Full Description
The poems of William Cowper (1731-1800) are best known outside their literary context, as hymns or half-remembered popular ballads. This selection reveals the qualities that have made Cowper's work enduringly loved: his gentle humor and detailed, delighted observations of the incidentals of everyday life, his intimate, conversational tone, his spiritual hunger. Beneath Cowper's quiet gratitude for everyday pleasures, though, is a darker sense of loss, a longing for stability and calm. His sense of the healing and life-affirming power of poetry gives them a profound humanity. Nick Rhodes' selection includes the finest of the short poems and substantial extracts from Cowper's longer works, including The Task, the poem from which the Romantic poets took their bearings.
Contents
Contents
Introduction
Select Bibliography
On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture out of Norfolk
from Conversation
from Retirement
from Olney Hymns (1771-1772)
Lines Written During a Period of Insanity
The Shrubbery
Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk
On the Loss of The Royal George
The Diverting History of John Gilpin
On the Death of Mrs. Throckmorton's Bullfinch
The Needless Alarm
The Colubriad
Epitaph on a Hare
The Retired Cat
To The Nightingale
On a Spaniel Called Beau
Beau's Reply
The Poplar-Field
Ode to Apollo
Yardley Oak
To Mary
The Castaway
from The Task
Notes
