The Fourth Book (“The Winter Evening”) is entirely free from instances of the mechanical abstraction, but the vision of Oriental Empire, and the fascination of the East, is effectively evoked in the personification of the land of the Moguls: Is India free? and does she wear her plumed And jewelled turban with a smile of peace. (ll. 28-9) “The Task,” however, has two examples of the detailed personification. The first is an attempt, in the manner of Spenser, to give a full length portrait of “a sage called Discipline”: His eye was meek and gentle and a smile Played on his lips, and in his speech was heard Paternal sweetness (Bk. II, l. 702 foll.) where there is a depth of feeling, as well as a gentle satiric touch in the delineation, that animate it into something more than a mere stock image; it embodies perhaps a reminiscence of one who at some time or other had guided the destinies of the youthful Cowper. The second instance is of a more imaginative kind. It is the presentation, in the Fourth Book, of Winter, with forehead wrapt in cloud A leafless branch thy sceptre, almost the only occasion on which Cowper, despite the nature of his subject, has personified the powers and orders of nature.[239] Cowper has also invested the Evening with human attributes, and despite the imitative ring of the lines,[240] and the “quaintness” of the images employed, there is a new beauty in the evocation: Come, Evening, once again, season of peace; Return, sweet Evening, and continue long! Methinks I see thee in the streaky west With matron step slow-moving, while the night Treads on thy sweeping train. The darkness soon to fall over the landscape is suggested in the added appeal to Evening to come Not sumptuously adorned, nor needing aid Like homely-featured Night, of clustering gems, where the compound epithet emphasizes the contrast between the quiet beauty of the twilight skyscape and the star-sprinkled gloom of the night. Finally, one of the last instances of the personified abstraction to be found in the work of Cowper may perhaps be taken to reflect something of the changes that have been silently working underneath. This is in the lines that suddenly bring “Yardley Oak” to an end: History not wanted yet Leaned on her elbow watching Time whose course Eventful should supply her with a theme.