First the flaming red
Sprung vivid forth; the tawny orange next;
And next delicious yellow; by whose side
Fell the kind beams of all-refreshing green.
Then the pure blue that swells autumnal skies,
Etherial played, and then of sadder hue
Emerged the deepened indigo (as when
The heavy-skirted evening droops with frost),
While the last gleamings of refracted light
Died in the fainting violet away.
(This, from the poem on Newton, is Thomson at his very best in blank verse, or nearly so. He was, however, too apt to emphasise his phrases into full stops, producing what Johnson justly called "broken style," as thus:
On he walks
Graceful, and crows defiance. In the pond
The finely-chequered duck, before her train,
Rows garrulous. The stately sailing swan, etc.)
The trick was pushed to a pitch of absurdity by
(b) Glover:
Mindful of their charge,
The chiefs depart. Leonidas provides
His various armour. Agis close attends,
His best assistant. First a breastplate arms
The spacious chest;
and is somewhat noteworthy in Young and others. The reason probably was a sort of nervous fear lest, in the absence of rhyme, the versification should not be sufficiently marked. But at length the proper flow was recovered by
(c) Cowper:
Tīme māde | thee what | thou wast, | kīng ŏf | the woods,
And time hath made thee what thou art—a cave
For owls to roost in. Once thy spreading boughs
O'erhung the champaign; and the nu|mĕrŏus flōcks
That grazed it stood beneath that ample cope
Uncrowded, yet safe-sheltered from the storm.
No flock frequents thee now. Thou hast outlived
Thy popularity, and art become
(Unless verse rescue thee awhile) a thing
Forgotten, as the foliage of thy youth.