Sometimes thro’ the yellow mead
Where Joy and White-robed Peace resort
And Venus keeps her festive court.
All the odes of Warton betray an abundant use of abstractions, in the midst of which he rarely displays anything suggestive of spontaneous inspiration. His few personifications of natural powers are clearly imitative. “Evening” is “the meek-eyed Maiden clad in sober gray” and Spring comes
array’d in primrose colour’d robe.
We feel all the time that the poet drags in his stock of personified abstractions only because he is writing odes, and considers that such devices add dignity to his subject.
At the same time it is worth noting that almost the same lavish use of these lay figures occurs in his blank verse poem, “The Enthusiast,” or “The Lover of Nature” (1740), likewise written in imitation of Milton, and yet in its prophetic insight so important a poem in the history of the Romantic revival.[217] Lines such as
Famine, Want and Pain
Sunk to their graves their fainting limbs
are frequent, while there is a regular procession of qualities, more or less sharply defined, but not poetically suggestive enough to be effective.