales, that breathe
Now landward, and the current's force beneath,
Have borne them nearer: and the nearer sight,
Advantaged more, contemplates them aright.
Their lofty summits crested high, they show,
With mingled sleet and long incumbent snow,
The rest is ice. Far hence, where, most severe,
Bleak winter well-nigh saddens all the year,
Their infant growth began. He bade arise
Their uncouth forms, portentous in our eyes.
Oft as, dissolved by transient suns, the snow
Left the tall cliff, to join the flood below,
He caught, and curdled with a freezing blast,
The current, ere it reach'd the boundless waste.
By slow degrees uprose the wondrous pile,
And long successive ages roll'd the while,
Till, ceaseless in its growth, it claim'd to stand
Tall as its rival mountains on the land.
Thus stood, and, unremovable by skill
Or force of man, had stood the structure still;
But that, though firmly fix'd, supplanted yet
By pressure of its own enormous weight,
It left the shelving beach-and, .with a sound
That shook the bellowing waves and rocks around,
Self-lanch'd, and swiftly, to the briny wave,
As if instinct with strong desire to lave,
Down went the ponderous mass. So bards of old,
How Delos swam the Ægean deep, have told.
But not of ice was Delos. Delos bore
Herb, fruit, and flower. She, crown'd with laurel, wore,
Even under wintry skies, a summer smile
And Delos was Apollo's favourite isle.
But, horrid wanderers of the deep, to you
He deems Cimmerian darkness only due.
Your hated birth he deign'd not to survey,
But, scornful, turn'd his glorious eyes away.
Hence! Seek your home, nor longer rashly dare
The darts of Phoebus, and a softer air;
Lest ye regret, too late, your native coast,
In no congenial gulf for ever lost!
[This, the last original poem composed by Cowper, was written under the most appalling mental depression; yet, being finished in one day, 20th March, 1799, and founded on an incident in Anson's Voyage, a book which he had not looked into for twenty years before, it evinces in a striking manner the powers of his mind.]
OBSCUREST night involved the sky,
The Atlantic billows roar'd,
When such a distant wretch as I,
Wash'd headlong from on board;
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
His floating home for ever left.
No braver chief could Albion boast
Than he with whom he went,
Nor ever ship left Albion's coast
With warmer wishes sent.
He loved them both, but both in vain,
Nor him beheld, nor her again.
Not long beneath the whelming brine,
Expert to swim, he lay ;
Nor soon he felt his strength decline,
Or courage die away;
But waged with death a lasting strife,
Supported by despair of life.
He shouted: nor his friends had fail'd
To check the vessel's course,
But so the furious blast prevail'd,
That, pitiless, per force
They left their outcast mate behind,
And scudded still before the wind.
Some succour yet they could afford;
And such as storms allow,
The cask, the coop, the floated cord,
Delay'd not to bestow.
But he, they knew, nor ship nor shore,
Whate'er they gave, should visit more.
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