"Such criticism seems to us superficial. It takes the words as if they were intended to be a literal prosaic statement. It forgets that what they express is not only poetry, but the poetry of intense and impassioned feeling, which naturally embodies itself in the boldest metaphors. The inner sense of the soul, when its deepest affections are moved, infallibly takes these metaphors in their true significance, while a cold critic of the letter misses that significance entirely. He merely demonstrates his own lack of the spiritual sympathies of which, for fervent Christian hearts, the hymn referred to is an admirable expression." Certainly it is a hymn that has spread blessings in its path, and countless are the stories of how it has broken down the resistance of hardened human hearts. One of these tells how a Belfast minister once visited a mill where two hundred girls were employed, many of them from his own congregation. One girl, when she saw her pastor entering, began to sing "There is a fountain filled with blood." Other girls took up the lines, and soon the glorious song was ringing above the noise of all the looms. The manager, who was an unbeliever, was so moved that he seized his hat and ran from the building. Later he confessed to the minister, "I never was so hard put to it in all my life. It nearly broke me down." Cowper also wrote a number of secular poems that achieved great fame. "The Task," has been called "one of the wisest books ever written, and one of the most charming." Another poem, "John Gilpin," is a very happy and mirthful narrative. Although Cowper's mother died in his early childhood, he never forgot her. When he was fifty-six years old, a cousin sent him a miniature of his mother. In acknowledging the gift, he wrote: "I had rather possess my mother's picture than the richest jewel in the British crown; for I loved her with an affection that her death, fifty years since, has not in the least abated." Cowper died in 1800. Three years before his death, he lost his lifelong comforter and friend, Mrs. Morley Unwin, who had cared for him with the solicitude of a mother. The sorrow was almost too great for his feeble nature, and he again sank into deepest gloom. At times he thought God had forsaken him. Only at intervals was he able to resume his literary work. His last poem was "The Castaway," written March 20, 1799. Through all his spiritual and mental depression, however, he was ever submissive to the will of God. But the time of release for this chastened child of God was at hand.