XIII

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

their wide long lake below,

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And they seemed joyous each and all;
The eagle rode the rising blast,
Methought he never flew so fast
As then to me he seemed to fly;
And then new tears came in my eye,
And I felt trouble, and would fain
I had not left my recent chain;
And, when I did descend again,
The darkness of my dim abode
Fell on me as a heavy load;
It was as is a new-dug grave
Closing o'er one we sought to save,

And yet my glance, too much opprest,
Had almost need of such a rest.

XIV

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.

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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

private care of a physician. After a time he recovered his mental faculties.

He settled at Huntington, where he entered into a close friendship with a clergyman of the name of Unwin, in whose family he became an inmate. Mr. Unwin died in 1767, and Cowper and Mrs. Unwin settled at Olney. He had, as yet, written but little, but in 1782 he issued a volume of poems, which, however, attracted but little public attention. But a second volume, in 1785, established his

WILLIAM COWPER

reputation as a poet. This volume contained his celebrated poem, "The Task," a blank verse production, written at the suggestion of his friend and admirer, Lady Austin. The same lady was also the occasion of the popular ballad, "John Gilpin," the story of which she related to amuse Cowper during one of his fits of melancholy. About the same time he translated the "Iliad" of Homer into blank verse.

In 1794 the King granted Cowper a pension of three hundred pounds a year, but the royal bounty was too late to yield much profit or pleasure. Its recipient was in a state of utter dejection, -a kind of morbid insanity, from which he rarely emerged into the enjoyment of unclouded reason. He continued to write, in short lucid intervals, until his death in 1800.

Cowper's personal appearance is thus described by Hay