Thou hold'st the sun A prisoner in the yet undawning East, Shortening his journey between morn and noon, And hurrying him impatient of his stay Down to the rosy West.

But kindly still Compensating his loss with added hours Of social converse and instructive ease, And gathering at short notice in one group The family dispersed by daylight and its cares.
I crown thee king of intimate delights, Fire-side enjoyments, home-born happiness, And all the comforts that the lowly roof Of undisturb'd retirement, and the hours Of long uninterrupted evening know.
The writer of _The Task_ also deserves the crown which he has himself claimed as a close observer and truthful painter of nature.

In this respect, he challenges comparison with Thomson.

The range of Thomson is far wider, he paints nature in all her moods, Cowper only in a few and those the gentlest, though he has said of himself that "he was always an admirer of thunderstorms, even before he knew whose voice be heard in them, but especially of thunder rolling over the great waters." The great waters he had not seen for many years; he had never, so far as we know, seen mountains, hardly even high hills; his only landscape was the flat country watered by the Ouse.

On the other hand he is perfectly genuine, thoroughly English, entirely emancipated from false Arcadianism, the yoke of which still sits heavily upon Thomson, whose "muse" moreover is perpetually "wafting" him away from the country and the climate which he knows to countries and climates which he does not know, and which he describes in the style of a prize poem.