The Task: from Book V: The Winter Morning Walk
The Task: from Book V: The Winter Morning Walk
Original Text
William Cowper, Poems (London: J. Johnson, 1782-85). 2 vols. B-10 5366 Fisher Rare Book Library (Toronto).
1'Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb
2Ascending, fires th' horizon: while the clouds,
3That crowd away before the driving wind,
4More ardent as the disk emerges more,
5Resemble most some city in a blaze,
6Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray
7Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,
8And, tinging all with his own rosy hue,
9From ev'ry herb and ev'ry spiry blade
10Stretches a length of shadow o'er the field.
11Mine, spindling into longitude immense,
12In spite of gravity, and sage remark
13That I myself am but a fleeting shade,
14Provokes me to a smile. With eye askance
15I view the muscular proportion'd limb
16Transform'd to a lean shank. The shapeless pair,
17As they design'd to mock me, at my side
18Take step for step; and, as I near approach
19The cottage, walk along the plaster'd wall,
20Prepost'rous sight! the legs without the man.
21The verdure of the plain lies buried deep
23And coarser grass, upspearing o'er the rest,
24Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine
25Conspicuous, and, in bright apparel clad
26And fledg'd with icy feathers, nod superb.
27The cattle mourn in corners where the fence
28Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep
29In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait
30Their wonted fodder; not like hung'ring man,
31Fretful if unsupply'd; but silent, meek,
32And patient of the slow-pac'd swain's delay.
33He from the stack carves out th' accustom'd load,
34Deep-plunging, and again deep-plunging oft,
35His broad keen knife into the solid mass:
36Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands,
37With such undeviating and even force
38He severs it away: no needless care,
39Lest storms should overset the leaning pile
40Deciduous, or its own unbalanc'd weight.
446 'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower
447Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume,
448And we are weeds without it. All constraint,
449Except what wisdom lays on evil men,
450Is evil; hurts the faculties, impedes
451Their progress in the road of science; blinds
452The eyesight of discovery, and begets,
453In those that suffer it, a sordid mind
454Bestial, a meagre intellect, unfit
455To be the tenant of man's noble form.
456Thee therefore, still, blameworthy as thou art,
457With all thy loss of empire, and though squeez'd
458By public exigence till annual food
459Fails for the craving hunger of the state,
460Thee I account still happy, and the chief
461Among the nations, seeing thou art free,
462My native nook of earth! . . .
538 But there is yet a liberty unsung
539By poets, and by senators unprais'd,
540 Which monarchs cannot grant, nor all the pow'rs
541Of earth and hell confederate take away;
542A liberty which persecution, fraud,
543Oppression, prisons, have no pow'r to bind;
544Which whoso tastes can be enslav'd no more.
545'Tis liberty of heart, deriv'd from Heav'n,
546Bought with his blood who gave it to mankind,
547And seal'd with the same token. It is held
548By charter, and that charter sanction'd sure
549By th' unimpeachable and awful oath
550And promise of a God. His other gifts
551All bear the royal stamp that speaks them his,
552And are august, but this transcends them all.
Notes
22] bents: dry stalks of grass. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1785
RPO poem Editors
G. G. Falle
RPO Edition
3RP 2.254.
Form