from William Cowper, The Task, 1785

In the following excerpts from his long poem The Task, William Cowper (1731–1800) addresses the vogue for “improvements” to the grounds of estates. Austen was a great admirer of Cowper’s work, and Fanny Price quotes from the first of these passages in Mansfield Park.

from Book 1: The Sofa

Ye fallen avenues! once more I mourn
Your fate unmerited, once more rejoice
That yet a remnant of your race survives.
How airy and how light the graceful arch,
Yet awful as the consecrated roof
Re-echoing pious anthems! while, beneath,
The chequered earth seems restless as a flood
Brushed by the wind. So sportive is the light
Shot through the boughs, it dances as they dance,
Shadow and sunshine intermingling quick,
And darkening and enlightening, as the leaves
Play wanton, every moment, every spot. …

from Book 3: The Garden

… [W]ere not madness in the head
And folly in the heart; were England now
What England was, plain, hospitable, kind,
And undebauch’d.  But we have bid farewell
To all the virtues of those better days,
And all their honest pleasures.  Mansions once
Knew their own masters, and laborious hands
That had surviv’d the father, serv’d the son.
Now the legitimate and rightful lord
Is but a transient guest, newly arrived
And soon to be supplanted.  He that saw
His patrimonial timber cast its leaf,
Sells the last scantling, and transfers the price
To some shrew’d sharper, ’ere it buds again.
Estates are landscapes, gazed upon awhile,
Then advertis’d, and auctioneer’d away.
The country starves, and they that feed th’ o’ercharged
And surfeited lew’d town with her fair dues,
By a just judgment strip and starve themselves.
The wings that waft our riches out of sight
Grow on the gamester’s elbows, and th’ alert
And nimble motion of those restless joints,
That never tire, soon fans them all away.
Improvement too, the idol of the age,
Is fed with many a victim. Lo! he comes—
The omnipotent magician, Brown appears.
Down falls the venerable pile, th’ abode
Of our forefathers, a grave whisker’d race,
But tasteless. Springs a palace in its stead,
But in a distant spot; where more expos’d
It may enjoy th’ advantage of the north
And agueish East, till time shall have transform’d
Those naked acres to a shelt’ring grove.
He speaks. The lake in front becomes a lawn,
Woods vanish, hills subside, and vallies rise,
And streams as if created for his use,
Pursue the track of his directing wand
Sinuous or strait, now rapid and now slow,
Now murm’ring soft, now roaring in cascades
Ev’n as he bids. Th’ enraptur’d owner smiles.
’Tis finished. And yet finish’d as it seems,
Still wants a grace, the loveliest it could show,
A mine to satisfy th’ enormous cost. …