William Cowper
 1785 | William Cowper, "The Garden," [offsite ebook] in The Task [First Published in Poems (London, 1785)] in Poems (London, 1786).
Detested sport,
That owes its pleasures to another's pain,
That feeds upon the sobs and dying shrieks
Of harmless nature, dumb, but yet endu'd
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.
(William Cowper, The Task, "The Garden" [offsite ebook])
1785 | William Cowper, "A Winter Walk at Noon," [offsite ebook] in The Task [First Published in Poems (London, 1785)] in Poems (London, 1786).
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 pleas'd
With sight of animals enjoying life,
Nor feels their happiness augment his own.
(William Cowper, The Task, "A Winter Walk at Noon")
The seeds of cruelty, that since have swell'd
To such gigantic and enormous growth,
Were sown in human nature's fruitful foil.
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 casues good,
And just in his account, why bird and beast
Shoud suffer torture, and the streams be dy'd
With blood of their inhabitants impal'd
Earth groans beneath the burthen of a war,
Wag'd with defenceless innocence
(William Cowper, The Task, "A Winter Walk at Noon")
Witness, the patient ox, with stripes and yells,
Driv'n to the slaughter, goaded as he runs
To madness, while the savage, at his heals
Laughs at the franctic suff'rer'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 murth'rer on his back, and push'd all day,
With bleeding sides and flanks that heave for life,
To the far-distanct 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 honours of his matchless horse his own.
But many a crime, deem'd innocent on earth,
Is register'd in heav'n, and there, no doubt,
Have each their record, with a curse annext.
Man may dismiss compassion from his heart,
But God will never.
(William Cowper, The Task, "A Winter Walk at Noon")
I would not enter on my list of friends,
(Though grac'd with polish'd manners, and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility) the man
Who needlessley 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.
(William Cowper, The Task, "A Winter Walk at Noon")
 Transcriber's Notes
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