As the wind sways it, has yet well suffic’d,
      And, intercepting in their silent fall
      The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me. 
      No noise is here, or none that hinders thought. 
      The redbreast warbles still, but is content
      With slender notes, and more than half suppress’d. 
      Pleas’d with his solitude, and flitting light
      From spray to spray, where’er he rests he shakes
      From many a twig the pendent drop of ice,
      That tinkle in the wither’d leaves below. 
      Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft,
      Charms more than silence.  Meditation here
      May think down hours to moments.  Here the heart
      May give a useful lesson to the head,
      And Learning wiser grow without his books. 
      Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,
      Have oft-times no connection.  Knowledge dwells
      In heads replete with thoughts of other men;
      Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. 
      Books are not seldom talismans and spells,
      By which the magic art of shrewder wits
      Holds an unthinking multitude enthrall’d. 
      Some to the fascination of a name
      Surrender judgment hood-wink’d.  Some the style
      Infatuates, and through labyrinths and wilds
      Of error leads them, by a tune entranc’d. 
      While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear
      The insupportable fatigue of thought,
      And swallowing therefore without pause or choice
      The total grist unsifted, husks and all. 
      But trees, and rivulets whose rapid course
      Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer,
      And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs,
      And lanes, in which the primrose ere her time
      Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root,
      Deceive no student.  Wisdom there, and truth,
      Not shy, as in the world, and to be won
      By slow solicitation, seize at once
      The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.”

His satire is also excellent.  It is pointed and forcible, with the polished manners of the gentleman, and the honest indignation of the virtuous man.  His religious poetry, except where it takes a tincture of controversial heat, wants elevation and fire.  His Muse had not a seraph’s wing.  I might refer, in illustration of this opinion, to the laboured anticipation of the Millennium at the end of the sixth book.  He could describe a piece of shell-work as well as any modern poet:  but he could not describe the New Jerusalem so well as John Bunyan;—­nor are his verses on Alexander Selkirk so good as Robinson Crusoe.  The one is not so much like a vision, nor is the other so much like the reality.

The first volume of Cowper’s poems has, however, been less read than it deserved.  The comparison in these poems of the proud and humble believer to the peacock and the pheasant, and the parallel between Voltaire and the poor cottager, are exquisite pieces of eloquence and poetry, particularly the last.