The Task, and Other Poems
By William Cowper
Cover: The Cornfield (1826), oil on canvas by John Constable (1776-1837) · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (artist died 1837)
Cowper's blank-verse Task takes up a sofa, a timepiece, a garden and the winter evenings and walks of the English countryside, and meditates on rural life and the moral state of England. The volume also has the comic ballad of John Gilpin's ride and the poet's lines To Mary.
Summary written with Claude Sonnet 5.5.