“More generous sorrow, while it sinks, exalts,
And conscious virtue mitigates the pang.”
What is Cowper’s answer, when he imagines some “sage, erudite, profound,” asking him “What’s the world to you?”
“Much. I was born of woman, and drew milk
As sweet as charity from human breasts.
I think, articulate, I laugh and weep,
And exercise all functions of a man.
How then should I and any man that lives
Be strangers to each other?”
Young is astonished that men can make war on each other—that any one can “seize his brother’s throat,” while
“The Planets cry, ‘Forbear.’”
Cowper weeps because
“There is no flesh in man’s obdurate heart:
It does not feel for man.”
Young applauds God as a monarch with an empire and a court quite superior to the English, or as an author who produces “volumes for man’s perusal.” Cowper sees his father’s love in all the gentle pleasures of the home fireside, in the charms even of the wintry landscape, and thinks—
“Happy who walks with him! whom what he finds
Of flavor or of scent in fruit or flower,
Or what he views of beautiful or grand
In nature, from the broad, majestic oak
To the green blade that twinkles in the sun,
Prompts with remembrance of a present God.”
To conclude—for we must arrest ourselves in a contrast that would lead us beyond our bounds. Young flies for his utmost consolation to the day of judgment, when