William Cowper
1731-1800
 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); Online at Google Books.
On a Goldfinch, Starved to Death in His Cage
I wrote the following last summer. The tragical occasion of it really happened at the house next to ours. (William Cowper to the Rev. William Urwin, Nov. 9, 1780)
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.
1785 | William Cowper, The Task [1st Published (London, 1785)] in The Works of William Cowper: His Life, Letters, and Poems, Now First Completed by the Introduction of Cowper's Private Correspondence (Boston, 1855); Online at Google Books.
The Task
The Garden
Detested sport,
That owes its pleasures to another's pain,
That feeds upon the sobs and dying shrieks
Of harmless nature, dumb, but yet endued
With eloquence, that agonies inspire,
Of silent tears and heart-distending sighs!
Vain tears, alas! and sighs that never find
A corresponding tone in jovial souls.
A Winter Walk at Noon
The heart is hard in nature, and unfit
For human fellowship, as being void
Of sympathy, and therefore dead alike
To love and friendship both, that is not pleased
With sight of animals enjoying life,
Nor feels their happiness augment his own.
The seeds of cruelty, that since have swell'd
To such gigantic and enormous growth,
Were sown in human nature's fruitful soil.
Hence date the persecution and the pain,
That man inflicts on all inferior kinds,
Regardless of their plaints. To make him sport,
To gratify the frenzy of his wrath,
Or his base gluttony, are causes good,
And just in his account, why bird and beast
Should suffer torture, and the streams be dyed
With blood of their inhabitants impaled
Earth groans beneath the burthen of a war
Waged with defenceless innocence
Witness, the patient ox, with stripes and yells,
Driven to the slaughter, goaded as he runs
To madness, while the savage, at his heals
Laughs at the sufferer's fury spent
Upon the guiltless passenger o'erthrown.
He too is witness, noblest of the train,
That wait on man, the flight-performing horse:
With unsuspecting readiness he takes,
His murderer on his back, and push'd all day,
With bleeding sides and flanks that heave for life,
To the far distant goal, arrives and dies.
So little mercy shows, who needs so much!
Does law, so jealous in the cause of man,
Denounce no doom on the delinquent? None.
He lives, and o'er his brimming beaker boasts,
(As if barbarity were high desert)
The' inglorious feat, and clamorous in praise
Of the poor brute, seems wisely to suppose,
the honors of his matchless horse his own.
But many a crime, deem'd innocent on earth,
Is register'd in heaven; and there, no doubt,
Have each their record, with a curse annex'd.
Man may dismiss compassion from his heart,
But God will never.
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.
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