I am out of humanity’s reach.I must finish my journey alone,Never hear the sweet music of speech;I start at the sound of my own.
WILLIAM COWPERI am out of humanity’s reach.I must finish my journey alone,Never hear the sweet music of speech;I start at the sound of my own.
WILLIAM COWPERGreat offices will have great talents, and God gives to every man the virtue, temper, understanding, taste, that lifts him into life, and lets him fall just in the niche he was ordained to fill.
WILLIAM COWPERAccomplishments have taken virtue’s place, and wisdom falls before exterior grace.
WILLIAM COWPERMaintains its hold with such unfailing sway, We feel it e’en in age, and at our latest day.
WILLIAM COWPERThe Cross! There, and there only (though the deist rave, and the atheist, if Earth bears so base a slave); There and there only, is the power to save.
WILLIAM COWPERPerhaps thou gav’st me, though unseen, a kiss; Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss.
WILLIAM COWPERFar happier are the dead methinks than they who look for death and fear it every day.
WILLIAM COWPERBooks are not seldom talismans and spells.
WILLIAM COWPERThey whom truth and wisdom lead, can gather honey from a weed.
WILLIAM COWPERBlind unbelief is sure to err, And scan his work in vain; God is his own interpreter, And he will make it plain.
WILLIAM COWPERHow happy it is to believe, with a steadfast assurance, that our petitions are heard even while we are making them; and how delightful to meet with a proof of it in the effectual and actual grant of them.
WILLIAM COWPERSpring hangs her infant blossoms on the trees, Rock’d in the cradle of the western breeze.
WILLIAM COWPERUnless a love of virtue light the flame,
WILLIAM COWPERAnd natural in gesture; much impress’d Himself, as conscious of his awful charge, And anxious mainly that the flock he feeds May feel it too; affectionate in look, And tender in address, as well becomes A messenger of grace to guilty men.
WILLIAM COWPERHappy the man who sees a God employed in all the good and ills that checker life.
WILLIAM COWPERHe that has seen both sides of fifty has lived to little purpose if he has no other views of the world than he had when he was much younger.
WILLIAM COWPER