The Life and Works of William Cowper: The works of William Cowper. His life and letters by William Hayley; v. 6-8, The life of William Cowper. Poems

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Saunders and Otley, 1835

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Page 252 - Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme: How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed; How He Who bore in Heaven the second name Had not on earth whereon to lay His head; How His first followers and servants sped; The precepts sage they wrote to many a land; How he, who lone in' Patmos banished, Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand, And heard great Bab'lon's doom pronounced by Heaven's command. Then kneeling down to Heaven's Eternal King, The saint, the father, and the husband prays; Hope 'springs...
Page 325 - At once on the eastern cliff of Paradise He lights; and to his proper shape returns A seraph wing'd : six wings he wore, to shade His lineaments divine ; the pair that clad Each shoulder, broad, came mantling o'er his breast With regal ornament ; the middle pair Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round Skirted his loins and thighs with downy gold, And colours dipt in heaven; the third his feet Shadow'd from either heel with feather'd mail, Sky-tinctured grain.
Page 299 - Like leaves on trees the race of man is found, Now green in youth, now withering on the ground; Another race the following spring supplies; They fall successive, and successive rise: So generations in their course decay; So flourish these, when those are pass'd away.
Page 208 - And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night: he took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people.
Page 9 - I first took a view Of my favourite field, and the bank where they grew And now in the grass behold they are laid, And the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade ! The blackbird has fled to another retreat, Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat, And the scene where his...
Page 168 - Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.
Page 326 - So saying, her rash hand in evil hour Forth reaching to the Fruit, she pluck'd, she eat: Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe, That all was lost.
Page 123 - Ouse, and its banks, every thing that I have described. I anticipate the pleasure of those days not very far distant, and feel a part of it at this moment. Talk not of an inn ! Mention it not for your life ! We have never had so many visitors but we could easily accommodate them all, though we have received Unwin, and his wife, and his sister, and his son, all at once.
Page 2 - It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the Yast lines of the last page in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains.
Page 9 - And the scene, where his melody charm'd me before, Resounds with his sweet-flowing ditty no more. My fugitive years are all hasting away, And I must ere long lie as lowly as they, With a turf on my breast, and a stone at my head, Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead.

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