Of friends, of hope, of all bereft, "Not long beneath the whelming brine, Expert to swim, he lay, Nor soon he felt his strength decline, Or courage die away, But waged with death a lasting strife, “He shouted; nor his friends had failed They left their outcast mate behind, "Some succor yet they could afford, But he, they knew, nor ship, nor shore, "Nor cruel, as it seemed, could he Yet bitter felt it still to die Deserted, and his friends so nigh. "He long survives who lives an hour In ocean self-upheld; a feeling for the There is hardly a The Task is full One noticeable thing in Cowper's verses is his sympathy with the humanity of which he was part, suffering and oppressed everywhere. poem of his which does not speak this. of such lines: "My soul is sick with every day's report Of wrong and outrage, with which earth is filled." And again, "I would not have a slave to till my ground, To carry me, to fan me while I sleep, And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth That sinews bought and sold have ever earned." This tenderness in Cowper breaks out even for the most helpless animal,— "I would not enter on my list of friends (Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm." This spirit of humanity, of sympathy for the sorrows and ardor for the rights of man, had long needed a voice among the poets, and it was only a year later than Cowper's Task when a little volume of poems apppeared, in which this voice spoke with a power it had never before possessed. 1759-1796 This volume was published in Scotland, and written by ROBERT BURNS, a poet of the people. He was the son of a farmer, and was himself a farm laborer till manhood. Without training or the culture of the schools, he was a born poet, singing his songs in the dialect of Scotland, the homely English spoken by the Scottish people, often inelegant and full of roughness, but rich in expression and feeling. As he was fettered with no rules of verse-making, Burns sang with an ease and freedom that brought back the earlier days of song. Yet his poetry had also a ring in it that was the echo of the modern spirit. It was ten years after the American Revolution, which had declared that men were equal in rights; it was on the very threshold of the French Revolution, an outburst of democracy that revenged the wrongs the French people had suffered for centuries, - that Burns began to sing. It is not strange that from lips like his, his voice rang like a slogan-cry when he spoke for humanity. Poetry had not before found vent in words like these: HONEST POVERTY. Is there, for honest poverty, For a' that, an' a' that; Our toils obscure, an' a' that; What though on hamely fare we dine, Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, A man's a man for a' that! For a' that, an' a' that; Their tinsel show an' a' that: The honest man, though e'er sae poor, Is king o' men for a' that. A prince can mak a belted knight, A marquis, duke, an' a' that; But an honest man's aboon his might, For a' that, an' a' that, Their dignities an' a' that, The pith o' sense an' pride o' worth Then let us pray that, come it may, That sense and worth o'er a' the earth For a' that, an' a' that; It's coming yet, for a' that, That man to man, the warld o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that. These were noble lines, and Burns wrote many such. He is also full of the true spirit of song,- arch, tender, exquisite. Never, since the early song-writers, had there been anything more natural than his little love-songs: "She is a winsome wee thing, This sweet wee wife of mine. "I never saw a fairer, I never lo'ed a dearer, And neist my heart I 'll wear her, "The warld's wrack, we share it, Or this: "Oh, my luve is like the red, red rose That 's sweetly played in tune. As fair thou art, my bonnie lass, So deep in luve am I, And I will luve thee still, my dear, Of such songs as these Burns wrote scores; and yet, in the midst of their careless music, the deeper undersong constantly makes itself heard, as this plea for human charity : "Then gently scan your brother-man, Still gentler sister-woman; 1754-1832 Just about the same time with Cowper and Burns came GEORGE CRABBE, whose first poem of any note, The Village, was published a year or two before Cowper's Task. There is something in Crabbe which reminds one of Cowper, and something, besides the title, which recalls Goldsmith's Deserted Village. He paints scenes of nature, and domestic life among the poor. His Tales in verse, which were taken from humble life, first gave him a name among poets. Then he wrote Tales of the Hall, and drew his characters from a higher rank; but these were not nearly so happy in their description as the first. They were very much read and liked in the early part of this century; but I think Crabbe's day as a poet is past, and that he is one whose name will remain in the archives of the poets long after his poetry has ceased to be read. He was too realistic to be a great poet; every line he wrote was true to nature. But Poetry must not be the naked Truth: Truth's fair form must be veiled by Fancy, in order to enter the ideal world of Poetry. Although there never was a measure so well adapted to commonplace subjects as that he used, yet in Crabbe's hands it sometimes is more than commonplace, it is comically matter-of-fact. This, in his best style, is the opening of one of the Tales: "Genius, thou gift of heaven, thou light divine, |