Poetry > Cowper's John Gilpin and The task, book I

BOOK I.]
31
And gain-devoted cities. Thither flow,
As to a common and most noisome sewer,
The dregs and feculence of every land.
In cities foul example on most minds 685
Begets its likeness. Bank abundance breeds,
In gross and pampered cities, sloth and lust,
And wantonness, and gluttonous excess.
In cities vice is hidden with most ease.
Or seen with least reproach; and virtue, taught 690
By frequent lapse, can hope no triumph there
Beyond the achievement of successful flight.
I do confess them nurseries of the arts,
In which they flourish most; where, in the beams
Of warm encouragement, and in the eye 695
Of public note, they reach their perfect size.
Such London is, by taste and wealth proclaimed
The fairest capital of all the world:
By riot and incontinence the worst.
There, touched by Reynolds, a dull blank becomes 700
A lucid mirror, in which Nature sees
All her reflected features. Bacon there
Gives more than female beauty to a stone,
And Chatham’s eloquence to marble lips.
Nor does the chisel occupy alone 705
The powers of sculpture, but the style as much j
Each province of her art her equal care.
With nice incision of her guided steel
She ploughs a brazen field, and clothes a soil
So sterile with what charms soe’er she will, 710
The richest scenery and the loveliest forms.
Where finds Philosophy her eagle eye,
With which she gazes at yon burning disk
TJndazzled, and detects and counts his spots ?
In London. Where her implements exact, 715
With which she calculates, computes, and scans
All distance, motion, magnitude, and now