Peace, in this poem, is a legal settlement, a royal pardon and a battle-cry all at once. Cowper looks back at a death for four stanzas, then turns to face a fight, and the turn hangs on one small word: "Now," which opens the fifth stanza. The Hebrew name in the title means "the Lord is peace," and the poem works out what that could mean for a speaker who admits he deserves none.
The opening stanzas borrow the language of the courtroom. Christ's blood flows "to satisfy the law's demand," Justice holds an "angry rod," and the speaker stands "Before the Father's face" like a defendant who has been let off. The question that follows, "What creature could have form'd the plan, / Or who fulfil it but a God?", is rhetorical, and its answer is built into the grammar. The third stanza makes the legal metaphor physical. "No drop remains of all the curse" echoes the first stanza's streaming blood, as if the blood has drained the curse away drop for drop. The line "The guilty, but returning soul" is cleverly balanced. The arrows of wrath are held back from someone who is still guilty, but who is turning back, and that "but" carries the whole argument of grace.
The fourth stanza is the poem's most striking moment, because it changes the metaphor from law to monarchy. The speaker is now a "rebel," and God is his "injured Sovereign." Such a rebel would expect punishment, so the idea that he might "hope to see" peace is almost absurd. Cowper then repeats his words: "Peace by his injured Sovereign wrought, / His Sovereign fasten'd to a tree." The second "Sovereign" opens the final line, as though the poet cannot believe the fact and must say it twice. The offended king is also the one who pays the price, and the plain word "tree," in place of anything grander, makes the image bare and rough.
The form suits this plainness. Each of the six stanzas is a quatrain in iambic tetrameter with alternating rhymes (stream'd/redeem'd, demand/stand), the steady, singable shape of a hymn. Cowper uses it with restraint. Most lines are simple words and short clauses, and the rhymes often connect the large ideas: "God" rhymes with "rod," "soul" with "whole," "wrought" with "bought." The language of purchase and labour ("dearly bought," "wrought") makes peace sound hard-won rather than gentle.
After the turn, the imagery shifts again to soldiers and weapons. The speaker calls himself a "feeble worm," a deliberately small image, and asks to be "conform'd" and girded "for the war." The enemies are "earth and hell," and the reason for their hatred is neatly turned: "They hate the soul that hates his sins." In the final stanza he almost taunts them. "Let them in horrid league agree!" is the only line with real swagger, and the list that follows, "assault," "distress," sounds like a catalogue of threats he has already decided not to fear. The stanza ends on "Nor rob me of the Lord my peace." Those last words compress the title and the whole poem. Peace is no longer a feeling that attackers could steal, because it is a person who has bound himself to the speaker. The title, which asks the Lord to "Send Peace," sounds like a prayer, while the last line speaks as though the gift has already been given.
What makes the poem worth reading is how it pairs a small voice with large claims. The speaker never boasts of his own courage. His strength comes entirely from what was done for him, and that is why he can sound defiant in the last stanza. Cowper also gives the reader three distinct pictures of the same event, a trial, a rebellion and a war, and each adds something the others lack. The courtroom explains the cost, the rebellion explains the shock of being forgiven, and the war explains what comes afterwards. A short, plainly rhymed hymn manages to hold all three together.