These lines are from the second book of The Task called The Timepiece.  The third is called The Garden, the fourth The Winter Evening.  There we have the well-known picture of a quiet evening by the cozy fireside.  The post boy has come “with spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks.”  He has brought letters and the newspaper—­

    “Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
    Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
    And, while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
    Throws up a steamy column, and the cups,
    That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
    So let us welcome peaceful evening in.”

The poem ends with two books called The Winter Morning Walk and The Winter Walk at Noon.  Though not grand, The Task is worth reading.  It is, too, an easily read, and easily understood poem, and through it all we feel the love of nature, the return to romance and simplicity.  In the last book we see Cowper’s love of animals.  There he sings, “If not the virtues, yet the worth, of brutes.”

Cowper loved animals tenderly and understood them in a wonderful manner.  He tamed some hares and made them famous in his verse.  And when he felt madness coming upon him he often found relief in his interest in these pets.  One of his poems tells how Cowper scolded his spaniel Beau for killing a little baby bird “not because you were hungry,” says the poet, “but out of naughtiness.”  Here is Beau’s reply—­

    “Sir, when I flew to seize the bird
        In spite of your command,
    A louder voice than yours I heard,
        And harder to withstand.

    “You cried ’Forbear!;—­but in my breast
        A mightier cried ’Proceed!’—­
    ’Twas nature, sir, whose strong behest
        Impelled me to the deed.

    “Yet much as nature I respect,
        I ventured once to break
    (As you perhaps may recollect)
        Her precept for your sake;

    “And when your linnet on a day,
        Passing his prison door,
    Had fluttered all his strength away
        And panting pressed the floor,

    “Well knowing him a sacred thing
        Not destined to my tooth,
    I only kissed his ruffled wing
        And licked the feathers smooth.

    “Let my obedience then excuse
        My disobedience now,
    Nor some reproof yourself refuse
        From your aggrieved Bow-wow;

    “If killing birds be such a crime
        (Which I can hardly see),

    What think you, sir, of killing Time
        With verse addressed to me?”

As Cowper’s life went on, the terrible lapses into insanity became more frequent, but his sweet and kindly temper won him many friends, and he still wrote a great deal.  And among the many things he wrote, his letters to his friends were not the least interesting.  They are among the best letters in our language.