Vain wish! thy deathless heroes should commend
Thy verse to fame, and bid it sweeter sound.
He who thy name's revival did intend,
In bloom of youth is buried under ground.[773]
So, nested on the rock, the parent dove
Sees down the cleft her callow offspring fall;
Full little may its chirping plaints behove;
She only hears, but cannot help its call.[774]
Like the fair swan of fame, the grateful muse
Assiduous tends on Lethe's barren bank,
To raise the name that envious time would lose,
Where many millions erst for ever sank.
While yet I wait, thou ever-honour'd shade,
Some better bard should the memorial rear,
The debt to friendship due by me be paid,
Weak in poetic fire, in friendship's zeal sincere.
We add the letter addressed by Cowper to his friend Mr. Unwin on this occasion.
TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.
March 31, 1770.
My dear Friend,—I am glad that the Lord made you a fellow labourer with us in praying my dear brother out of darkness into light. It was a blessed work; and when it shall be your turn to die in the Lord, and to rest from all your labours, that work shall follow you. I once entertained hopes of his recovery: from the moment when it pleased God to give him light in his soul, there was, for four days, such a visible amendment in his body as surprised us all. Dr. Glynn himself was puzzled, and began to think that all his threatening conjectures would fail of their accomplishment. I am well satisfied that it was thus ordered, not for his own sake, but for the sake of us, who had been so deeply concerned for his spiritual welfare, that he might be able to give such evident proof of the work of God upon his soul as should leave no doubt behind it. As to his friends at Cambridge, they knew nothing of the matter. He never spoke of these things but to myself; nor to me, when others were within hearing, except that he sometimes would speak in the presence of the nurse. He knew well to make the distinction between those who could understand him and those who could not; and that he was not in circumstances to maintain such a controversy as a declaration of his new views and sentiments would have exposed him to. Just after his death, I spoke of this change to a dear friend of his, a fellow of the college, who had attended him through all his sickness with assiduity and tenderness. But he did not understand me.
I now proceed to mention such particulars as I can recollect; and which I had not opportunity to insert in my letters to Olney; for I left Cambridge suddenly, and sooner than I expected. He was deeply impressed with a sense of the difficulties he should have to encounter, if it should please God to raise him again. He saw the necessity of being faithful, and the opposition he should expose himself to by being so. Under the weight of these thoughts, he one day broke out in the following prayer, when only myself was with him. "O Lord, thou art light; and in thee is no darkness at all. Thou art the fountain of all wisdom, and it is essential to thee to be good and gracious. I am a child; O Lord, teach me how I shall conduct myself! Give me the wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of the dove! Bless the souls thou hast committed to the care of thy helpless miserable creature, who has no wisdom or knowledge of his own, and make me faithful to them, for thy mercy's sake!" Another time he said, "How wonderful it is, that God should look upon man; and how much more wonderful that he should look upon such a worm as I am! Yet he does look upon me, and takes the exactest notice of all my sufferings. He is present, and I see him (I mean, by faith), and he stretches out his arms towards me,"—and he then stretched out his own—"and he says, 'Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest!'" He smiled and wept, when he spoke these words. When he expressed himself upon these subjects, there was a weight and dignity in his manner such as I never saw before. He spoke with the greatest deliberation, making a pause at the end of every sentence; and there was something in his air and in the tone of his voice inexpressibly solemn, unlike himself, unlike what I had ever seen in another.