William Cowper summary

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William Cowper, detail of an oil painting by Lemuel Abbott, 1792; in the National Portrait Gallery, London

William Cowper, (born Nov. 26, 1731, Great Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire, Eng.—died April 25, 1800, East Dereham, Norfolk), British poet. Throughout his life he was plagued by recurring mental instability and religious doubt. Olney Hymns (1779; with John Newton), a book of devotional verse, includes hymns that are still favourites in Protestant England. The Task (1785), a long discursive poem written “to recommend rural ease,” was an immediate success. He also wrote many melodious, even humorous, shorter lyrics, and he is considered one of the best letter writers in English. His work, often about everyday rural life, brought a new directness and humanitarianism to 18th-century nature poetry, foreshadowing Romanticism.

hymn Summary

Hymn, (from Greek hymnos, “song of praise”), strictly, a song used in Christian worship, usually sung by the congregation and characteristically having a metrical, strophic (stanzaic), nonbiblical text. Similar songs, also generally termed hymns, exist in all civilizations; examples survive, for

poetry Summary

Poetry, literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. (Read Britannica’s biography of this author, Howard Nemerov.) Poetry is a vast subject, as old as history and