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Home  »  The English Poets  »  Extracts from the Task: Relish of Fair Prospect

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. III. The Eighteenth Century: Addison to Blake

William Cowper (1731–1800)

Extracts from the Task: Relish of Fair Prospect

[Book I, The Sofa]

OH! may I live exempted (while I live

Guiltless of pampered appetite obscene)

From pangs arthritic that infest the toe

Of libertine excess. The Sofa suits

The gouty limb, ’tis true; but gouty limb,

Though on a Sofa, may I never feel:

For I have loved the rural walk through lanes

Of grassy swarth, close cropped by nibbling sheep

And skirted thick with intertexture firm

Of thorny boughs; have loved the rural walk

O’er hills, through valleys, and by rivers’ brink,

E’er since a truant boy I passed my bounds

To enjoy a ramble on the banks of Thames;

And still remember, nor without regret,

Of hours that sorrow since has much endeared,

How oft, my slice of pocket store consumed,

Still hungering, penniless and far from home,

I fed on scarlet hips and stony haws,

Or blushing crabs, or berries that emboss

The bramble, black as jet, or sloes austere.

Hard fare! but such as boyish appetite

Disdains not, nor the palate undepraved

By culinary arts, unsavoury deems.

No Sofa then awaited my return,

Nor Sofa then I needed. Youth repairs

His wasted spirits quickly, by long toil

Incurring short fatigue; and though our years,

As life declines, speed rapidly away,

And not a year but pilfers as he goes

Some youthful grace that age would gladly keep,

A tooth or auburn lock, and by degrees

Their length and colour from the locks they spare,

The elastic spring of an unwearied foot

That mounts the stile with ease, or leaps the fence,

That play of lungs, inhaling and again

Respiring freely the fresh air, that makes

Swift pace or steep ascent no toil to me,

Mine have not pilfered yet; nor yet impaired

My relish of fair prospect: scenes that soothed

Or charmed me young, no longer young, I find

Still soothing and of power to charm me still.

And witness, dear companion of my walks,

Whose arm this twentieth winter I perceive

Fast locked in mine, with pleasure such as love,

Confirmed by long experience of thy worth

And well-tried virtues, could alone inspire,

Witness a joy that thou hast doubled long.

Thou knowest my praise of nature most sincere,

And that my raptures are not conjured up

To serve occasions of poetic pomp,

But genuine, and art partner of them all.

How oft upon yon eminence our pace

Has slackened to a pause, and we have borne

The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,

While admiration feeding at the eye,

And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene.

Thence with what pleasure have we just discerned

The distant plough slow moving, and beside

His labouring team, that swerved not from the track,

The sturdy swain diminished to a boy.

Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain

Of spacious meads with cattle sprinkled o’er,

Conducts the eye along his sinuous course

Delighted. There, fast rooted in their bank,

Stand, never overlooked, our favourite elms,

That screen the herdsman’s solitary hut;

While far beyond, and overthwart the stream,

That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale,

The sloping land recedes into the clouds;

Displaying on its varied side the grace

Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower,

Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells

Just undulates upon the listening ear;

Groves, heaths, and smoking villages remote.

Scenes must be beautiful which, daily viewed,

Please daily, and whose novelty survives

Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years:

Praise justly due to those that I describe.