February Cowper. 59 



throughout, and very grand. The subject is introduced 

 by a few weak and prosaic verses, which injure the effect 

 in the original, but when the nobler lines are detached 

 from these the ore is pure indeed : 



1 No forest fell 



When thou wouldst build ; no quarry sent its stores 

 To enrich thy walls : but thou didst hew the floods, 

 And make thy marble of the glassy wave. 

 In such a palace Aristaeus found 

 Gyrene, when he bore the plaintive tale 

 Of his lost bees to her maternal ear : 

 In such a palace Poetry might place 

 The armory of Winter ; where his troops, 

 The gloomy clouds, find weapons, arrowy sleet, 

 Skin-piercing volley, blossom-bruising hail, 

 And snow, that often blinds the traveller's course, 

 And wraps him in an unexpected tomb. 

 Silently as a dream the fabric rose ; 

 No sound of hammer or of saw was there. 

 Ice upon ice, the well-adjusted parts 

 Were soon conjoined : nor other cement asked 

 Than water interfused to make them one. 

 Lamps gracefully disposed, and of all hues, 

 Illumined every side ; a watery light 

 Gleamed through the clear transparency, that seemed 

 Another moon new risen, or meteor fallen 

 From heaven to earth, of lambent flame serene.* 



Surely these lines have qualities which m\\ survive 

 the vicissitudes of taste ; but we are so impeded in our 

 judgment of the poets by the fashions of two epochs, 

 by their fashions and our fashions, that it is almost im- 

 possible for us to arrive at an unprejudiced appreciation 



