William Cowper Quotes

The dogs did bark, the children screamed, Up flew the windows all; And every soul cried out, "Well done!" As loud as he could bawl.

Reading what they never wrote, Just fifteen minutes, huddle up their work, And with a well-bred whisper close the scene.

No voice divine the storm allay'd, No light propitious shone; When, snatch'd from all effectual aid, We perish'd, each alone; But I beneath a rougher sea, And whelmed in deeper gulphs than he.

Riches have wings, and grandeur is a dream.

Those golden times And those Arcadian scenes that Maro sings, And Sidney, warbler of poetic prose.

Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs Receive our air, that moment they are free! They touch our country, and their shackles fall.

How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude!
But grant me still a friend in my retreat,
Whom I may whisper, Solitude is sweet.

I believe no man was ever scolded out of his sins.

I burn to set the imprison'd wranglers free, And give them voice and utterance once again. Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups That cheer but not inebriate wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

What peaceful hours I once enjoyed! How sweet their memory still! But they have left an aching void The world can never fill.

But that disease when soberly defined
Is the false fire of an o'erheated mind.

But it is a sort of April-weather life that we lead in this world. A little sunshine is generally the prelude to a storm.

Dream after dream ensues; And still they dream that they shall still succeed; And still are disappointed.

The man that hails you Tom or Jack, And proves, by thumping on your back, His sense of your great merit, Is such a friend that one had need Be very much his friend indeed To pardon or to bear it.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace, behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.