“How oft upon yon eminence our pace Has slackened to a pause, and we have borne The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew, While admiration, feeding at the eye, And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene. Thence with what pleasure have we just discerned, The distant plow slow-moving, and beside His laboring team, that swerved not from the track, The sturdy swain diminished to a boy! Here Ouse, slow-winding through a level plain Of spacious meads with cattle sprinkled o’er, Conducts the eye along his sinuous course Delighted. There, fast rooted in their bank, Stand, never overlooked, our favorite elms, That screen the herdsman’s solitary hut; While far beyond, and overthwart the stream, That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale, The sloping land recedes into the clouds; Displaying, on its varied side, the grace Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower, Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells Just undulates upon the listening ear, Groves, heaths, and smoking villages, remote. Scenes must be beautiful which, daily viewed, Please daily, and whose novelty survives Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years. Praise justly due to those that I describe.” An ordinary prospect, you say, described in very ordinary poetry. Yes, but the scene is a real scene, one of England’s veritable landscapes, and the lines which describe it are genuine poetry,—exact, transparent, lingering lovingly over the scene which the eye rests on. And for its being ordinary description, no doubt it flows easily and naturally along, but let any one try to describe as common a prospect in verse, and he will find that this is not ordinary verse, but instinct with that unobtrusive grace which only true poets attain. Then how frequently the commonest country sights awaken Cowper’s touch of native humor. Here is what he says of the mole and his work: we— “Feel at every step Our foot half sunk in hillocks green and soft, Raised by the mole, the miner of the soil. He, not unlike the great ones of mankind, Disfigures earth, and, plotting in the dark, Toils much to earn a monumental pile That may record the mischiefs he has done.”