When prevented by rains and floods from visiting the lady who suggested “The Task,” Cowper beguiled the time by writing to her the following lines, and afterwards printing them with his own hand. He sent a copy of these verses, so printed, to his sister, accompanied by the subjoined note written upon his typographical labours.
To watch the storms, and hear the sky
Give all the almanacks the lie;
To shake with cold, and see the plains
In autumn drown’d with wintry rains:
’Tis thus I spend my moments here,
And wish myself a Dutch mynheer;
I then should have no need of wit,
For lumpish Hollander unfit;
Nor should I then repine at mud,
Or meadows delug’d with a flood;
But in a bog live well content,
And find it just my element;
Should be a clod, and not a man,
Nor wish in vain for sister Anne,
With charitable aid to drag
My mind out of its proper quag;
Should have the genius of a boor,
And no ambition to have more.
My dear Sister,—You see my beginning; I do not know but in time I may proceed to the printing of halfpenny ballads. Excuse the coarseness of my paper; I wasted so much before I could accomplish any thing legible, that I could not afford finer. I intend to employ an ingenious mechanic of this town to make me a longer case, for you may observe that my lines turn up their tails like Dutch mastiffs; so difficult do I find it to make the two halves exactly coincide with each other.
We wait with impatience for the departure of this unseasonable flood. We think of you, and talk of you; but we can do no more till the waters subside. I do not think our correspondence should drop because we are within a mile of each other; it is but an imaginary approximation, the flood having in reality as effectually parted us, as if the British Channel rolled between us.
Yours, my dear sister, with Mrs. U.’s best love,
William Cowper.
Monday, Aug. 12, 1782.
[217] Suggested by a picture in the possession of Charles Aders, Esq. Euston-square, in which is represented the Legend of a poor female Saint, who, having spun past midnight to maintain a bed-rid mother, has fallen asleep from fatigue, and Angels are finishing her work. In another part of the chamber, an Angel is tending a lily, the emblem of her purity.