The task

In Book III of his poem “The Task,” the most popular poem of the late eighteenth century, William Cowper lamented how the lust for “improvement” has spoiled nature and the English character. Austen, who described Cowper as her favorite poet, might have had the poem open as she wrote Mansfield Park . An excerpt follows:

My charmer is not mine alone; my sweets, And she that sweetens all my bitters, too, Nature, enchanting Nature, in whose form And lineaments divine I trace a hand That errs not, and find raptures still renewed, Is free to all men—universal prize. Strange that so fair a creature should yet want Admirers, and be destined to divide With meaner objects even the few she finds . . . .

Stript of her ornaments, her leaves and flowers, She loses all her influence. Cities then Attract us, and neglected Nature pines, Abandoned, as unworthy of our love. But are not wholesome airs, though unperfumed By roses, and clear suns, though scarcely felt, And groves, if unharmonious yet secure From clamour and whose very silence charms, To be preferred to smoke—to the eclipse That Metropolitan volcanoes make, Whose Stygian throats breathe darkness all day long, And to the stir of commerce, driving slow, And thundering loud with his ten thousand wheels? They would be, were not madness in the head And folly in the heart; were England now What England was, plain, hospitable, kind, And undebauched. 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 survived the father, served 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 shrewd sharper, ere it buds again. Estates are landscapes, gazed upon awhile, Then advertised, and auctioneered away. The country starves, and they that feed the o’er-charged And surfeited lewd 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 the 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, the abode Of our forefathers, a grave whiskered race, But tasteless. Springs a palace in its stead, But in a distant spot; where more exposed It may enjoy the advantage of the North And aguish East, till time shall have transformed Those naked acres to a sheltering grove. He speaks. The lake in front becomes a lawn, Woods vanish, hills subside, and valleys rise, And streams, as if created for his use, Pursue the track of his directed wand Sinuous or straight, now rapid and now slow, Now murmuring soft, now roaring in cascades, Even as he bids. The enraptured owner smiles. ‘Tis finished. And yet, finished as it seems, Still wants a grace, the loveliest it could show, A mine to satisfy the enormous cost. Drained to the last poor item of his wealth, He sighs, departs, and leaves the accomplished plan That he has touched and retouched, many a day Laboured, and many a night pursued in dreams, Just when it meets his hopes, and proves the heaven He wanted, for a wealthier to enjoy. And now perhaps the glorious hour is come, When having no stake left, no pledge to endear Her interests, or that gives her sacred cause A moment’s operation on his love, He burns with most intense and flagrant zeal To serve his country. Ministerial grace Deals him out money from the public chest, Or, if that mine be shut, some private purse Supplies his need with an usurious loan, To be refunded duly, when his vote, Well-managed, shall have earned its worthy price. Oh, innocent compared with arts like these, Crape and cocked pistol and the whistling ball Sent through the traveller’s temples! He that finds One drop of heaven’s sweet mercy in his cup, Can dig, beg, rot, and perish well-content, So he may wrap himself in honest rags At his last gasp; but could not for a world Fish up his dirty and dependent bread From pools and ditches of the commonwealth, Sordid and sickening at his own success.