In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems.
Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs around.
Full swell the woods, their every music wakes,
Mixed in wild concert, with the warbling brooks
Increased, the distant bleatings of the hills,
And hollow lows responsive from the vales,
Whence, blending all, the sweetened zephyr springs.”
These are but a few samples from “Spring” showing the minute faithfulness with which Thomson had observed
“The negligence of Nature, wide and wild.”
Here are appearances of Nature, each accurately observed, and their succession truthfully rendered, but the whole is so overlaid with tawdry diction that it is hard to pierce below the enamel and feel the true pulse of Nature beating under it. And yet it does beat there, and in many another description in the “Seasons” now little heeded, because of their old-fashioned garb. And yet he who will read the “Seasons” through will find many a phrase true to Nature, many a felicitous expression cropping out from the even roll of his solemn pompous monotone. Thomson has been called the Claude of poets. And his way of handling Nature stands to that of Wordsworth or Tennyson much as Claude’s landscapes do to those of Turner or some of the other modern painters. It may be added that Thomson’s somewhat vapid digressions about Amelia and Lavinia have not more meaning than the conventional lay figures and the classic temples which Claude introduces into the foreground of his landscapes.