In Blake’s youthful work the personifications of natural powers, though in most cases clearly imitative are yet striking in their beauty and power of suggestion. The influence of “Ossian” is seen in such “prose” personifications as “The Veiled Evening walked solitary down the Western hills and Silence reposed in the valley” (“The Couch of Death”), and “Who is this that with unerring step dares to tempt the wild where only Nature’s foot has trod, ’Tis Contemplation, daughter of the Grey Morning” (“Contemplation”). Here also are evocations of the seasons which, whatever they may owe to Thomson or Collins, are new in that we actually get a picture of Spring with “dewy locks” as she looks down
Thro’ the clear windows of the morning
of summer with
ruddy limbs and flourishing hair,
of the “jolly autumn,”
laden with fruits and stained
With the blood of the grape;
and of winter,
a dreadful monster whose skin clings