William Cowper

Posts in Comfortable Words credited to ‘William Cowper’

William Cowper (1731-1800) is remembered today as one of England’s most accomplished poets, admired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth and Jane Austen. His verse ranges from translations of Classical epics such as Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ to homely and sometimes tongue-in-cheek reflections on English rural life, much of it coloured by his strong Christian beliefs and today recognised as truly groundbreaking. Cowper suffered for most of his life from depression; after three attempts on his own life he was briefly confined to an asylum, and thereafter lived in the home of a friend’s widow, Mary Unwin. Cowper spoke out loudly against slavery, and his verses were often quoted by Martin Luther King. Cowper is pronounced ‘cooper.’

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God Moves in a Mysterious Way by William Cowper

However dark the night of doubt, day is sure to come.

In October 1773, William Cowper was broken by a nightmarish attack of the depression that had clouded his life for almost twenty years. His neighbour the Revd John Newton had encouraged Cowper to write hymns to keep the depression at bay, but after his breakdown he never wrote another. Samuel Greatheed, who preached at Cowper’s funeral, said that this, his last, was composed during a solitary walk in the fields, and expressed a faith that always reasserted itself once the fits had passed.

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