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William Cowper cytaty
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William Cowper − angielski poeta religijny okresu sentymentalizmu, autor wielu uznanych pieśni kościelnych, związany z nurtem wiejskim; przez wielu mylnie kojarzony z „rewolucją romantyczną” w literaturze XVIII wieku.

Cowper, skądinąd twórca żarliwych hymnów chrześcijańskich oraz pogodnych i prostych wierszy o przyrodzie, osobiście przez całe życie cierpiał na głębokie ataki depresji, w ostatnich latach życia uwieńczone trwającym aż do śmierci przeświadczeniem o czekającym go, nieuchronnym, wiecznym potępieniu. Wszystko to złożyło się na „żywot najsmutniejszego i najbardziej czułego żywota angielskiego pisarza”.

Niewątpliwą zasługą Cowpera był twórczy regres, co w jego wykonaniu oznaczało zwrócenie się do poezji przeszłości, kultywowanie prostoty wyrazu oraz pisania intuicyjnego. Jego wiersze na dobre porzuciły literacki salon na rzecz lokalnej przyrody oraz codziennego życia angielskich chłopów. Jak zauważył jeden ze współczesnych krytyków, Cowper „kochał naturę miłością nie zadającą pytań i nie znającą problemów”. Inspirował się pismami mistycznymi Madame Guyon oraz nurtem kwietyzmu, pod względem estetycznym zaś − pisarstwem Johna Miltona.

Często zestawia się go w opozycji do Alexandra Pope'a, ukazując tym samym dwa przeciwstawne bieguny poezji angielskiego Oświecenia, gdzie Pope reprezentuje „mistrzostwo formalne” oraz „poezję miasta”, a Cowper − „prymitywizm formalny” oraz „poezję wsi”. Wikipedia  

✵ 26. Listopad 1731 – 25. Kwiecień 1800
William Cowper Fotografia
William Cowper: 176   Cytatów 0   Polubień

William Cowper cytaty

„Miał rację pewien Francuz zauważając: „Jakże słodka jest samotność!” Ale chciałbym mieć przyjaciela, któremu mógłbym to powiedzieć!”

William Cowper
O samotności

William Cowper: Cytaty po angielsku

“And Katerfelto, with his hair on end
At his own wonders, wondering for his bread.
'T is 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.”

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William Cowper The Task

Źródło: The Task (1785), Book IV, The Winter Evening, Line 86.

“How fleet is a glance of the mind!
Compared with the speed of its flight
The tempest itself lags behind,
And the swift-winged arrows of light.”

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William Cowper

Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“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.”

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William Cowper The Task

Źródło: The Task (1785), Book V, The Winter Morning Walk, Line 779.

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

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William Cowper The Task

Źródło: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 411.

“There is a bird who by his coat,
And by the hoarseness of his note,
Might be supposed a crow.”

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William Cowper

The Jackdaw (translation from Vincent Bourne).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Society friendship and love
Divinely bestow'd upon man,
O had I the wings of a dove
How soon I would taste you again!”

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William Cowper

Źródło: Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk (1782), Line 17.

“And still to love, though prest with ill,
In wintry age to feel no chill,
With me is to be lovely still,
My Mary!”

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William Cowper

"To Mary", st. 11 (1791).

“Here the heart
May give a useful lesson to the head,
And Learning wiser grow without his books.”

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William Cowper The Task

Źródło: The Task (1785), Book VI, Winter Walk at Noon, Line 85.

“My soul
Shall bear that also; for, by practice taught,
I have learned patience, having much endured.”

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William Cowper

The Odyssey of Homer: translated into English blank verse (1791), Book V, line 264.

“I pity bashful men, who feel the pain
Of fancied scorn and undeserved disdain,
And bear the marks upon a blushing face,
Of needless shame, and self-impos'd disgrace.”

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William Cowper

Źródło: Conversation (1782), Line 347.

“I was a stricken deer that left the herd
Long since.”

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William Cowper The Task

Źródło: The Task (1785), Book III, The Garden, Line 108.

“No voice divine the storm allay'd,
No light propitious shone;
When, snatch'd from all effectual aid,
We perish'd, each alone;
But I beneath a rougher sea,
And whelmed in deeper gulphs than he.”

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William Cowper The Castaway

"The Castaway" (1799).

“She that asks
Her dear five hundred friends.”

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William Cowper The Task

Źródło: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 642.

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

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William Cowper The Task

Źródło: The Task (1785), Book VI, Winter Walk at Noon, Line 240.

“No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach.”

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William Cowper

From the writings of William Cowper Brann (1855 – 1898), known as Brann the Iconoclast. http://www.google.co.uk/books?id=zc6W3a68NsoC&pg=PA60&dq=%22patriot+on+an+empty%22+inauthor:Brann&as_brr=0&sig=an5LOns0MG1gg4C2x7VNE1HdeuI
Misattributed

“Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations, who had else
Like kindred drops, been mingled into one.”

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William Cowper The Task

Źródło: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 17.

“Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too.”

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William Cowper The Task

Źródło: The Task (1785), Book III, The Garden, Line 566.

“Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true,—
A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew.”

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William Cowper

Truth, line 327.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“He that holds fast the golden mean, 22
And lives contentedly between
The little and the great,
Feels not the wants that pinch the poor,
Nor plagues that haunt the rich man's door.”

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William Cowper

Translation of Horace, book ii, Ode x.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“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.”

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William Cowper The Task

Źródło: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 702.

“Fate steals along with silent tread,
Found oftenest in what least we dread,
Frowns in the storm with angry brow,
But in the sunshine strikes the blow.”

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William Cowper

"A Fable" (or "The Raven"), line 36.

“I burn to set the imprison'd wranglers free,
And give them voice and utterance once again.
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.”

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William Cowper The Task

Źródło: The Task (1785), Book IV, The Winter Evening, Line 34.

“An idler is a watch that wants both hands;
As useless when it goes as when it stands.”

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William Cowper Retirement

Źródło: Retirement (1782), Line 681.

“Pernicious weed! whose scent the fair annoys,
Unfriendly to society's chief joys,
Thy worst effect is banishing for hours
The sex whose presence civilizes ours.”

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William Cowper

Źródło: Conversation (1782), Line 251.

“But that disease when soberly defined
Is the false fire of an o'erheated mind.”

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William Cowper

Źródło: Conversation (1782), Line 667; of fanaticism.

“Remorse, the fatal egg by Pleasure laid.”

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William Cowper

Źródło: The Progress of Error (1782), Line 240.

“When one that holds communion with the skies
Has fill'd his urn where these pure waters rise,
And once more mingles with us meaner things,
'T is e'en as if an angel shook his wings.”

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William Cowper

Charity, line 435.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain;
God is his own interpreter,
And he will make it plain.”

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William Cowper

No. 35, "Light Shining out of Darkness".
Olney Hymns (1779)