1795.

TO THE POET COWPER

On his Recovery from an Indisposition. 
Written some Time Back

(Summer, 1796)_

Cowper, I thank my God, that thou art heal’d. 
Thine was the sorest malady of all;
And I am sad to think that it should light
Upon the worthy head:  but thou art heal’d,
And thou art yet, we trust, the destin’d man,
Born to re-animate the lyre, whose chords
Have slumber’d, and have idle lain so long;
To th’ immortal sounding of whose strings
Did Milton frame the stately-paced verse;
Among whose wires with lighter finger playing
Our elder bard, Spencer, a gentler name,
The lady Muses’ dearest darling child,
Enticed forth the deftest tunes yet heard
In hall or bower; taking the delicate ear
Of the brave Sidney, and the Maiden Queen. 
Thou, then, take up the mighty epic strain,
Cowper, of England’s bards the wisest and the best!

        December 1, 1796.

        LINES

        Addressed, from London, to Sara and S.T.C. at Bristol,
        in the Summer of 1796.

        Was it so hard a thing?  I did but ask
        A fleeting holiday, a little week.

        What, if the jaded steer, who, all day long,
        Had borne the heat and burthen of the plough,
        When ev’ning came, and her sweet cooling hour,
        Should seek to wander in a neighbour copse,
        Where greener herbage wav’d, or clearer streams
        Invited him to slake his burning thirst? 
        The man were crabbed who should say him nay;
        The man were churlish who should drive him thence.

        A blessing light upon your worthy heads,
        Ye hospitable pair!  I may not come
        To catch, on Clifden’s heights, the summer gale;
        I may not come to taste the Avon wave;
        Or, with mine eye intent on Redcliffe tow’rs,
        To muse in tears on that mysterious youth,
        Cruelly slighted, who, in evil hour,
        Shap’d his advent’rous course to London walls! 
        Complaint, be gone! and, ominous thoughts, away! 
        Take up, my Song, take up a merrier strain;
        For yet again, and lo! from Avon’s vales,
        Another Minstrel[2] cometh.  Youth endear’d,
        God and good Angels guide thee on thy road,
        And gentler fortunes ’wait the friends I love!

[Footnote 2:  “From vales where Avon winds, the Minstrel came.”  COLERIDGE’S Monody on Chatterton.]

SONNET TO A FRIEND

        (End of 1796)

        Friend of my earliest years and childish days,
          My joys, my sorrows, thou with me hast shar’d
          Companion dear, and we alike have far’d
        (Poor pilgrims we) thro’ life’s unequal ways. 
        It were unwisely done, should we refuse