Or if it were, in wingèd guise,

A visitant from Paradise ;

For Heaven forgive that thought! the while
Which made me both to weep and smile
I sometimes deemed that it might be
My brother's soul come down to me;
But then at last away it flew,

And then 'twas mortal- well I knew,
For he would never thus have flown,
And left me twice so doubly lone,
Lone as the corse within its shroud,
Lone as a solitary cloud,

A single cloud on a sunny day,
While all the rest of heaven is clear,
A frown upon the atmosphere,

That hath no business to appear

When skies are blue and earth is gay.

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I saw them

XIII

and they were the same,

They were not changed like me in frame;

I saw their thousand years of snow

On high
And the blue Rhone in fullest flow;
I heard the torrents leap and gush
O'er channeled rock and broken bush;
I saw the white-walled distant town,
And whiter sails go skimming down;

their wide long lake below,

And then there was a little isle,
Which in my very face did smile,
The only one in view,

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It might be months, or years, or days,-
I kept no count, I took no note,

I had no hope my eyes to raise

And clear them of their dreary mote:
At last men came to set me free;

I asked not why, and recked not where ;
It was at length the same to me,
Fettered or fetterless to be;

I learned to love despair.

And thus when they appeared at last,
And all my bonds aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
A hermitage and all my own!
And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home.
With spiders I had friendship made,
And watched them in their sullen trade,
Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
We were all inmates of one place,
And I, the monarch of each race,
Had power to kill; yet, strange to tell!
In quiet we had learned to dwell;
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are : - even I
Regained my freedom with a sigh.

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CHAPTER XX

WILLIAM COWPER, 1731-1800

"His talent is but the picture of his character, and his poems but the echo of his life. Poor charming soul, perishing like a frail flower transplanted from a warm land to the snows! the world's temperature was too rough for it; and the moral law which should have supported it, tore it with its thorns." —TAINE.

WILLIAM COWPER, whom his best biographer, Southey, speaks of as "the most popular poet of his generation, and the best of English letter writers," was born at Berkhamstead, England, in 1731. His mother, whom to the last he affectionately remembered, died when he was only six years old. His constitution was from his infancy remarkably delicate, and his extremely sensitive nature was subject to fits of melancholy. He received his education at Westminster School. Being designed for the law, he was placed under an eminent attorney, on leaving whom he entered the Inner Temple. At the age of thirty-one he was nominated clerk in the House of Lords, but an unconquerable timidity of character prevented his entering upon the duties of the appointment. He was next appointed clerk of the journals; but an occasion occurring which rendered it necessary for the clerk to appear before the bar of the House, had such an effect on his nerves that he resigned his place. A morbid melancholy seized him, and it was found necessary to place him under the