‘Jehovah Our Righteousness’ by William Cowper (1731-1800)

Jeremiah 23:6

My God, how perfect are Thy ways!
But mine polluted are;
Sin twines itself about my praise,
And slides into my prayer.   4

When I would speak what Thou hast done
To save me from my sin,
I cannot make Thy mercies known,
But self-applause creeps in.  8

Divine desire, that holy flame
Thy grace creates in me;
Alas! impatience is its name,
When it returns to Thee.     12

This heart, a fountain of vile thoughts.
How does it overflow,
While self upon the surface floats,
Still bubbling from below.   16

Let others in the gaudy dress
Of fancied merit shine;
The Lord shall be my righteousness,
The Lord forever mine.        20

Considering the Poem

Having read through Cowper’s poem even for a first time, we can feel that it has a particular mood and emotional rhythm. There is a recurrent rising and falling arc of movement in each of the first three verses. Each begins with a bright, rising tone which then, about half way through the verse, weakens and falls away into despair. The falling cadences embody the continual failing of the speaker’s spiritual ambitions.

The poem is a confessional lyric so we may assume that the speaker is Cowper and that he is describing what must be the most common of all causes of regret – the failure to do one’s best. In the opening verse, God’s plans are ‘polluted’ (2) by Cowper’s weaknesses which hamper his attempts to pray (3-5); then, when he tries to thank God for His gracious efforts, he cannot, because vanity or ‘self-applause’ sidles in (6-8) and, in the third verse, the Pentecostal ‘holy flame’ (9), though it answers Cowper’s desire for ‘Divine grace’, returns rejected and impotently to God (10-12).

Cowper concentrates on verbs to convey ideas and feelings in this poem. This stylistic choice is often, for obvious reasons, a mark of vigorous, clear writing. The verbs carry much of the meaning in the early verses, especially when it comes to describing the way that the poet’s failings operate in his body, spirit and mind. About the work of sin, the poem makes no noisy drama. The simple, everyday verbs ‘twines’ (3), ‘slides’ (4) and ‘creeps’ (8) communicate the silent, surreptitious and insinuating movement of sin as it pursues its enervating way.

The image of a polluted spring welling up to defile Cowper’s aspirations appears twice (2, 13-16). Like the verbs, it is simple and straightforward. The pollution image is completed in the fourth verse. Now the verbs suggest, not quiet movement but a constant pressure of destructive energy: we learn that the source of the spring or ‘fountain’ of ‘vile’ pollution is Cowper’s ‘heart’ (13) which ‘bubbling from below’ (14) threatens but does not disturb that part of him that others see – his outer, conscious and public ‘self’ (15).

The experience of thinking and feeling that has gone to make the poem has led Cowper to the moral and spiritual statement at its culmination – the determination to devote himself in faith and humble submission to his only source of aid, the grace of God. Thinking, perhaps, of Jesus’ warning to the Pharisees about making shows of virtue (Matthew 23: 5-7; Mark 12:38-39; Luke 20:45-46) as well as the passage from Jeremiah that he refers to in the subtitle to the poem, Cowper resolves that he will be more determined, now he knows the truth about himself, to avoid all ‘gaudy’ (20) demonstrations of virtue and signs of self-love, or ‘self-applause’ (8).

He will trust not his own unreliable and infected righteousness, but God’s manifold and great mercies. Thus, the poem (and hymn, as it also became) reaches a perfect conclusion by linking its beginning and its end and by connecting Cowper’s weakness to his trust and faith.

‘Poems’: William Cowper (Everyman)