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Animal Rights History Timeline » [1660-1785] Enlightenment: » William Cowper

William Cowper

On a Goldfinch, Starved to Death in His Cage

[1782 [1780]] William Cowper, On a Goldfinch, Starved to Death in His Cage [1st Published in Poems (London, 1782)] in The Works of William Cowper: His Life, Letters, and Poems, Now First Completed by the Introduction of Cowper's Private Correspondence (Boston, 1855; Google Books: Online Library of Free eBooks) 632.

In a letter to the Rev. William Urwin, Nov. 9., 1780, William Cowper explains "I wrote the following last summer. The tragical occasion of it really happened at the house next to ours." (82)

Time was when I was free as air,
The thistle's downy seed my fare,
My drink the morning dew;
I perch'd at will on every spray,
My form genteel, my plumage gay,
My strains forever new.

But gaudy plumage, sprightly strain,
And form genteel were all in vain,
And of a transient date;
For, caught and caged, and starved to death,
In dying sighs my little breath
Soon pass'd the wiry grate.

Thanks, gentle swain, for all my woes,
And thanks for this effectual close
And cure of every ill!
More cruelty could none express;
And I, if you had shown me less,
Had been your prisoner still. (632)