The Task (poem)

The Task: A Poem, in Six Books is a poem in blank verse by William Cowper published in 1785, usually seen as his supreme achievement. Its six books are called "The Sofa", "The Timepiece", "The Garden", "The Winter Evening", "The Winter Morning Walk" and "The Winter Walk at Noon". Beginning with a mock-Miltonic passage on the origins of the sofa, it develops into a discursive meditation on the blessings of nature, the retired life, and religious faith, with attacks on slavery, blood sports, fashionable frivolity, lukewarm clergy, and French despotism among other things.

• I sing the Sofa. I, who lately sang
  Truth, Hope, and Charity, and touch'd with awe
  The solemn chords, and with a trembling hand,
  Escap'd with pain from that advent'rous flight,
  Now seek repose upon an humbler theme.
  • Opening lines

• United yet divided, twain at once:
  So sit two kings of Brentford on one throne.
  • Line 77

• Thus first necessity invented stools,
  Convenience next suggested elbow-chairs,
  And luxury the accomplished Sofa last.
  • Line 86

• The nurse sleeps sweetly, hired to watch the sick,
  Whom snoring she disturbs.
  • Line 89

• Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds,
  Exhilarate the spirit, and restore
  The tone of languid nature.
  • Line 181

• The earth was made so various, that the mind
  Of desultory man, studious of change
  And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.
  • Line 506

• Doing good,
  Disinterested good, is not our trade.
  • Line 673

• God made the country, and man made the town.
  • Line 749

• Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
  Some boundless contiguity of shade,
  Where rumor of oppression and deceit,
  Of unsuccessful or successful war,
  Might never reach me more.
  • Line 1

• Mountains interposed
  Make enemies of nations, who had else
  Like kindred drops, been mingled into one.
  • Line 17

• I would not have a slave to till my ground,
  To carry me, to fan me while I sleep
  And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
  That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd.
  • Line 29

• We have no slaves at home. ─ Then why abroad?
  • Line 37

• Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
  Receive our air, that moment they are free!
  They touch our country, and their shackles fall.
  • Line 40

• Fast-anchor'd isle.
  • Line 151

• England, with all thy faults, I love thee still—
  My country! and, while yet a nook is left
  Where English minds and manners may be found,
  Shall be constrained to love thee.
  • Line 206

• Presume to lay their hand upon the ark
  Of her magnificent and awful cause.
  • Line 231

• Praise enough
  To fill the ambition of a private man,
  That Chatham's language was his mother tongue.
  • Line 235

• There is a pleasure in poetic pains
  Which only poets know.
  • Line 285

• Transforms old print
  To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes
  Of gallery critics by a thousand arts.
  • Line 363

• Reading what they never wrote,
  Just fifteen minutes, huddle up their work,
  And with a well-bred whisper close the scene.
  • Line 411

• Whoe'er was edified, themselves were not.
  • Line 444

• O Popular Applause! what heart of man
  Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms?
  • Line 481

• Variety's the very spice of life,
  That gives it all its flavour.
  • Line 606

• She that asks
  Her dear five hundred friends.
  • Line 642

• His head,
  Not yet by time completely silvered o'er,
  Bespoke him past the bounds of freakish youth,
  But strong for service still, and unimpaired.
  • Line 702

• Domestic happiness, thou only bliss
  Of Paradise that has survived the fall!
  • Line 41

• I was a stricken deer that left the herd
  Long since.
  • Line 108

• Dream after dream ensues;
  And still they dream that they shall still succeed;
  And still are disappointed.
  • Line 127

•                                                      Charge
  His mind with meanings that he never had.
  • Line 148

• Great contest follows, and much learned dust
  Involves the combatants; each claiming truth,
  And truth disclaiming both.
  • Line 161

• Defend me, therefore, common sense, say I,
  From reveries so airy, from the toil
  Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
  And growing old in drawing nothing up.
  • Line 188

•                                  Newton, childlike sage!
  Sagacious reader of the works of God.
  • Line 252

• Riches have wings, and grandeur is a dream.
  • Line 265

•                                  Detested sport,
  That owes its pleasures to another's pain.
  • Line 326 (Fox-hunting)

• How various his employments whom the world
  Calls idle, and who justly in return
  Esteems that busy world an idler too!
  • Line 352

• Studious of laborious ease.
  • Line 361

• Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too.
  • Line 566

• So manifold, all pleasing in their kind,
  All healthful, are the employs of rural life,
  Reiterated as the wheel of time,
  Runs round; still ending, and beginning still.
  • Line 624

• To combat may be glorious, and success
  Perhaps may crown us, but to fly is safe.
  • Line 686

• Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
  Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
  And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
  Throws up a steamy column, and the cups
  That cheer but not inebriate wait on each,
  So let us welcome peaceful evening in.
  • Line 34

• Which not even critics criticise.
  • Line 51

• What is it but a map of busy life,
  Its fluctuations, and its vast concerns?
  • Line 55

• 'Tis pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat,
  To peep at such a world,—to see the stir
  Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd.
  • Line 86

• While fancy, like the finger of a clock,
  Runs the great circuit, and is still at home.
  • Line 118

• O Winter, ruler of the inverted year!
  • Line 120

• I crown thee king of intimate delights,
  Fire-side enjoyments, home-born happiness,
  • Line 139

•                                          A Roman meal,
  Such as the mistress of the world once found
  Delicious, when her patriots of high note,
  Perhaps by moonlight, at their humble doors,
  And under an old oak’s domestic shade,
  Enjoyed—spare feast!—a radish and an egg.
  • Line 168

• The slope of faces from the floor to th' roof,
  (As if one master-spring controlled them all),
  Relaxed into a universal grin.
  • Line 202 (Theatre)

• With spots quadrangular of diamond form,
  Ensanguined hearts, clubs typical of strife,
  And spades, the emblems of untimely graves.
  • Line 217

• In indolent vacuity of thought.
  • Line 297

• It seems the part of wisdom.
  • Line 336

• All learned, and all drunk!
  • Line 478

• Gloriously drunk, obey the important call.
  • Line 510

• Those golden times
  And those Arcadian scenes that Maro sings,
  And Sidney, warbler of poetic prose.
  • Line 514

• The Frenchman's darling.
  • Line 765

• Some must be great. 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 ordain'd to fill.
  • Line 788

• Shaggy and lean and shrewd, with pointed ears
  And tail cropped short, half lurcher and half cur.
  • Line 45

• Silently as a dream the fabric rose —
  No sound of hammer or of saw was there.
  • Line 144

• But war's a game, which, were their subjects wise,
  Kings would not play at.
  • Line 187

• The beggarly last doit.
  • Line 316

• As dreadful as the Manichean god,
  Adored through fear, strong only to destroy.
  • Line 444

• The still small voice is wanted.
  • Line 685

• He is the freeman whom the truth makes free.
  • Line 733

• With filial confidence inspired,
  Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye,
  And smiling say, My Father made them all!
  • Line 745

• Acquaint thyself with God, if thou would'st taste
  His works. Admitted once to his embrace,
  Thou shalt perceive that thou was blind before:
  Thine eye shall be instructed; and thine heart
  Made pure shall relish with divine delight
  Till then unfelt, what hands divine have wrought.
  • Line 779

• Give what Thou canst, without Thee we are poor;
  And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.
  • Line 905

• There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
  And as the mind 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.
  How soft the music of those village bells
  Falling at intervals upon the ear
  In cadence sweet!
  • Line 1

• Here the heart
  May give a useful lesson to the head,
  And Learning wiser grow without his books.
  • Line 85

• Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,
  Have oft-times no connexion. Knowledge dwells
  in heads replete with thoughts of other men,
  Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
  • Line 88

• 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.
  Books are not seldom talismans and spells.
  • Line 92

• Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much,
  Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
  • Line 96

• Some to the fascination of a name
  Surrender judgment hoodwink'd.
  • Line 101

• Nature is but a name for an effect,
  Whose cause is God.
  • Line 223

• Not a flower
  But shows some touch, in freckle, streak or stain,
  Of his unrivall'd pencil.
  • Line 240

• A cheap but wholesome salad from the brook.
  • Line 304

• But many a crime deem'd innocent on earth
  Is register'd in Heaven; and these no doubt
  Have each their record, with a curse annex'd.
  Man may dismiss compassion from his heart,
  But God will never.
  • Line 439

• I would not enter on my list of friends,
  (Though graced with polish'd manners and fine sense,
  Yet wanting sensibility) the man
  Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
  An inadvertent step may crush the snail
  That crawls at evening in the public path;
  But he that has humanity, forewarn'd,
  Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.
  • Line 560

• Encyclopedic article on The Task (poem) on Wikipedia