[239] There are faint personifications of the other seasons in Book III, ll. 427 foll., but none perhaps as effective as William Mickle had already given in his ode, “Vicissitude,” where he depicts Winter staying:
his creeping steps to pause
And wishful turns his icy eyes
On April meads.
[240] Streaky, for instance, is due to Thomson who, in the first draft of “Summer” (ll. 47-48) had written:
Mildly elucent in the streaky east,
later changed to
At first faint-gleaming in the dappled east.
[241] “Letters,” edited E. Coleridge, 1895, p. 215.
[242] “Biographia Literaria,” Chap. I.