"You cried 'Forbear!;—but in my breast
A mightier cried 'Proceed!'—
'Twas nature, sir, whose strong behest
Impelled me to the deed.
"Yet much as nature I respect,
I ventured once to break
(As you perhaps may recollect)
Her precept for your sake;
"And when your linnet on a day,
Passing his prison door,
Had fluttered all his strength away
And panting pressed the floor,
"Well knowing him a sacred thing
Not destined to my tooth,
I only kissed his ruffled wing
And licked the feathers smooth.
"Let my obedience then excuse
My disobedience now,
Nor some reproof yourself refuse
From your aggrieved Bow-wow;
"If killing birds be such a crime
(Which I can hardly see),
What think you, sir, of killing Time
With verse addressed to me?"
As Cowper's life went on, the terrible lapses into insanity became more frequent, but his sweet and kindly temper won him many friends, and he still wrote a great deal. And among the many things he wrote, his letters to his friends were not the least interesting. They are among the best letters in our language.
Perhaps Cowper's greatest accomplishment, though not his greatest work, was a translation of Homer. He had never considered Pope's Homer good, and he wished to leave to the world a better. Cowper's version was published in 1791, and he fondly believed that it would take the place of Pope's. But although Cowper's may be more correct, it is plain and dry, and while Pope's is still read and remembered, Cowper's is forgotten.
Indeed, that Cowper is remembered at all is due more to his shorter poems such as Boadicea and The Wreck of the Royal George, and chiefly, perhaps, to John Gilpin, which in its own way is a treasure that we would not be without. Other of his shorter poems are full of a simple pathos and gentle humor. The last he wrote was called The Castaway, and the verse with which it ends describes not unfittingly the close of his own life. For his mind sank ever deeper into the shadow of madness until he died in April 1800—