Charms more than silence. Meditation here
May think down hours to moments. Here the heart
May give a useful lesson to the head,
And Learning wiser grow without his books.
Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,
Have oft-times no connection. Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men;
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
Books are not seldom talismans and spells,
By which the magic art of shrewder wits
Holds an unthinking multitude enthrall'd.
Some to the fascination of a name
Surrender judgment hood-wink'd. Some the style
Infatuates, and through labyrinths and wilds
Of error leads them, by a tune entranc'd.
While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear
The insupportable fatigue of thought,
And swallowing therefore without pause or choice
The total grist unsifted, husks and all.
But trees, and rivulets whose rapid course
Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer,
And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs,
And lanes, in which the primrose ere her time
Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root,
Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth,
Not shy, as in the world, and to be won
By slow solicitation, seize at once
The roving thought, and fix it on themselves."

His satire is also excellent. It is pointed and forcible, with the
polished manners of the gentleman, and the honest indignation of the
virtuous man. His religious poetry, except where it takes a tincture of
controversial heat, wants elevation and fire. His Muse had not a
seraph's wing. I might refer, in illustration of this opinion, to the
laboured anticipation of the Millennium at the end of the sixth book. He
could describe a piece of shell-work as well as any modern poet: but he
could not describe the New Jerusalem so well as John Bunyan;--nor are
his verses on Alexander Selkirk so good as Robinson Crusoe. The one is
not so much like a vision, nor is the other so much like the reality.

The first volume of Cowper's poems has, however, been less read than
it deserved. The comparison in these poems of the proud and humble
believer to the peacock and the pheasant, and the parallel between
Voltaire and the poor cottager, are exquisite pieces of eloquence and
poetry, particularly the last.

"Yon cottager, who weaves at her own door,