Come then, and thou shalt find thy votary calm Or make me so. Composure is thy gift: And whether I devote the gentle hours of evening To books, to music, or the poet’s toil, To weaving nets for bird-alluring fruit, Or turning silken threads round ivory reels, When they command whom man was born to please.

Could there well be a more feminine picture than that? All the politics, commerce, passions, conflicts of the world are shut out by Mrs. Unwin’s comfortable curtains, and, with her and Lady Austen for sympathising companions, the poet fills his time, with perfect satisfaction, by holding their skeins of wool, and meditating such homely lines as these:

For I, contented with a humble theme, Have poured my stream of panegyric down The vale of nature where it creeps and winds Among her lovely works, with a secure And unambitious ease reflecting clear If not the virtues, yet the worth of brutes. And I am recompensed, and deem the toils Of poetry not lost, if verse of mine May stand between an animal and woe, And teach one tyrant pity for his drudge.

Cowper was never married, nor ever, as far as I know, in love, though Lady Austen, to her and his misfortune, for a time seemed to fancy he was; and in his verse therefore we do not meet with the note of amatory sentiment. But what love is there in this world more beautiful, more touching, more truly romantic, than the love of a mother for her son, and of a son for his mother? And where has it been more charmingly expressed than in Cowper’s lines on the[Pg 42] receipt of his mother’s picture? After that beautiful outburst—

[Pg 42]

O that those lips had language! Life has passed With me but roughly since I heard thee last

—he proceeds to recall the home, the scenes, the tender incidents of his childhood, but, most of all, the fond care bestowed on him by his mother:

Thy nightly visits to my chamber made That thou mightst know me safe and warmly laid, Thy fragrant waters on my cheek bestowed By thy own hand, till fresh they were and glowed, All this, and more endearing still than all, Thy constant flow of love that knew no fall, Ne’er roughened by those cataracts and breaks That humour interposed too often makes; All this still legible in memory’s page, And still to be so to my latest age, Adds joy to duty, makes me glad to pay Such honour to thee as my numbers may, Perhaps a frail memorial, but sincere, Not scorned in Heaven, though little noticed here.

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