Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Collected Poetry of William Cowper - Volume I: 'The innocent seldom find an uncomfortable pillow''
    The Collected Poetry of William Cowper - Volume I: 'The innocent seldom find an uncomfortable pillow''
    The Collected Poetry of William Cowper - Volume I: 'The innocent seldom find an uncomfortable pillow''
    Ebook255 pages3 hours

    The Collected Poetry of William Cowper - Volume I: 'The innocent seldom find an uncomfortable pillow''

    By William Cowper

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    William Cowper was born 26th November 1731 in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. Traumatically he and his brother, John, were the only survivors, out of seven, to survive infancy. His mother died when he was six.

    His education, after several temporary schools, was stabilised at Westminster school. Here he established several life-long friendships and a dedication to Latin. Upon leaving he was articled to a solicitor in London and spent almost a decade training in Law. In 1763 he was offered a Clerkship of Journals in the House of Lords. With the examinations approaching Cowper had a mental breakdown. He tried to commit suicide three times and a period of depression and insanity seemed to settle on him. The end of this unhappy period saw him find refuge in fervent evangelical Christianity, and it was also the inspiration behind his much-loved hymns.

    This led to a collaboration with John Newton in writing ‘Olney Hymns’.

    However dark forces were about to overwhelm Cowper. In 1773, he experienced a devastating attack of insanity, believing that he was eternally condemned to hell, and that God was instructing him to make a sacrifice of his own life. With great care and devotion his friend, Mary Unwin, nursed him back to health.

    In 1781 Cowper had the good fortune to meet a widow, Lady Austen, who inspired a new bout of poetry writing. Cowper himself tells of the genesis of what some have considered his most substantial work, ‘The Task’.

    In 1786 he began his translations from the Greek into blank verse of Homer's ‘The Iliad’ and ‘The Odyssey’. These translations, published in 1791, were the most significant since those of Alexander Pope earlier in the century.

    Mary Unwin died in 1796, plunging Cowper into a gloom from which he never fully recovered though he did continue to write.

    William Cowper was seized with dropsy and died on 25th April 1800.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPortable Poetry
    Release dateDec 7, 2018
    ISBN9781787802858
    The Collected Poetry of William Cowper - Volume I: 'The innocent seldom find an uncomfortable pillow''

    Read more from William Cowper

    Related to The Collected Poetry of William Cowper - Volume I

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Coleridge Way

      Nov 5, 2021

      The Coleridge Way
      6 min read

    • Article

      A 350th-Anniversary ‘Paradise Lost’ Reading List

      Feb 6, 2018

      Before John Milton could be a visionary writer, first he had to be a visionary reader. All poetry is supported by the accumulated scaffolding of tradition and defines itself in part by subverting that tradition. Milton was simultaneously partisan for

      16 min read

    • Article

      Confronting Agony

      Jan 29, 2019

      Confronting Agony
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Iľja Rákoš

      Dec 23, 2020

      I’d been out of the hospital following (let’s call it) treatment for COVID-19 about a month. My hospital ward of 50 patients had one oxygen concentrator. Despite my blood-oxygen saturation levels of 90%, that device wasn’t coming my way anytime soon.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Collins Ferry Landing

      Jul 1, 2020

      for my father Only rivers bottom out like this.Only rivers bottom out with this kind of conviction.Not humans, or, at least, not humans asindisputably human as you were,trapped in consciousness’s surplus, exilic,animalized absurdity, writhing in its

      5 min read

    • Article

      A Pained Intuition and a Palpable Longing: Katie Ford on Theology, Poetry, and the Unknowable

      Sep 13, 2018

      If You Have to Go, the new collection of poems by Katie Ford, is a book that conjures powers of possession. I feel that way about all of her books: Her poems bring me to a mystical plane somewhere between language and life. I’m left shaken. Her willi

      17 min read

    • Article

      Read a (Love) Letter From Herman Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne

      Mar 16, 2017

      167 years ago today, Ticknor, Reed & Fields published The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic novel of repentance and slut-shaming. But actually, this isn’t about The Scarlet Letter—it’s about one of the most fascinating friendships in lite

      5 min read

    • Article

      On Grief

      Jul 29, 2019

      On Grief
      5 min read

    • Article

      Unlearnable Lessons on My Father’s Deathbed

      Mar 21, 2017

      I was at my father’s side much of the time in his final weeks, a witness to both the gifts and miseries of being near death. Nurses came and went, patient, long-suffering. They sat beside him for hours at a time, dousing spongy lollipops in water and

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Saving Grace of Mary Oliver

      Jan 22, 2019

      Oliver’s queer identity and search for meaning provided the subtle underpinning for much of her work and we—in search of understanding, comfort, fortitude—often saw ourselves and our questions reflected in it. The post The Saving Grace of Mary Oliver

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Execution

      Mar 27, 2018

      The Execution
      4 min read

    • Article

      Death Is A Powerful Teacher

      Jul 29, 2019

      Death Is A Powerful Teacher
      6 min read

    • Article

      Cornel West on Why James Baldwin Matters More Than Ever

      Mar 2, 2017

      James Baldwin was the prophetic voice of an era that isn’t over. Fifty years ago he was the intense man from Harlem who wrote, in essays and novels, his version of a civil-rights movement. Over the ruins of the 1960s, and specially the assassination

      12 min read

    • Article

      On Apocalyptic Poetry

      Jun 25, 2018

      On Apocalyptic Poetry
      14 min read

    • Article

      Michael Leunig

      Feb 24, 2022

      It is said that most of the world’s great work is done by people who are feeling just a little bit unwell. This is a heartening idea for a newspaper cartoonist like myself, who in more than fifty years has faced too many deadlines feeling a bit off-c

      4 min read

    • Article

      My Adventures in Hell

      Jul 25, 2019

      On one particular drive, I interrupted my father and told him, apropos of nothing other than to see how he would react, that I didn’t think Hell was real. The post My Adventures in Hell appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • Article

      Harold Bloom’s Immortality

      Oct 16, 2019

      Harold Bloom’s Immortality
      4 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems by Geoffrey Hill

      Dec 15, 2018

      62. Why such irony in re the mystical context when a graph of even the most commonplace exchange would appear perplexed; when we drop out from the plainest statement in the posture of a bat? So, decide to make something of that, the style to resemble

      2 min read

    • Article

      What Kind of Angel: On Percy Shelley

      Nov 21, 2022

      Shelley saw himself as a conduit for the electricity of the universe. The post What Kind of Angel: On Percy Shelley appeared first on The Millions.

      15 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Collected Poetry of William Cowper - Volume I

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Collected Poetry of William Cowper - Volume I - William Cowper

      .2^book_preview_excerpt.html}\ےƑeiG4G+{MC.%Rօ+c5P( ji?KUtw.Y'O^g'?K|]|=z4^x~ ]\'?V>g?,)vs>౳K>CgS[}|ӏ0Txߺ>a]ʏ!MjoͽBRanh6`1NwWvُU0.CxcUqxt!aZ7U?4aHzPnx^!bRB8R_ǡ00Uc4{tta\72iz}iY!87UrWq%>̛y׼?RYinjVqLwM<6du0rq:n= /D!6\ѧqn.&K~:4rzb2ergcFT 2yLW/1)h>%u)J)v{߆\Є쯽CZ.[Ä,͞?S4[vuD Rt?3կjx_kPօaKXa$]S~"\P{S֚n\}O1p.xBFyX X3i>GӢƹݽz PK()荬*k4U W(qܮFpai\dϣhObY>*0/ct]zOc;\@'Ȯ:2woo(*)p5ݝn&j<^Z`N [+U.B¹ uKQ L}M3^q>&4, e&BEUnxJScnZɿ7y&x8{VA\)>-PDUW1 8qq| 1ŭH_n$qpx{?ION zj /ӻkZEW}5aoS?n-̵zpHwj/t,6]c4 z/n_^|ՆQd * r "44b\0CfІdCan1|YF} \xTs>Qr7 fq^'usBUxapXF@☦ݳ}^%z&y@ԊnC~3 pl iWc=x]z09 8dlRB1%ÔC>nYu0Nu Mk`}ꖦr!q\`J˾2_<u1$7#lFM9}p3l*[{Emp,q&*/kX) P%ϐ,(Rx6*C^ j=dkN%WcB6+ Z,O7 1i>'j.|~4Hh&gi|BAI^ 'Tu $# !OJTNG VIMA6XF-TE!̖/zjHnZ-͒pͤ&lz`( "#{2\ex2LX&=e@"&8 p@&¸˂”8x ό'n cUSi@pY,z"\`䦶h3C 8ؤSZ;5 hGWk!:)$C:e`MKS y4 $% AɞN&AĨ6b[L9+bǦ ` 0[7dDX3dpoX Y8iPrAL K{17O-?+DqW _nSquΤ NeBf\8ԋ*8;A!r8bQ1dY-3ƹ% I ~L-t.p7^' ٙ{7*Oܰn5[1"~~Ɉ 6!VCg#Oa=kk23댇rC?]ENq/T[&N+;9"  ӊlHv8ErbsJLv\6Œh2Z7X.]rmϤdq1d|䖳^S9N>bpj&E?^ <LEdYiS LK>)-5=hʰLCꋞY*GIf2 ƣĐR]d 1R(O%Tk腵]M2f#́B)ؘ,&̲6ݐR<,vM&A̒)k&w֙–(щMCPZ ,*@@,-gf'AT ?ak*B{q~D'\0]<|>lWqBdr颐)p+ ri:Ӽ$`tWcC! ܇rkǚ7%"O.^,^AcN3F.jbj)'5sn "05N9Rbey e=BX%$`n+:HRԎ4u I<G5 :#T,>drN I95$6saTՍ<^ 2@Rx rH)g ]}YbcN8YӪ"e2Ub>mBIy#d&MżD!iħK%d%5)p>sQ?JK@G`g{ ޸<Ѫq"@" EH%G_"#s,iȢd0YL(CUVqr*%*'D0t&8@RJd`!$-%c@q4V~ɦ(7PFq=ܮ݀? ~ ѻy'*PYGxdp)jMP-wrK"I2`}"ב^XrT)qUF14OF+Rf*21r@˚jfs&IDKxe5".&b̩|S@;icyU ]&ZkRu͂熜 sMC$̻H|[lBdx)+ZvrϧO@CGş8 ËXrbEpH&nCSd^IiJYerter1 ŋ(]wf \df/_#G6n7 0ÚS5 IxQA ;!3"2l|F8艹:(ӋEUI~[m) fhD\3/SSa `41U&w?33P_kH# 5KqZs\ܙ]C#}R(Mʰg_<_ai+$0)CԂwڽ2$|Z)f΁5?,T͖7w][kbƘk1$%4d+[`7w\R fM7gl5Z L0\#W%qh53²[(TM+͍|=|+ˉew9ͪm6^}7;zW_8}g>5/ۯw l|.=b!"v՟x 'M{ےvkYܴù@aA}5Ţavwm7՟&׾[]b $D2%TJ.V4-V,{ʷ>i4o'6nnVMh"VxfcKkإOHlR[&f˶0[72r[Z#FeG8 ӨЮ(Z$$!ڀ53M@YQaRYpvv\&Tj:*S%.(U>=Zvḇ^ڛ剩&Ɓ"hHPN!2IXz2_K)zHS`Xh h9#lxdNkӅBzʲ`m?]ZyV*(tȤ/R{|RQ0N/ 4.ȇ\(+)ۥ煴lTL.Աjg*5Z;Jyw xn*p Jŋs Ә=8dt6o)np, '~֬/rV| ç  vOW=z5+]?W >Is^aPV92HTUR _ΣRRZ}7}w =bw ,oz By3pBpsQ2puC_.w-H@O*>1Ehmk0:N I0N` 檣.W~F;s;$?le W4獕#2zc4wJݲh" S*2lyݠES,_ٿ3PzlYT_0x,LzWH9UxBFRx‘دr=q,y4-^ʏOiꇫ ^tQM{XF 0 9>J[0(I$|WWQzV.%f[gom! ϶IJ?f2!*\!J`B!5]G ɉHk*l`o戮[V0u#Pt!`.Mh"=ՌV0q̖̊p;[e&f{4_r]#R`rM[ᣳbXWռzH)x>8Mߘ&@l9̒ܲ%N"_\m\"N|m2~Bt^ JWf(k9x~gp P4,Q8lK2_XFO2^Ty~Ǝ>+EOZ[$.6OR*/p3Fo/6g ?\n!=״l(MczH ͻd=(z +]U^|ڕS 51p`ǓCH/˞UWm_`9mx-ldJlLOzuy42~saa9R &16ٌIk:Cklش1K̭bj$_+0zUTk<*]CիRsW"лSM)vhYd?Y/6sswL8J\(*˜[c, #ȔIL%hh:X:zKli7Ʌ{6imoD
      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1