The Cloud, with its marvellously vivid personification, is a perfect example of his genius.
It gives the measure of his unlikeness to the more homekeeping imaginations of his contemporaries Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burns, and Moore; and at the same time to Byron, for here there are no morbid reflections; the poem is pervaded by a naive, childlike tone, such as one hears in the old mythologies.
The Cloud:
I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their Mother's breast