I think, with you, that the most magnificent object under heaven is the great deep; and can not but feel an unpolite species of astonishment when I consider the multitudes that view it without emotion, and even without reflection. In all its various forms it is an object of all others the most suited to affect us with lasting impressions of the awful power that created and controls it. I am the less inclined to think this negligence excusable, because, at a time of life when I gave as little attention to religious subjects as any man, I yet remember that the waves would preach to me, and that in the midst of dissipation I had an ear to hear them. One of Shakespeare’s characters says, “I am never merry when I hear sweet music.” The same effect that harmony seems to have had upon him I have experienced from the sight and sound of the ocean, which have often composed my thoughts into a melancholy not unpleasing nor without its use. He had also, during these years at Olney, made many an imaginary evening journey to remote lands by means of books of travel, of which he was especially fond. But when he came to write poems, only what he had known at first hand and with long familiarity occurred to him. Experiences merely casual, or remote in time, and facts gained from books slipped away. He remembered only what he habitually saw. The scenes about Olney he knew, literally, by heart, and of these he wrote. A characteristic excellence of Cowper’s treatment of Nature is that, within his narrow circuit, his knowledge is of unusual fulness and accuracy. The charm of truthful description is everywhere apparent. In pictures of homely country occupations, such as feeding the hens,[475] foddering the cattle,[476] cutting wood,[477] plowing,[478] threshing,[479] there are no false touches, no hasty work. All is the result of first-hand, leisurely, sympathetic observation. His description of the garden is from memory, but it almost seems as if he were walking from flower to flower and taking notes, so minute is the characterization, so exact each epithet in the representation of the various colors, forms, odors, and ways of growth of the flowers in this garden that the poet sees under the snows of winter.[480]