COWPER

When evening in her sober vest

Drew the grey curtain of the fading west.
Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad.

Where covert guile and artifice abound.
Whether of open war or covert guile.

These are thy glorious works, thou Source of good,
How dimly seen, how faintly understood!
Thine, and upheld by thy paternal care,
This universal frame, thus wondrous fair;
Thy power divine, and bounty beyond thought,
Adored and praised in all that thou hast wrought.
These are thy glorious works, eternal Truth. . .
Then these thy glorious works.

They are thy witnesses, who speak thy power

...

Charity, 262-3.

P. L. iv. 598-9.

Ib. 285.
P. L. ii. 41.

Retirement, 87-92.

Hope, 742-50.

And goodness infinite. [Of created works as revealing God.] Task, v. 853-4.

These are thy glorious works, Parent of good,

Almighty! thine this universal frame,

Thus wondrous fair: thyself how wondrous then!

Unspeakable! who sitt'st above these Heavens

To us invisible, or dimly seen

In these thy lowest works; yet these declare

Thy goodness beyond thought, and power divine.

Delights unfelt before.
Pangs unfelt before.

When piping winds shall soon arise.
While rocking winds are piping loud.

A massy slab, in fashion square or round.
Extended wide

In circuit, undetermined square or round.

In the cushion fixed:

If cushion might be called what harder seemed.

The other Shape,

If shape it might be call'd that shape had none.

P. L. v. 153-9.

Retirement, 360.
P. L. ii. 703.

Mrs. Throckmorton's Bullfinch, 17.
Penseroso, 126.

Task, i. 21.

P. L. ii. 1047-8.

Ib. i. 54-5.

P. L. ii. 666-7; cf. i. 227-8.

(Similar parenthetical repetitions occur in The Task, i. 602-3, ii. 717,
754-5, v. 162-3, 871-2; Odyssey, ii. 449-50, 468–9.)

Bars and bolts

Grew rusty by disuse, and massy gates
Forgot their office, opening with a touch.
Every bolt and bar

Of massy iron or solid rock with ease
Unfastens: on a sudden open fly.

As one who, long in thickets and in brakes

Entangled, winds now this way and now that...
Or having long in miry ways been foiled
And sore discomfited, from slough to slough
Plunging, and half despairing of escape,

If chance at length he finds a greensward smooth
And faithful to the foot, his spirits rise,
He chirrups brisk his ear-erecting steed,
And winds his way with pleasure and with ease.
As one who long detained on foreign shores
Pants to return.

As one who, long in populous city pent,
Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,
Forth issuing on a summer's morn to breathe
Among the pleasant villages and farms
Adjoin'd, from each thing met conceives delight...
If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass,
What pleasing seem'd, for her now pleases more.
Vernal airs breathe mild.

Airs, vernal airs, Breathing the smell of field.

Overlaid with clear translucent glass.
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave.

The voluble and restless earth.

This less volubil Earth.

Much yet remains Unsung.

Half yet remains unsung.

Fell Discord, arbitress of such debate,

Perched on the sign-post, holds with even hand

Her undecisive scales.

Chaos umpire sits,

And by decision more embroils the fray

By which he reigns; next him, high arbiter,

Chance governs all.

Task, ii. 745-7.

P. L. ii. 877-9.

Ib. iii. 1-10.

Ib. v. 832-3.

P. L. ix. 445-53.

Ib. iii. 443.
P. L. iv. 264-5.

Ib. iii. 485.
Comus, 861.

Ib. iii. 490.
P. L. iv. 594.

Ib. iii. 605-6.

P. L. vii. 21.

Ib. iv. 482-4.

P. L. ii. 907-10.

(Cf. P. L. ii. 960-67, where Discord is mentioned in connection with Chaos.)

Arrowy sleet.

Sharp sleet of arrowy showers.

Ib. v. 140.

P. R. iii. 324.

(But cf. Gray's Fatal Sisters, 3, "Iron-sleet of arrowy shower.")

{The effect of the fall of man upon the animals, as described in The Task, vi. 368-83,

was probably suggested by Paradise Lost, x. 710–14, xi. 182–90.]

Fixed motionless, and petrified with dread.
In stony fetters fix'd and motionless.

Sheer o'er the craggy barrier.

Sheer o'er the chariot front.

Sheer o'er the crystal battlements.

The looms of Ormus, and the mines of Ind.

The wealth of Ormus and of Ind.

And Saba's spicy groves.

Sabaean odours from the spicy shore.

From yonder withered spray.

O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray.

Ib. vi. 538.
Comus, 819.

Ib. vi. 554.
Iliad, xvi. 494.
P. L. i. 742.

Task, vi. 806.
P. L. ii. 2.

Ib. vi. 807.
P. L. iv. 162.

To the Nightingale, 2.
Nightingale sonnet, I.

(The riming word is "May" in each case.)

Ib. i. 678-9.
Ib. iv. 29, viii. 537,
P. L. ix. 1144.

xviii. 446.

(Said by a woman to her husband in each case. Cowper has similar lines, ib. viii. 240-41, xiv. 97, Odyssey, i. 81.)

Covert (as a noun, Task, i. 233, Iliad, viii. 305); cf. P. L. iii. 39, iv. 693, etc.
Vapours dank (Task, i. 438, iii. 499); cf. P. L. vii. 441, ix. 179, etc.
Ever-during brass (Task, v. 710, Odyssey, xi. 704); cf. P. L. iii. 45, vii. 206.
Hedge-row shrubs (Retirement, 419, and cf. Task, i. 173); cf. Allegro, 58.
Horrent (Iliad, vii. 69, xiii. 413); cf. P. L. ii. 513. Of arms in each case.
Small interval between (Iliad, iii. 134, X. 191, xiii. 734, xvi. 557); cf. P. L. vi. 105.
Of space between combatants in each case.

Intestine war (Mutual Forbearance, 48); cf. P. L. vi. 259, ii. 1001.

Massy (Task, i. 21, 59, ii. 746, Iliad, xiii. 620, 1007); cf. P. L. i. 285, 703, etc. Misdeems (Task, iv. 685); cf. P. L. ix. 301, P. R. i. 424.

Nitrous air (Task, iii. 32); cf. P. L. iv. 815, vi. 512.

Oary barks (Iliad, ii. 193, xviii. 318, Odyssey, iii. 205); cf. P. L. vii. 440.

O'erleap (of barriers, Task, ii. 55, iii. 681, Table Talk, 302); cf. P. L. iv. 181, 583. Shagg'd (Iliad, xv. 378); cf. Comus, 429.

Smit with (Task, v. 560); cf. P. L. iii. 29.

Speculative height (Task, i. 289, Jackdaw, 13); cf. P. L. xii. 588-9, P. R. iv. 236.
Tempest (as a verb, Iliad, xv. 168); cf. P. L. vii. 412. Pointed out by Cowper.
Tricked with flowers (Task, vi. 992); cf. Penseroso, 123, Lycidas, 170.
Unwieldy joy (Queen's Visit to London, 20); cf. P. L. iv. 345, vii. 411. Of sea-
monsters in the first and third cases.

Well attired (of a plant, Task, vi. 168); cf. Lycidas, 146.

WORDSWORTH1

Toil, small as pigmies in the gulf profound.
The cataract had borne him down

Into the gulf profound.

Bishops and Priests, think what a gulf profound.
A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog.

The swan uplifts his chest, and backward flings

Evening Walk, 163.

Idle Shepherd-Boys, 69-70.
Eccl. Sonnets, III. xvi. 12.
P. L. ii. 592.

His neck, a varying arch, between his towering wings. . . .

Close by her mantling wings' embraces prest.
Fair is the Swan, whose majesty, prevailing..
Behold! the mantling spirit of reserve
Fashions his neck into a goodly curve;

An arch thrown back between luxuriant wings.
with arched neck

The swan,

Between her white wings mantling proudly.

Evening Walk, 218-31.

Dion (original form), 1–7.

P. L. vii. 438-9; cf. v. 279.

(Wordsworth also speaks of the "mantling" celandine, To the Small
Celandine, 2d poem, 24; "mantling triumphs," Sonnet, "Grief, thou hast
lost," 14; and "mantling ale," Duddon, xiii. 12.)

(Wordsworth uses "bosomed" three times more, twice in the sense of
hidden by trees. "Embosom," "embosoming," and "embosomed" he
uses nine times; cf. P. L. iii. 75, v. 597.)

And neighbouring moon, that coasts the vast profound,

Wheel pale and silent her diminish'd round.

While overhead the moon...

Wheels her pale course.

A gulf profound.

Round through the vast profundity obscure.

Tinged like an angel's smile all rosy red.
Unveiling timidly a cheek

Suffused with blushes of celestial hue.

To whom the Angel, with a smile that glow'd
Celestial rosy red, love's proper hue.

Ib. (1793 ed.), 382-3.

P. L. i. 784-6.

P. L. ii. 592.

P. L. vii. 229.

Desc. Sketches, 475.

Eccl. Sonnets, II. xxii. 5-6.

P. L. viii. 618-19.

1 These parallels are nearly all taken from a collection of material regarding Wordsworth's debt to Milton, undertaken at Cornell University by Mrs. Alice M. Dunbar of Wilmington, Delaware, under the direction of Mr. Lane Cooper, who called my attention to the work. They are published here for the first time by the very kind consent of Mrs. Dunbar, whose list contains many more.