88 WA TERSIDE SKETCHES. 



great grazing shires. Thus it fully justifies Cowper's repeated 

 use of the expression referred to. He says : 



" Shut out from more important views 

 Fast by the banks of the slow-winding Ouse : 

 Content if thus sequestered I may raise 

 A monitor's, though not a poet's praise, 

 And while I teach an art too little known, 

 To close life wisely, may not waste my own." 



In such words terminates the not half appreciated poem 

 on " Retirement." Yet again the poet returns to his idea. 

 He has not written many pages of his " Sofa " before he 

 draws a picture of the river he knew so well and loved so 

 much, which, like all his pictures of the country about 

 Olney, is Wilkie-like in its fidelity to details : 



" Here Ouse, slew-winding through a level plain 

 Of spacious meads with cattle sprinkled o'er, 

 Conducts the eye along the sinuous course 

 Delighted. There fast rooted in their bank 

 Stand, never over-looked, our favourite elms 

 That screen the herdsman's solitary hut ; 

 While far beyond, and overthwart the stream, 

 That as with molten glass inlays the vale, 

 The sloping land recedes into the clouds, 

 Displaying on its varied side the grace 

 Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower, 

 Tall spire from which the sound of cheerful bells 

 Just undulates upon the listening ear ; 

 Groves, heaths, and smoking villages remote." 



This sketch is as faithful now as ever it was, and it is a 

 description that may be said to apply not only to the 

 particular district in which the poet lived and suffered, but 

 to the general character of the river. Here and there the 

 Ouse is not without picturesqueness, but there is always that 

 fine suggestion of molten glass inlaying the vale. By no 



