Please daily, and whose novelty survives
Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years.'[24]
Cowper's poetic vision was like his landscape, limited, though within its range it was searching and accurate. His timid nature shrank from what was rugged and wild. He found his consolation in
'Nature in her cultivated trim
And dressed to his taste.'[25]
But no one before him had revealed to men the infinite variety and beauty and charm to be seen by the contemplative eye even in these everyday surroundings. The calm of evening—
'With matron step slow moving, while the Night
Treads on her sweeping train,'[26]
or the river shining in the moonlight beneath the 'wearisome but needful length' of Olney bridge, or the creep of autumn over wood and field and weedy fallow, or the advent of winter and the shrouding of the valley under snow, or the coming of spring, when—