William Cowper , né à Berkhamsted, dans le comté anglais de Hertfordshire le 26 novembre 1731, et mort le 25 avril 1800 à East-Dereham, dans le Norfolk , est un poète britannique considéré comme le précurseur du Romantisme en poésie.
Ne commençant à publier qu'à l’âge de quarante ans, William Cowper innova en abandonnant le style néo-classique et en choisissant pour thème des scènes de la vie quotidienne des campagnes anglaises, qui firent de lui l'un des poètes les plus populaires de son temps. Particulièrement apprécié par l'écrivain anglais Jane Austen - plusieurs des héroïnes de ses romans le citent ou font allusion à ses poèmes - ce précurseur du romantisme est reconnu par ses successeurs immédiats : Wordsworth et Coleridge. La poétesse Elizabeth Barrett Browning lui a même dédié un poème : Cowper's Grave. Poète moralisant, il a aussi laissé de nombreuses hymnes d'inspiration évangélique. Wikipedia
“Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.”
William Cowper The Task
Source: The Task (1785), Book VI, Winter Walk at Noon, Line 92.
Contexte: 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.
William Cowper The Task
Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 1.
“Silently as a dream the fabric rose —
No sound of hammer or of saw was there.”
William Cowper The Task
Source: The Task (1785), Book V, The Winter Morning Walk, Line 144.
“Regions Caesar never knew
Thy posterity shall sway”
"Boadicea" (1782).
Contexte: "Regions Caesar never knew
Thy posterity shall sway;
Where his eagles never flew,
None invincible as they."Such the bard's prophetic words, Pregnant with celestial fire, Bending as he swept the chords Of his sweet but awful lyre.
"Boadicea" (1782).
Contexte: "Regions Caesar never knew
Thy posterity shall sway;
Where his eagles never flew,
None invincible as they."Such the bard's prophetic words, Pregnant with celestial fire, Bending as he swept the chords Of his sweet but awful lyre.
“O tell me I yet have a friend,
Though a friend I am never to see.”
Source: Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk (1782), Line 37.
Contexte: My friends, do they now and then send
A wish or a thought after me?
O tell me I yet have a friend,
Though a friend I am never to see.
“It seems idolatry with some excuse,
When our forefather Druids in their oaks
Imagined sanctity.”
Source: The Yardley Oak (1791), Lines 9-11
“He would not, with a peremptory tone,
Assert the nose upon his face his own.”
Source: Conversation (1782), Line 121.
“I play with syllables and sport in song”
From:First of the Moral Satires
Table Talk (1782)
William Cowper The Task
Source: The Task (1785), Book III, The Garden, Line 161.
"To a Young Lady" (1782).
William Cowper The Task
Source: The Task (1785), Book III, The Garden, Line 127.
St. 28.
The Diverting History of John Gilpin (1785)
Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
William Cowper The Task
Source: The Task (1785), Book I, The Sofa, Line 506.
William Cowper The Task
Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 40.
“Gloriously drunk, obey the important call.”
William Cowper The Task
Source: The Task (1785), Book IV, The Winter Evening, Line 510.
“Low ambition and the thirst of praise.”
Source: Table Talk (1782), Line 591.
“Nature is but a name for an effect,
Whose cause is God.”
William Cowper The Task
Source: The Task (1785), Book VI, Winter Walk at Noon, Line 223.
“What is it but a map of busy life,
Its fluctuations, and its vast concerns?”
William Cowper The Task
Source: The Task (1785), Book IV, The Winter Evening, Line 55.
“Domestic happiness, thou only bliss
Of Paradise that has survived the fall!”
William Cowper The Task
Source: The Task (1785), Book III, The Garden, Line 41.
“Doing good,
Disinterested good, is not our trade.”
William Cowper The Task
Source: The Task (1785), Book I, The Sofa, Line 673.
“Give what Thou canst, without Thee we are poor;
And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.”
William Cowper The Task
Source: The Task (1785), Book V, The Winter Morning Walk, Line 905.
“A business with an income at its heels
Furnishes always oil for its own wheels.”
William Cowper Retirement
Source: Retirement (1782), Line 615.
“Our wasted oil unprofitably burns,
Like hidden lamps in old sepulchral urns.”
Source: Conversation (1782), Line 357.
Source: Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk (1782), Line 53.
“Built God a church, and laugh'd his word to scorn.”
William Cowper Retirement
Source: Retirement (1782), Line 688.
Source: The Yardley Oak (1791), Lines 18-23
