To Cowper

Sweet are thy strains, celestial Bard;
⁠And oft, in childhood's years,
I've read them o'er and o'er again,
⁠With floods of silent tears.

The language of my inmost heart,
⁠I traced in every line;
My sins, my sorrows, hopes, and fears,
⁠Were there—and only mine.

All for myself the sigh would swell,
⁠The tear of auguish start;
I little knew what wilder woe
⁠Had filled the Poet's heart.

I did not know the nights of gloom,
⁠The days of misery;
The long, long yеars of dark despair,
⁠That crushed and tortured thee.

But, thеy are gone; from earth at length
⁠Thy gentle soul is pass'd,
And in the bosom of its God
⁠Has found its home at last.

It must be so, if God is love,
⁠And answers fervent prayer;
Then surely thou shalt dwell on high,
⁠And I may meet thee there.

Is he the source of every good,
⁠The spring of purity?
Then in thine hours of deepest woe,
⁠Thy God was still with thee.

How else, when every hope was fled,
⁠Couldst thou so fondly cling
To holy things and holy men?
⁠And how so sweetly sing,

Of things that God alone could teach?
⁠And whence that purity,
That hatred of all sinful ways—
⁠That gentle charity?

Are these the symptoms of a heart
⁠Of heavenly grace bereft:
For ever banished from its God,
⁠To Satan's fury left?

Yet, should thy darkest fears be true,
⁠If Heaven be so severe,
That such a soul as thine is lost,—
⁠Oh! how shall I appear?