Silent Fear, Overflowing With Love

William Cowper had a break down. That is a very mild term for what he had. He became an invalid and nearly a lunatic for a couple of years. It was all caused by his panic when he finished his tutelage in the law and was to give his defense before a panel of lawyers. He couldn't get up in front of them. He couldn't have them looking at him. He had stage fright. I can so well relate! Not so long ago I was so paralized to think of getting up in front of the church and preaching that on Sunday morning I couldn't quit thinking how much easier it would be to just kill myself than to have to go up there. Stupid? Maybe. But I can relate to Cowper's panic.

During his "illness," as it is so placidly referred to, some kind folk

Playing The Part Of Poet

Garbage can be literature. The voice is all. That is the main concept that I always strove to leave with my literature students. The filth on bathroom walls might be literature, albeit a low form of it. And eloquence might fall short.

To qualify as literature, a group of words (usually but not always written) must leave us access to the real voice of the author or authors.

Verse That Immortalizes Whom It Sings

When William Cowper was ill and in need of care, the family of the Reverend Morley Unwin took him in. They cared for him for years in his illness.

The son, William Unwin, grew and became a minister. Cowper was to him something of mentor and elder brother to whom he would write with his ministerial questions, to which Cowper would respond with long, thoughtful, and affectionate letters.

But it was to Mary, the wife of Morley and the mother of William that Cowper became the most attached. When Morley died, Cowper remained in the home with William and Mary until William moved away for his ministerial duties.

Deep in Unfathomable Mines

Among the many great works of William Cowper, is his collaboration with his friend John Newton on a hymnal to be used in their church. That is, in the church of which Newton was pastor and of which Cowper was a member.

The most known song in the book was Newton's Amazing Grace. Most of the many hymns in the book are able to be sung to about four or five tunes. The following hymn which is among Cowper's contributions to the hymnal was probably sung to the same tune as Amazing Grace. It does, however, sound better when read than when sung.

He That Stabs Deepest

William Cowper spent years preparing to become a barrister, or at least a government clerk. And he was bright. He learned his lessons and was exemplary in testing and in his essays, although also a bit of a mocker of the institution. But there came a day when a final examination was due. It couldn't be passed by. It couldn't be mocked away. He had to do it in order to either gain the job for which he had been nominated, or even to keep the post at which he had been long stationed.

He had to stand in front of a group of lawyers and give answers. Out loud. With them watching him. And listening. And judging.

Typical Cowper

Having posted a poem that seems very out of character for William Cowper, I will now post a poem in which we hear the voice of the man much more distinctly. This is Cowper at his Cowperest.

"Ouse" is a river near Olney along which Cowper used to take his walks.

THE POPLAR FIELD

The poplars are felled, farewell to the shade,
And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade;
The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves,
Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives.

Twelve years have elaps'd, since I last took a view
Of my favorite field, and the bank where they grew;
And now in the grass behold they are laid,
And the tree is my seat, that once lent me shade.

The blackbird has fled to another retreat,
Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat,
And the scene, where his melody charm'd me before,
Resounds with his sweet-flowing ditty no more.

My fugitive years are all hasting away,
And I must ere long lie as lowly as they,
With a turf on my breast, and a stone at my head,
Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead.

The change both my heart and my fancy employs,
I reflect on the frailty of man, and his joys;
Short-lived as we are, yet our pleasures, we see,
Have a still shorter date, and die sooner than we.

Cowper the Revolutionary?

William Cowper is now probably mostly remembered for his comic poem "John Gilpin's Ride." Early on though, it was "Task," his epic poem of the evolution of the sofa--from stools into hardbacked chairs into the sitting room sofa--that was most admired.

Although technically Cowper preceeds the Romantic era, Coleridge, Wordsworth and Blake were all infatuated with him, Task in particular, during the years that they were working out the style that would eventually be collectively called Romantic. And one hears echoes of Cowper in some of the work of each of them. In fact William Blake published his own edition of the poetical works of William Cowper, complete with his own engravings.

Together with his pastor and close friend John Newton, he wrote an entire hymnal: the Ulney Hymnal. At the outset they were to be equal partners in the work. But when Cowper fell into a depression for a few years and failed to complete more than a handful of hymns, John Newton took up the slack and wrote most of Cowper's allotment for the hymnal. This was very much in character for each of them.

From that hymnal very few are now used, but you may have sung "Amazing Grace" (Newton) a time or two, and maybe even "God Works in a Mysterious Way" (Cowper). Though rarely now sung, the hymnal is an exquisite testimony to the passionate faith and friendship of these two extraordinary men.

So shy that, having studied years to become a lawyer, he was unable to complete the final step of an oral examination. When he attempted to stand in front of an audience his mind collapsed and he became quite literally mad, nearly dying from the experience. His recovery from the episode took years, and it was never really complete. Moving from London to a country town to avoid crowds, we was addicted to long lonely walks in the drizzly English countryside and to his private sitting room. There he would paint and write. And be alone. Very quiet and physically soft, I can not picture him even holding a dirty rock, let alone throwing it through a window.

Written while England was losing the war to her American colonies, the poem that follows is, I think, the most uncharacteristic poem that could be presented in terms of violent sentiment, yet it is entirely Cowper in sound and feel. And the love of freedom is also entirely Cowper. It must have been somewhat controversial, maybe even illegal, to write such a thing during the war.

THE MODERN PATRIOT

Rebellion is my theme all day;
I only wish 'twould come
(As who knows but perhaps it may!)
A little nearer home.

Yon roaring boys, who rave and fight
On t'other side th'Atlantic,
I always held them in the right,
But most so when most frantic.

When lawless mobs insult the court,
That man shall be my toast,
If breaking windows be the sport,
Who bravely breaks the most.

But O! for him my fancy culls
The choicest flow'rs she bears,
Who constitutionally pulls
Your house about your ears.

Such civil broils are my delight,
Though some folks can't endure them,
Who say the mob are mad outright,
And that a rope must cure them.

A rope! I wish we partiots had
Such strings for all who need 'em--
What! hang a man for going mad!
Then farewell British freedom.

To Love the Law

A young pastor once was troubled by a teenager asking if the law of the Sabbath were still binding in modern Christian times. What pastor has not dealt with similar queries? We are no longer under law, right? Isn’t that why Jesus died?

The young pastor mentioned the teenager in a letter to his mentor, the poet William Cowper. Cowper suggested, “I would ask my catechumen one short question− ‘Do you love the day, or do you not? If you love it, you will never inquire how far you may safely deprive yourself of the enjoyment of it.’”[1]

How would our catechumens fare in such a test? How would we? Do we love the Sabbath? Do we love God’s law in general? Do David’s psalms in praise of the law give vent to the overflowing thoughts of our hearts?

Or is it idolatrous to worship the law? Doesn’t all of our worship belong to God alone? Did David gush so just because it was the best he knew? He didn’t know about Jesus after all, right?

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer points out though:

All prayers of the Bible are such prayers which we pray together with Jesus Christ, in which he accompanies us, and through which he brings us into the presence of God.
If we want to read and pray the prayers of the Bible and especially the Psalms, therefore, we must not ask first what they have to do with us, but what they have to do with Jesus Christ.[2]

In the Psalms we get to eavesdrop on Jesus’ prayers to his Father. And so many of the Psalms are nothing short of law worship. If Jesus is praying in the Psalms, is he an idolater? What is this law that God himself sings its praises?


[1] William Cowper, Letters of William Cowper (London: Religious Tract Society, 1870), p. 116.
[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1974), p. 14.