Draw the soft tear, from thrill'd remembrance sprung,
How oft my childhood mark'd that tribute paid.
The gloves, suspended by the garland's side,
White as its snowy flowers, with ribbons tied ;-
Dear Village, long these wreaths funereal spread,
Simple memorials of thy early dead!

But O! thou blank, and silent pulpit !-thou,
That with a Father's precepts, just, and bland,
Did'st win my ear, as reason's strength'ning glow
Show'd their full value, now thou seem'st to stand
Before my sad, suffus'd, and trembling gaze,
The dreariest relic of departed days.

Of eloquence paternal, nervous, clear,

Dim Apparition thou-and bitter is my tear!

REMONSTRANCE

ADDRESSED TO WILLIAM COWPER, ESQ. IN 1788,

ON THE SARCASMS LEVELLED AT NATIONAL GRATITUDE IN

THE TASK.*

66

"I WOULD not enter on my list of friends,

"Tho' grac'd with polish'd manners," tho' endow'd With talents destin'd to immortal fame,

But wanting generosity, the man

Who darts the blighting of satiric wit,

Lanc'd from a spleenful heart, or sullen weaves
The dark anathemas of Calvin's school

Against a nation's praise, its grateful praise,

* These verses were not sent to Mr Cowper, on account of the reported depression on his spirits, and were during his lifetime, for the same reason, with-held from the press.

1. 1. I would not enter, &c.—The line and half, with which this poem opens, are taken from the TASK. So says its author of those who feel no pang of conscience for having set their foot upon a noisome reptile.

Pour'd for the assiduous culture of those gifts
Bestow'd by Heaven,-not on the general mind,
But on the chosen Few, ordain'd to prove
In what full portion to the human soul
God can impart intelligence; the rays
Destin'd to stream from their eternal source
Through future ages. O'er each feeling heart
Shed they not transport which allays each ill,
Sickness, and pain, and sorrow; lift the mind,
Seating its pleasures high, till waste expense
And frivolous pursuits, fatigue or pall,
While all the grosser train of sensual joys
Prove vapid as they are guilty?-Read we not
On Inspiration's page, "Who loves not man
Whom he hath seen, how should he love his GOD,
Yet unbeheld?" So he, who would repress

The fervent tribute of each thankful heart

For true delights and pure, receiv'd from Man,
May fear his MAKER, but will never know
The nobler piety, that fits the soul

For happiness and HEAVEN. O! wintry Spirit,,
Hurling thine icy bolt of sarcasm

Against the loveliest and most generous rites
That e'er an honest, grateful nation paid

1. 22. Bolt of sarcasm-See the invidious ridicule of the Stratford jubilee in the 6th Book of the TASK, a poem whose descriptive powers are always admirable, and whose morality and piety are often sublime.

At the bright shrine of Genius! Look'st thou back
With grudging eyes on those applausive hours
When Poesy and Music, with twin'd arms,
Attended jubilant?-to Avon's bank
From the remotest confines of our isle,
Her silver shores, and mast-aspiring towns,
Her tower'd cities and her villa'd hills,
Her lakes, her rivers, and her golden vales,

1. 2. Grudging eyes-The use of that word here has been objected to, as too low an expression and unmusical; but surely it had been unwise to have expunged it, because it may be familiar in the dialect of our peasantry, since the English vocabulary has no word which would exactly give its meaning in the two passages where it occurs in this Remonstrance. Learned men have asserted, that grudge has no precise synonime in any language. Its harsh sound, where an harsh feeling is to be expressed, cannot be a just objection. Neither the words envious, or malignant, nor yet unwilling, or reluctant, convey its perfect meaning. The two first are too strong, the second not strong enough. Grudge is a word so peculiar in its signification, that it should not be banished from serious poetry. It stands between unwillingness that our neighbour should possess a certain good, and hating, or envying him its possession: Grudge denotes a feeling stronger than reluctance, yet less bitter than hatred, less vile than envy; and finally, it has been used by our best writers in their serious strains, as the authorities in Johnson's Dictionary prove. If false refinement has rejected any word, the loss of which cannot with precision be supplied, and which has no indecent meaning, those who wish rather to write nervously than nicely, should endeavour, by using it themselves, to recall the exile. Cowper, in the Task, has the word grudge twice, see book iii. page 119, first edition.

Summon'd those glowing votaries, who with hearts
Exulting in their country's proudest boast,
And by the patriot passion taller grown,
Stood tiptoe on Avona's brink, and there
Strew'd all the rifled Summer's bloomy stores;
The incense of the warmer Orient toss'd;
Pour'd in loud pæans the triumphant song,
And from the cup, carv'd from the hallow'd tree,
Sprinkled the bright libation; tree, that fell
At the harsh dictate of a kindred mind,
Kindred in spleen, though much unlike in power,
To thine, Misanthropist! Nor singly rose

This murmur, cold and dreary as the rill

That ink-like huddles through the russet moor,
Powerless to fertilize. Lo! in a strain
Fanatic and illiberal as the lay
Maligning Avon's festival, thou scorn'st
Thy country, marshalling in holy shrines
The harmonic strength of Europe, to fulfil
The great designs Briarean Handel plann'd;

1. 10. Kindred mind-Rev.

Gastril, who having bought the premises on which it stood, cut down Shakespear's mulberry tree, inhospitably to preclude the request of travellers to pay visits of poetic veneration to the tree planted by the great poet of England.

1. 15. In a strain-Vide 6th Book of the Task.

1. 20.

Strong in new arms, lo! giant Handel stands, "Like bold Briareus with his hundred hands!"