"From brightening fields of ether fair disclosed,
Child of the Sun, refulgent Summer comes,
In pride of youth, and felt through Nature's depth:
He comes attended by the sultry hours,
And ever-fanning breezes, on his way;
While, from his ardent look, the turning Spring
Averts her blushful face, and earth, and skies,
All smiling, to his hot dominion leaves."
Here the Impersonation is stronger—and perhaps the superior strength lies in the words "child of the Sun." And here in the words describing Spring, she too is more of an Impersonation than in the other passage—averting her blushful face from the Summer's ardent look. The poet having made Summer masculine, very properly makes Spring feminine; and 'tis a jewel of a picture—for ladies should always avert their blushful faces from the ardent looks of gentlemen. Thomson, indeed, elsewhere says of an enamoured youth overpowered by the loving looks of his mistress,—
"From the keen gaze her lover turns away,
Full of the dear ecstatic power, and sick
With sighing languishment."
This, we have heard, from experienced persons of both sexes, is as delicate as it is natural; but for our own simple and single selves, we never remember having got sick on any such occasion. Much agitated, we cannot deny—if we did, the most credulous would not credit us—much agitated we have been, when our lady-love, not contented with fixing upon us her dove-eyes, began billing and cooing in a style from which the cushat might have taken a lesson with advantage, that she might the better perform her innocent part on her first assignation with her affianced in the pine-grove on St Valentine's day; but never in all our long lives got we absolutely sick—nor even squeamish—never were we obliged to turn away with our hand to our mouth—but, on the contrary, we were commonly as brisk as a bee at a pot of honey; or, if that be too luscious a simile, as brisk as that same wonderful insect murmuring for a few moments round and round a rose-bush, and then settling himself down seriously to work, as mute as a mouse, among the half-blown petals. However, we are not now writing our Confessions—and what we wished to say about this passage is, that in it the one sex is represented as turning away the face from that of the other, which may be all natural enough, though polite on the gentleman's part we can never call it; and, had the female virgin done so, we cannot help thinking it would have read better in poetry. But for Spring to avert his blushful face from the ardent looks of Summer, has on us the effect of making both Seasons seem simpletons. Spring, in the character of "ethereal mildness," was unquestionably a female; but here she is "unsexed from the crown to the toe," and changed into an awkward hobbletehoy, who, having passed his boyhood in the country, is a booby who blushes black at the gaze of his own brother, and if brought into the company of the lasses, would not fail to faint away in a fit, nor revive till his face felt a pitcherful of cold water.
"Crown'd with the sickle and the wheaten sheaf,
While Autumn, nodding o'er the yellow plain,
Comes jovial on," &c.,
is, we think, bad. The Impersonation here is complete, and though the sex of Autumn is not mentioned, it is manifestly meant to be male. So far, there is nothing amiss either one way or another. But "nodding o'er the yellow plain" is a mere statement of a fact in nature—and descriptive of the growing and ripening or ripened harvest—whereas it is applied here to Autumn, as a figure who "comes jovial on." This is not obscurity—or indistinctness—which, as we have said before, is often a great beauty in Impersonation; but it is an inconsistency and a contradiction—and therefore indefensible on any ground either of conception or expression.
"There are no such essential vices as this in the "Castle of Indolence"—for by that time Thomson had subjected his inspiration to thought—and his poetry, guided and guarded by philosophy, became celestial as an angel's song.
"See, Winter comes, to rule the varied year,
Sullen and sad, with all his rising train,
Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme,
These! that exalt the soul to solemn thought,
And heavenly musing. Welcome, kindred glooms!
Congenial horrors, hail! with frequent foot,
Pleased have I, in my cheerful morn of life,
When nursed by careless Solitude I lived,
And sung of Nature with unceasing joy,
Pleased have I wander'd through your rough domain;
Trod the pure virgin-snows, myself as pure;
Heard the winds roar, and the big torrents burst;
Or seen the deep-fermenting tempest brew'd
In the grim evening sky. Thus passed the time,
Till through the lucid chambers of the south
Look'd out the joyous Spring, look'd out, and smiled!"
Divine inspiration indeed! Poetry, that if read by the bedside of a dying lover of nature, might
"Create a soul
Under the ribs of death!"