Quotes
Quotes - Cowper
Absence of occupation is not rest,
A mind quite vacant is a mind distress'd.
An idler is a watch that wants both hands,
As useless if it goes as if it stands.
Built God a church, and laugh'd his word to scorn.
Philologists, who chase
A panting syllable through time and space,
Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark
To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's ark.
I praise the Frenchman, his remark was shrewd,--
How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude!
But grant me still a friend in my retreat,
Whom I may whisper, Solitude is sweet.
A kick that scarce would move a horse
May kill a sound divine.
I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute.
O Solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
But the sound of the church-going bell
These valleys and rocks never heard;
Ne'er sigh'd at the sound of a knell,
Or smiled when a Sabbath appear'd.
How fleet is a glance of the mind!
Compared with the speed of its flight
The tempest itself lags behind,
And the swift-winged arrows of light.
There goes the parson, O illustrious spark!
And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk.
But oars alone can ne'er prevail
To reach the distant coast;
The breath of heaven must swell the sail,
Or all the toil is lost.
And the tear that is wiped with a little address,
May be follow'd perhaps by a smile.
'T is Providence alone secures
In every change both mine and yours.
I shall not ask Jean Jacques Rousseau
If birds confabulate or no.
Misses! the tale that I relate
This lesson seems to carry,--
Choose not alone a proper mate,
But proper time to marry.
That though on pleasure she was bent,
She had a frugal mind.
A hat not much the worse for wear.
Now let us sing, Long live the king!
And Gilpin, Long live he!
And when he next doth ride abroad,
May I be there to see!
The path of sorrow, and that path alone,
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.
United yet divided, twain at once:
So sit two kings of Brentford on one throne.
Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds,
Exhilarate the spirit, and restore
The tone of languid nature.
The earth was made so various, that the mind
Of desultory man, studious of change
And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.
Doing good,
Disinterested good, is not our trade.
God made the country, and man made the town.
