SOURCE: “Short Poems, Lyric and Comic,” in William Cowper, Twayne Publishers, 1970, pp. 152-173.

In the following essay, Free offers a comprehensive analysis of Cowper's shorter poems, demonstrating that a sense of control, and reference to external objects as markers of internal states are important to Cowper's verse.

At the end of the fourth book of The Task, Cowper, after referring to the placidness of his life at Olney, hails rural life, the “patroness of health and ease / And contemplation,” and resolves never to add himself “to the pursuit / Of honors, or emolument, or fame.” “Great offices,” he continues,

                              will have Great talents. And God gives to every man The virtue, temper, understanding, taste, That lifts him into life, and lets him fall Just in the niche he was ordained to fill. To the deliverer of an injured land He gives a tongue t’enlarge upon, an heart To...