He was practically the first to make poetry the handmaid to piety. Religion no longer stood shivering and forlorn,' but attired in the beauty of poetic enchantment, scattering flowers 'where'er she deigned to stray.'

To estimate the scope and endurance of his practical influence, it is sufficient to consider the popularity which his poems gained and still preserve; their meditative and moral tone, ever slipping in between The beauty coming and the beauty gone;

and the natural law by which the mind grows of its associated images. No good thing is lost. perpetual :

into the likeness

All excellence is

'When one that holds communion with the skies
Has filled his urn where the pure waters rise,

And once more mingles with us meaner things,
'Tis e'en as if an angel shook his wings;

Immortal fragrance fills the circuit wide.'

His character, career, and power are happily told by Elizabeth Browning in the stanzas entitled Cowper's Grave:

It is a place were poets crowned
May feel the heart's decaying-
It is a place where happy saints
May weep amid their praying-
Yet let the grief and humbleness,
As low as silence, languish;
Earth surely now may give her calm
To whom she gave her anguish.

O poets! from a maniac's tongue
Was poured the deathless singing!

O Christians! at your cross of hope
A hopeless hand was clinging!
O men! this man in brotherhood,

Your weary paths beguiling,

Groaned inly while he taught you peace,
And died while ye where smiling!

And now, what time ye all may read
Through dimming tears his story-

How discord on the music fell,

And darkness on the glory

And how, when, one by one, sweet sounds

And wandering lights departed,

He wore no less a loving face,

Because so broken-hearted.