Quotes
Quotes - Cowper
That, though on pleasure she was bent, She had a frugal mind.
Pleasure admitted in undue degree Enslaves the will, nor leaves the judgment free.
Made poetry a mere mechanic art.
And spare the poet for his subject's sake.
Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appeared, And ages ere the Mantuan Swan was heard; To carry nature lengths unknown before, To give a Milton birth, asked ages more.
There is a pleasure in poetic pains, Which only poets know.
They best can judge a poet's worth, Who oft themselves have known The pangs of a poetic birth By labours of their own.
Greece, sound, thy Homer's, Rome thy Virgil's name, But England's Milton equals both in fame.
How much a dunce that has been sent to roam, excels a dunce that has been kept at home.
He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch, Cold and yet cheerful; messenger of grief Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some.
The beggarly last doit.
Praise enough To fill the ambition of a private man, That Chatham's language was his mother-tongue.
And Satan trembles when he sees The weakest saint upon his knees.
There goes the parson, oh illustrious spark! And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk.
I venerate the man whose heart is warm, Whose hands are pure, whose doctrine and whose life, Coincident, exhibit lucid proof That he is honest in the sacred cause.
Would I describe a preacher, . . . . I would express him simple, grave, sincere; In doctrine uncorrupt; in language plain, And plain in manner; decent, solemn, chaste, And natural in gesture; much impress'd Himself, as conscious of his awful charge, And anxious mainly that the flock he feeds May feel it too; affectionate in look, And tender in address, as well becomes A messenger of grace to guilty men.
He that negotiates between God and man, As God's ambassador, the grand concerns Of judgment and of mercy, should beware Of lightness in his speech.
The things that mount the rostrum with a skip, And then skip down again, pronounce a text, Cry hem; and reading what they never wrote Just fifteen minutes, huddle up their work, And with a well-bred whisper close the scene!
A kick that scarce would move a horse, May kill a sound divine.
The priest he merry is, and blithe Three-quarters of a year, But oh! it cuts him like a scythe When tithing time draws near.
Transforms old print To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes Of gallery critics by a thousand arts.
Prison'd in a parlour snug and small, Like bottled wasps upon a southern wall.
It chills my blood to hear the blest Supreme Rudely appealed to on each trifling theme.
'Tis Providence alone secures In every change both mine and yours.
Behind a frowning Providence He hides a smiling face.
