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YARDLEY OAK.

SURVIVOR sole, and hardly such, of all
That once lived here, thy brethren !—at my birth
(Since which I number threescore winters past)
A shattered veteran, hollow-trunked perhaps,
As now, and with excoriate forks deform,
Relics of ages!—could a mind, imbued
With truth from Heaven, created thing adore,
I might with reverence kneel and worship thee.
It seems idolatry with some excuse,
When our forefather Druids in their oaks
Imagined sanctity. The conscience, yet
Unpurified by an authentic act

Of amnesty, the meed of blood divine,
Loved not the light, but, gloomy, into gloom
Of thickest shades, like Adam after taste
Of fruit proscribed, as to a refuge, fled.

Thou wast a bauble once; a cup and ball,
Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay,
Seeking her food, with ease might have purloined
The auburn nut that held thee, swallowing down
Thy yet close-folded latitude of boughs,
And all thine embryo vastness, at a gulp.
But fate thy growth decreed; autumnal rains
Beneath thy parent tree mellowed the soil
Designed thy cradle; and a skipping deer,
With pointed hoof dibbling the glebe, prepared
The soft receptacle, in which, secure,
Thy rudiments should sleep the winter through.
So fancy dreams. Disprove it, if ye can,
Ye reasoners broad awake, whose busy search
Of argument, employed too oft amiss,
Sifts half the pleasures of short life away!

Thou fell'st mature; and in the loamy clod
Swelling with vegetative force instinct

Didst burst thine egg, as theirs the fabled Twins,
Now stars; two lobes, protruding, paired exact;
A leaf succeeded, and another leaf,

And, all the elements thy puny growth

Fostering propitious, thou becamest a twig.

Who lived when thou wast such? Oh, couldst thou speak,

As in Dodona once thy kindred trees

Oracula, I would not curious ask

The future, best unknown, but at thy mouth

Inquisitive, the less ambiguous past.

By thee I might correct, erroneous oft,
The clock of history, facts and events
Timing more punctual, unrecorded facts
Recovering, and misstated setting right-
Desperate attempt, till trees shall speak again!

Time made thee what thou wast, king of the woods,
And Time hath made thee what thou art a cave
For owls to roost in. Once thy spreading boughs
O'erhung the champaign; and the numerous flocks
That grazed it stood beneath that ample cope
Uncrowded, yet safe-sheltered from the storm.
No flock frequents thee now. Thou hast outlived

Thy popularity, and art become

(Unless verse rescue thee awhile) a thing
Forgotten, as the foliage of thy youth.

While thus through all the stages thou hast pushed
Of treeship-first a seedling, hid in grass;

Then twig; then sapling; and, as century rolled
Slow after century, a giant-bulk

Of girth enormous, with moss-cushioned root
Upheaved above the soil, and sides embossed
With prominent wens globose,—till at the last
The rottenness, which Time is charged to inflict
On other mighty ones, found also thee.

What exhibitions various hath the world
Witnessed, of mutability in all

That we account most durable below!
Change is the diet on which all subsist,
Created changeable, and change at last
Destroys them. Skies uncertain, now the heat
Transmitting cloudless, and the solar beam
Now quenching in a boundless sea of clouds,-
Calm and alternate storm, moisture and drought,
Invigorate by turns the springs of life

In all that live, plant, animal, and man,

And in conclusion mar them. Nature's threads,
Fine passing thought, even in her coarsest works,
Delight in agitation, yet sustain

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The force that agitates, not unimpaired;
But, worn by frequent impulse, to the cause
Of their best tone their dissolution owe.

Thought cannot spend itself, comparing still
The great and little of thy lot, thy growth
From almost nullity into a state

Of matchless grandeur, and declension thence,
Slow, into such magnificent decay.

Time was when, settling on thy leaf, a fly

Could shake thee to the root-and time has been

When tempests could not. At thy firmest age

Thou hadst within thy bole solid contents,

That might have ribbed the sides and planked the deck
Of some flagged admiral; and tortuous arms,

The shipwright's darling treasure, didst present
To the four-quartered winds, robust and bold,
Warped into tough knee-timber,* many a load!

* Knee-timber is found in the crooked arms of oak, which, by reason of their distortion, are easily adjusted to the angle formed where the deck and the ship's sides meet.

But the axe spared thee. In those thriftier days
Oaks fell not, hewn by thousands, to supply
The bottomless demands of contest waged
For senatorial honours. Thus to Time
The task was left to whittle thee away
With his sly scythe, whose ever-nibbling edge,
Noiseless, an atom, and an atom more,
Disjoining from the rest, has, unobserved,
Achieved a labour, which had, far and wide,
By man performed, made all the forest ring.
Embowelled now, and of thy ancient self
Possessing nought but the scooped rind,—that seems
A huge throat calling to the clouds for drink,
Which it would give in rivulets to thy root,-
Thou temptest none, but rather much forbiddest
The feller's toil, which thou couldst ill requite.
Yet is thy root sincere, sound as the rock,
A quarry of stout spurs and knotted fangs,
Which, crooked into a thousand whimsies, clasp
The stubborn soil, and hold thee still erect.

So stands a kingdom, whose foundation yet
Fails not, in virtue and in wisdom laid,
Though all the superstructure, by the tooth
Pulverized of venality, a shell

Stands now, and semblance only of itself!
Thine arms have left thee.

Winds have rent them off

Some have left

Long since, and rovers of the forest wild
With bow and shaft have burnt them.
A splintered stump, bleached to a snowy white :
And some memorial none, where once they grew.
Yet life still lingers in thee, and puts forth
Proof not contemptible of what she can,
Even where death predominates. The Spring
Finds thee not less alive to her sweet force
Than yonder upstarts of the neighbouring wood,
So much thy juniors, who their birth received
Half a millennium since the date of thine.

But since, although well qualified by age
To teach, no spirit dwells in thee, nor voice
May be expected from thee, seated here
On thy distorted root, with hearers none,
Or prompter, save the scene, I will perform
Myself the oracle, and will discourse
In my own ear such matter as I may.

One man alone, the father of us all,
Drew not his life from woman; never gazed,
With mute unconsciousness of what he saw,
On all around him; learned not by degrees,
Nor owed articulation to his ear;
But moulded by his Maker into man
At once, upstood intelligent, surveyed
All creatures, with precision understood

Their purport, uses, properties; assigned

To each his name significant, and, filled

With love and wisdom, rendered back to Heaven

In praise harmonious the first air he drew.

He was excused the penalties of dull

Minority.

No tutor charged his hand

With the thought-tracing quill, or tasked his mind
With problems. History, not wanted yet,

Leaned on her elbow, watching Time, whose course,

Eventful, should supply her with a theme.

*

1791.

*

TO THE NIGHTINGALE

WHICH THE AUTHOR HEARD SING ON NEW YEAR'S DAY, 1792.

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1792.

HASTINGS! I knew thee young, and of a mind,
While young, humane, conversable, and kind;
Nor can I well believe thee. gentle then,
Now grown a villain, and the worst of men ;
But rather some suspect who have oppressed
And worried thee, as not themselves the best.

LINES

WRITTEN FOR INSERTION IN A COLLECTION OF HANDWRITINGS AND SIGNATURES, MADE BY MISS PATTY, SISTER OF HANNAH MORE.

IN vain to live from age to age
While modern bards endeavour,
I write my name in Patty's page,
And gain my point for ever.

March 6, 1792.

W. COWPER.

TO WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, ESQ.
THY Country, Wilberforce, with just disdain,
Hears thee by cruel men and impious called
Fanatic, for thy zeal to loose the enthralled
From exile, public sale, and slavery's chain.
Friend of the poor, the wronged, the fetter-galled,
Fear not lest labour such as thine be vain!
Thou hast achieved a part; hast gained the ear

Of Britain's senate to thy glorious cause.

Hope smiles, joy springs, and though cold caution pause
And weave delay, the better hour is near

That shall remunerate thy toils severe

By peace for Afric, fenced with British laws.

Enjoy what thou hast won, esteem and love

From all the just on earth and all the blest above.

April 16, 1792.

TO DR. AUSTEN, OF CECIL STREET, LONDON.

AUSTEN! accept a grateful verse from me,

The poet's treasure, no inglorious fee.
Loved by the Muses, thy ingenuous mind
Pleasing requital in a verse may find;

Verse oft has dashed the scythe of Time aside,
Immortalizing names which else had died.

And oh! could I command the glittering wealth
With which sick kings are glad to purchase health,

Yet, if extensive fame, and sure to live,

Were in the power of verse like mine to give,

I would not recompense his heart with less,

Who, giving Mary health, heals my distress.

Friend of my friend !* I love thee, though unknown,
And boldly call thee, being his, my own.

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