His silver-winding way.
Gray, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College
In this verse there are the conventional personifications of Science and the Thames, and such stock phrases as “the watery glade.” The whole poem, however, is infused with a new spirit of mingled energy and meditation.
As the century draws to a close we have many of the newer styles appearing: the more regular blank verse of Cowper; the lighter heroic couplet of Goldsmith; the archaic medley of Chatterton; and the intense simplicity of Burns and Blake. As a further example of the new manner we quote a few stanzas from a poem by Fergusson, who, dying in the year 1774 (ten years before the death of Johnson), wrote as naturally as Burns himself:
As simmer rains bring simmer flowers,
And leaves to cleed the birken bowers;
Sae beauty gets by caller showers
Sae rich a bloom,
As for estate, or heavy dowers
Aft stands in room.