Deriv'd from nature's nobleft part,
The centre of a glowing heart!

And this is what the world, who knows
No flights, above the pitch of prose,
His more fublime vagaries flighting,
Denominates an itch for writing.
No wonder I, who fcribble rhyme,
To catch the triflers of the time,
And tell them truths divine, and clear,
Which couch'd in profe, they will not hear;
Who labour hard to allure, and draw
The loiterers I never faw,

Should feel that itching, and that tingling,
With all my purpose intermingling,
intrinfic merit true,

Το

your

When call'd to addrefs myself to you.

Mysterious are HIS ways, whofe power

Brings forth that unexpected hour,
When minds that never met before,
Shall meet, unite, and part no more:
It is th' allotment of the skies,
The hand of the Supremely Wife,
That guides and governs our affections,
And plans and orders our connexions;
Directs us in our diftant road,

And marks the bounds of our abode.

Thus we were fettled when you
found us,
Peasants and children all around us,
Not dreaming of fo dear a friend,
Deep in the abyfs of Silver-End.*
Thus Martha, ev'n against her will,
Perch'd on the top of yonder hill;

* An obfcure part of Olney, adjoining to the refidence of Cowper, which faced the market-place.

And you, though you must needs prefer
The fairer fcenes of fweet Sancerre,+
Are come from diftant Loire, to choose
A cottage on the banks of Ouse.
This page of Providence, quite new,
And now juft opening to our view,
Employs our prefent thoughts and pains,
To guess, and spell, what it contains:
But day by day, and year by year,
Will make the dark enigma clear;
And furnish us perhaps at laft,
Like other scenes already paft,
With proof, that we, and our affairs
Are part of a Jehovah's cares :-
For God unfolds, by flow degrees,
The purport of his deep decrees;
hour a clearer light
In aid of our defective fight;

Sheds every

And spreads at length, before the foul,
A beautiful, and perfect whole,
Which busy man's inventive brain
Toils to anticipate in vain.

Say Anna, had you never known
The beauties of a rofe full blown,
Could you, though luminous your eye,.
By looking on the bud, defcry,
Or guefs, with a prophetic power,
The future fplendour of the flower?
Juft fo th' Omnipotent, who turns
The fyftem of a world's concerns,
From mere minutiæ can educe
Events of most important use;
And bid a dawning sky display
The blaze of a meridian day.

Lady Auften's refidence in France.

The works of man tend, one and all,

As needs they must, from great to small;
And vanity absorbs at length

The monuments of human strength.
But who can tell how vast the plan,
Which this day's incident began?
Too fmall perhaps the flight occafion
For our dim-fighted obfervation;
It pafs'd unnotic'd, as the bird
That cleaves the yielding air unheard,
And yet may prove, when understood,
An harbinger of endless good.

Not that I deem, or mean to call
Friendship a bleffing cheap, or small;
But merely to remark, that ours,
Like fome of nature's sweetest flowers,
Rofe from a feed of tiny fize,
That feem'd to promise no fuch prize :
A tranfient vifit intervening,

And made almost without a meaning,
(Hardly the effect of inclination,
Much lefs of pleafing expectation!)
Produc'd a friendship, then begun,
That has cemented us in one;

And plac'd it in our power to prove,

By long fidelity and love,

That Solomon has wifely spoken:

"A three-fold cord is not foon broken."

In this interesting poem the author expreffes a lively and devout prefage of the fuperior productions, that were to arife in the process of time, from a friendship so unexpected, and so pleasing; but he does not feem to have been aware, in the flightest degree, of the evident dangers, that must naturally attend an intimacy fo very close, yet perfectly innocent, between a Poet and two la

dies, who with very different mental powers, had each reason to flatter herself that she could agreeably promote the ftudies, and animate the fancy of this fafcinating Bard.

Genius of the moft exquifite kind is fometimes, and perhaps generally, so modest and diffident, as to require continual folicitation and encouragement, from the voice of fympathy and friendship, to lead it into permanent and fuccessful exertion. Such was the genius of Cowper and he therefore confidered the cheerful and animating fociety of his new accomplished friend, as a bleffing conferred on him by the fignal favour of Providence. She returned the following fummer to the house of her fifter, fituated on the brow of a hill, the foot of which is washed by the river Oufe, as it flows between Clifton and Olney. Her benevolent ingenuity was exerted to guard the spirits of Cowper from finking again into that hypochondriacal dejection, to which, even in her company, he still sometimes discovered an alarming tendency. To promote his occupation and amufement, fhe furnished him with a small portable printing-prefs, and he gratefully fent her the following verfes, printed by himself, and enclosed in a billet that alludes to the occafion on which they were compofed-a very unfeafonable flood, that interrupted the communication between Clifton and Olney.

TO watch the ftorms, and hear the sky
Give all our Almanacks the lie
To shake with cold, and fee the plains
In autumn drown'd with wintry rains;
'Tis thus I spend my moments here,
And wish myfelf a Dutch Mynheer;
I then fhould have no need of wit;
For lumpish Hollander unfit!

Nor fhould I then repine at mud,
Or meadows delug'd by a flood;
But in a bog live well content,
And find it just my element;
Should be a clod, and not a man,
Nor wifh in vain for fifter Ann,
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 fee my beginning; I do not know but in time I may proceed even to the printing of halfpenny ballads. Excufe the coarseness of my paper; I wafted fuch a quantity before I could accomplish any thing legible, that I could not afford finer. I intend to employ an ingenius mechanic of the town to make me a longer cafe; for you may obferve, that my lines turn up their tales like Dutch maftiffs, fo difficult do I find it to make the two halves exactly coincide with each other.

We wait with impatience for the departure of this unfeasonable flood. We think of you, and talk of you, but we can do no more, till the waters fhall fubfide. I do not think our correfpondence fhould 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 fifter, with Mrs. Unwin's best love. WM. COWPER.

Auguft 12, 1782.

A flood that precluded him from the converfation of fuch an enlivening friend, was to Cowper a ferious evil; but he was happily relieved from the apprehenfion of