William Cowper (1731–1800) was a British poet and hymn-writer. Often recognized as a “transitional” writer, he anticipated the attitudes and subjects of Romantic and Victorian authors.
Born in Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire, Cowper was educated at Westminster School. He studied law and was called to the Bar in 1754, but did not practice. He showed signs of insanity—in 1763, he tried to commit suicide and was sent to a sanatorium.
Together with the evangelical minister John Newton, Cowper wrote the Olney Hymns (1779,) to which Cowper contributed some hymns. His well-known hymns, including “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood,” “God Moves in a Mysterious Way,” and “Oh for a Closer Walk with God” have become standards of the Anglican Church.
Cowper’s other works include the ballad ‘John Gilpin’ (1783,) ‘Castaway,’ The Task (1785,) an intimate sketch of rural life, and translations including poet John Milton’s Latin poems.
Cowper is generally regarded as the poet of the evangelical revival and as the precursor of William Wordsworth as a poet of nature. Novelist Jane Austen’s characters often quote some of Cowper’s poems.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by William Cowper
Knowledge dwells in heads replete with thoughts of other men; wisdom, in minds attentive to their own.
—William Cowper
Topics: Knowledge
Forced from home, and all its pleasures, afric coast I left forlorn; to increase a stranger’s treasures, o the raging billows borne. Men from England bought and sold me, paid my price in paltry gold; but, though theirs they have enroll’d me, minds are never to be sold.
—William Cowper
Topics: Slavery
Detested sport, that owes its pleasures to another’s pain.
—William Cowper
Topics: Cruelty
Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair.
—William Cowper
Topics: Romance, Absence
Meditation may think down hours to moments. The heart may give most useful lessons to the head, and learning wiser grow without his books.
—William Cowper
Topics: Meditation
O Winter! ruler of the inverted year, … I crown thee king of intimate delights, Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness, And all the comforts that the lowly roof Of undisturb’d Retirement, and the hours Of long uninterrupted evening, know.
—William Cowper
Topics: Winter
The earth was made so various, that the mind of desultory man, studious of change, and pleased with novelty, might be indulged.
—William Cowper
Topics: Earth
Ceremony leads her bigots forth, prepared to fight for shadows of no worth. While truths, on which eternal things depend, can hardly find a single friend.
—William Cowper
Topics: Truth
An idler is a watch that wants both hands; As useless if it goes as when it stands.
—William Cowper
Topics: Idleness
We are never more in danger than when we think ourselves most secure, nor in reality more secure than when we seem to be most in danger.
—William Cowper
Topics: Safety, Security
Restraining prayer, we cease to fight; Prayer keeps the Christian’s armor bright; And Satan trembles when he sees The weakest saint upon his knees.
—William Cowper
Topics: Evil, Prayer
Gardening imparts an organic perspective on the passage of time.
—William Cowper
Topics: Gardening
Like Eden’s dead probationary tree, Knowledge of good and evil is from thee.
—William Cowper
Topics: Journalism
Candid and generous and just. Boys care but little whom they trust. An error soon corrected—for who but learns in riper years. That man, when smoothest he appears, is most to be suspected?
—William Cowper
Topics: Trust
He comes, the herald of a noisy world, news from all nations lumbering at his back; a messenger of grief perhaps to thousands, and a joy to some.
—William Cowper
Topics: News
Fanaticism soberly defined, is the false fire of an over heated mind.
—William Cowper
Topics: Fanaticism
Great offices will have great talents, and God gives to every man the virtue, temper, understanding, taste, that lifts him into life, and lets him fall just in the niche he was ordained to fill.
—William Cowper
Topics: Life, Talent
Beware of desperate steps.—The darkest day, live till tomorrow, will have passed away.
—William Cowper
Topics: Despair
Man may dismiss compassion from his heart, but God never will.
—William Cowper
Topics: Kindness, Compassion
Once more I would adopt the graver style—a teacher should be sparing of his smile.
—William Cowper
Topics: Teaching, Teachers
A fretful temper will divide the closest knot that may be tied, by ceaseless sharp corrosion; a temper passionate and fierce may suddenly your joys disperse at one immense explosion.
—William Cowper
Topics: Temper, Anger
There is in souls a sympathy with sounds, and as the wind is pitched the ear is pleased with melting airs or martial, brisk or grave; some chord in unison with what we hear is touched within us, and the heart replies.
—William Cowper
If a great man struggling with misfortunes is a noble object, a little man that despises them is no contemptible one.
—William Cowper
Topics: Misfortune
No one was ever scolded out of their sins.
—William Cowper
Topics: Sin
Unless a love of virtue light the flame,
Satire is, more than those he brands, to blame;
He hides behind a magisterial air
He own offences, and strips others’ bare.
—William Cowper
True modesty is a discerning grace, and only blushes in the proper place, but counterfeit is blind, and skulks through fear, where ’tis a shame to be ashamed to appear; humility the parent of the first; the last by vanity produced and nursed.
—William Cowper
Topics: Modesty
Man, in society, is like a flower blown in its native bud. It is there only that his faculties, expanded in full bloom, shine out, there only reach their proper use.
—William Cowper
Topics: Society
How much a dunce that has been sent to roam, excels a dunce that has been kept at home.
—William Cowper
Topics: Experts, Professionalism
The rich are too indolent, the poor too weak, to bear the insupportable fatigue of thinking.
—William Cowper
Topics: Thought
Man disavows, and Deity disowns me: hell might afford my miseries a shelter; therefore hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all bolted against me.
—William Cowper
Topics: Insanity
I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute on;
but I wish that I could get away
And go home to the village of Bruton.
—William Cowper
Hypocrisy, detest her as we may, and no man’s hatred ever wronged her yet, may claim this merit still, that she admits the worth of what she mimics with such care.
—William Cowper
Topics: Hypocrisy
A life of ease is a difficult pursuit.
—William Cowper
Topics: Laziness, Living, Happiness, Life, Idleness
The man that hails you Tom or Jack, and proves by thumps upon your back how he esteems your merit, is such a friend, that one had need be very much his friend indeed to pardon or to bear it.
—William Cowper
Topics: Friends and Friendship
Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
That slaves, howe’er contented, never know.
—William Cowper
Topics: Freedom
To follow foolish precedents, and wink with both our eyes, is easier than to think.
—William Cowper
Topics: Fools, Custom
Labor was the primal curse, but it was softened into mercy, and made the pledge of cheerful days, and nights without a groan.
—William Cowper
Topics: Labor
O popular applause! what heart of man is proof against thy sweet seducing charms? The wisest and the best feel urgent need of all their caution in thy gentlest gales; but swell’d into a gust—who then, alas! with all his canvas set, and inexpert, and therefore heedless, can withstand thy power?
—William Cowper
Topics: Applause, Popularity, Praise
Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass, the mere materials with which wisdom builds, till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place, does but encumber whom it seems to enrich. Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
—William Cowper
Topics: Knowledge, Wisdom, Humility
Fate steals along with silent tread, Found oftenest in what least we dread; Frowns in the storm with angry brow, But in the sunshine strikes the blow.
—William Cowper
Topics: Fate
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