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 

 Cyrene, 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 will 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 



