Here unmolested, through whatever sign The sun proceeds, I wander; neither mist, Nor freezing sky nor sultry, checking me, Nor stranger intermeddling with my joy. Even in the spring and playtime of the year, That calls the unwonted villager abroad With all her little ones, a sportive train, To gather kingcups in the yellow mead, And prink their hair with daisies, or to pick A cheap but wholesome salad from the brook, These shades are all my own. The timorous hare, Grown so familiar with her frequent guest, Scarce shuns me; and the stockdove unalarmed Sits cooing in the pine-tree, nor suspends His long love-ditty for my near approach. Drawn from his refuge in some lonely elm That age or injury has hollowed deep, Where on his bed of wool and matted leaves He has outslept the winter, ventures forth To frisk awhile, and bask in the warm sun, The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play. He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird, Ascends the neighboring beech; there whisks his brush, And perks his ears, and stamps and scolds aloud, With all the prettiness of feigned alarm, And anger insignificantly fierce. (COWPER: _The Task_, book VI. ll. 295-320. 1785.) "The blank verse of Cowper's _Task_ is admirably adapted to the theme," says Professor Corson. "Cowper saw farther than any one before him had seen, into the secrets of the elaborate music of Milton's blank verse, and availed himself of those secrets to some extent--to as far an extent as the simplicity of his themes demanded." (_Primer of English Verse_, p. 221.) Professor Ward speaks, however, of the "lumbering movement" of Cowper's blank verse as being in contrast to "the neatness and ease of his rhymed couplets." (_English Poets_, vol. iii. p. 432.) Cowper prided himself, not without reason, on the individuality of his blank verse. In a letter to the Rev. John Newton (Dec. 11, 1784) he said: "Milton's manner was peculiar. So is Thomson's. He that should write like either of them, would, in my judgment, deserve the name of a copyist, but not of a poet.... Blank verse is susceptible of a much greater diversification of manner than verse in rhyme: and why the modern writers of it have all thought proper to cast their numbers alike, I know not." In another letter (to Lady Hesketh, March 20, 1786) Cowper reveals his careful study of Milton's verse: "When the sense requires it, or when for the sake of avoiding a monotonous cadence of the lines, of which there is always danger in so long a work, it shall appear to be prudent, I still leave a verse behind me that has some uneasiness in its formation. It is not possible to read _Paradise Lost_, with an ear for harmony, without being sensible of the great advantage which Milton drew from such a management.... Uncritical readers find that they perform a long journey through several hundred pages perhaps without weariness;