The flowing plenty of her growing hair
Diffusing lavishly ambrosia round
Earth smil’d, and Gladness danc’d along the sky.
The epithets which accompany the abstractions are no longer conventional (“Chastity meek-ey’d,” “Modesty sweet-blushing”) and help to give touches of animation to otherwise inanimate figures. In the “Nativity” (1757) there is a freer use of the mere abstraction that calls up no distinct picture, but even here there are happy touches that give relief:
Faith led the van, her mantle dipt in blue,
Steady her ken, and gaining on the skies.
In the “Hymn to May” (1787) Thompson personified the month whose charms he is singing, the result being a radiant figure, having much in common with the classical personifications of the orders or powers of nature:
A silken camus, em’rald green
Gracefully loose, adown her shoulder flow.