Page:The poetical works of William Cowper (IA poeticalworksof00cowp).pdf/144

Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appeared,
And ages e'er the Mantuan swan was heard,
To carry nature lengths unknown before,
To give a Milton birth, asked ages more.
Thus genius rose and set at ordered times,
And shot a day-spring into distant climes,
Ennobling ev'ry region that he chose,
He sunk in Greece, in Italy he rose,
And tedious years of Gothic darkness passed,
Emerged all splendor in our isle at last.
Thus lovely Halcyons dive into the main,
Then show far off their shining plumes again.
A. Is genius only found in epic lays?
Prove this, and forfeit all pretence to praise.
Make their heroic powers your own at once,
Or candidly confess yourself a dunce.
B. These were the chief, each interval of night
Was graced with many an undulating light;
In less illustrious bards his beauty shone
A meteor or a star, in these, the sun.
The nightingale may claim the topmost bough,
While the poor grasshopper must chirp below.
Like him unnoticed, I, and such as I,
Spread little wings, and rather skip than fly,
Perched on the meagre produce of the land,
An ell or two of prospect we command,
But never peep beyond the thorny bound
Or oaken fence that hems the paddoc round.
In Eden e'er yet innocence of heart
Had faded, poetry was not an art;
Language above all teaching, or if taught,
Only by gratitude and glowing thought,
Elegant as simplicity, and warm
As exstasy, unmanacled by form,
Not prompted as in our degen'rate days,
By low ambition and the thirst of praise,
Was natural as is the flowing stream,
And yet magnificent, a God the theme.
That theme on earth exhausted, though above
'Tis found as everlasting as his love,
Man lavished all his thoughts on human things,
The feats of heroes and the wrath of kings,
But still while virtue kindled his delight,
The song was moral, and so far was right.
'Twas thus till luxury seduced the mind,
To joys less innocent, as less refined,
Then genius danced a bacchanal, he crowned
The brimming goblet, seized the thyrsus, bound
His brows with ivy, rushed into the field
Of wild imagination, and there reeled
The victim of his own lascivious fires,
And dizzy with delight, profaned the sacred wires.