Gradual sinks the breeze
Into a perfect calm; that not a breathIs heard to quiver through the closing woods,
Or rustling turn the many twinkling leaves
Of aspen tall. The uncurling floods diffused
In glassy breadth, seem, through delusive lapse,
Forgetful of their course. ‘Tis silence all,
And pleasing expectation. Herds and flocks
Drop the dry sprig, and, mute imploring, eye
The falling verdure. Hush’d in short suspense,
The plumy people streak their wings with oil,
To throw the lucid moisture trickling off;
And wait the approaching sign to strike, at once,
Into the general choir. E’en mountains, vales,
And forests seem impatient to demand
The promised sweetness. Man superior walks
Amid the glad creation, musing praise,
And looking lively gratitude. At last,
The clouds consign their treasures to the fields;
And, softly shaking on the dimpled pool
Prelusive drops, let all their moisture flow
In large effusion o’er the freshen’d world.
The stealing shower is scarce to patter heard,
By such as wander through the forest-walks,
Beneath the umbrageous multitude of leaves.
But who can hold the shade, while Heaven descends
In universal bounty, shedding herbs,
And fruits, and flowers on Nature’s ample lap?
Swift Fancy fired anticipates their growth;
And, while the milky nutriment distils,Beholds the kindling country colour round.
Thus all day long the full-distended clouds
Indulge their genial stores, and well-shower’d earth
Is deep enrich’d with vegetable life;
Till, in the western sky, the downward sun
Looks out, effulgent, from amid the flush
Of broken clouds, gay-shifting to his beam.
The rapid radiance instantaneous strikes
The illumined mountain; through the forest streams,
Shakes on the floods, and, in a yellow mist,
Far-smoking o’er the interminable plain,
In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems.
Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs around.
Full swell the woods; their every music wakes,
Mix’d in wild concert with the warbling brooks
Increased, the distant bleatings of the hills,
 |
| Engraved title-page for 'Spring' in the 1876 illustrated edition of Thomson's Seasons |
Whence, blending all, the sweeten’d zephyr springs.
Meantime, refracted from yon eastern cloud,
Bestriding earth, the grand ethereal bow
Shoots up immense, and every hue unfolds,
In fair proportion, running from the red,
To where the violet fades into the sky.
Here, awful Newton, the dissolving clouds
Form, fronting on the sun, thy showery prism;
And, to the sage-instructed eye, unfold
The various twine of light, by thee disclosed
From the white mingling maze. Not so the boy:
He wondering views the bright enchantment bend,
Delightful, o’er the radiant fields, and runs
Beholds the amusive arch before him fly,
Then vanish quite away.
(Excerpt from ‘Spring’)
The Seasons1728-30
 |
| Engraved frontispiece for 'Spring' from the 1876 illustrated edition of Thomson's Seasons. |
You might be wondering why today’s quotation is so
long. Well, quite simply it’s because
this is something of a tricky poem to get hold of (and I didn't want folks put off reading it by its eulsiveness). Published in 1730, James Thomsons’s Seasons would have a profound effect on
English Literature throughout the remainder of the eighteenth century. Sadly, however, like many great
eighteenth-century poets, his works are not always remembered today. Indeed, my attention was only drawn to this
talented poet and his work through my investigations into pre-chapter quotation,
since extracts from Thomson’s Seasons
frequently appear in the works of Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe (whose novels I
am currently researching). It’s a
fantastic example of how an interest in one thing can stimulate a love of something
else in literary studies!
Divided into four sections, each corresponding to
a specific season, Thomson’s Seasons is
a lush, and glorious poem. It’s also
rather long, so for the purposes of this blog post I’ll focus on the extract I’ve
typed up above. This section is taken
from ‘Spring’, and narrates the approach and arrival of a brief spring shower,
finishing with the inevitable rainbow splashed across the sky. Thus it begins with a sense of anticipation: ‘‘Tis
silence all, / And pleasing expectation’.
The herds stop their grazing, and ‘The plumy people [the birds] streak
their wings with oil’ in preparation for the forthcoming rain. Importantly, the rain is also seen as a good
thing here as ‘E’en mountains, vales, / And forests seem impatient to demand /
The promised sweetness’ that the rain will bring.
Finally ‘The clouds consign their treasures to the
fields’, and the world is ‘freshen’d’.
In just three lines, Thomson forms an exquisite and evocative image of
wandering beneath the trees as the rain falls overhead:
‘The stealing shower is scarce to patter heard,
By such as wander through the forest-walks,
(I had to look up what ‘umbrageous’ means, so just
in case you’re not sure either it means ‘shady’, or ‘shaded’. Good word to use at parties, and in
crosswords.). Yet neither is this just a
romantic description of the countryside: there’s a practical side to it
too. This ‘universal bounty’ or ‘milky nutriment’
will call to life ‘herbs, And fruits, and flowers’; that the rain also causes ‘the
kindling country [to] colour round’ is simply an added bonus. It’s like when you think of how vibrantly
green the beautiful hills of Wales always look, because of the rain from the
mountains. Here too, the rain is
bringing out all the glorious colours of nature.
In Thomson’s poem, the rain lasts ‘all day long’,
spreading its goodness around until the ‘well-shower’d earth / Is deep enrich’d
with vegetable life’. Only as the day
draws to a close does the sun peek out ‘effulgent’ or radiant from the clouds. It’s sunset, and the light ‘instantaneous
strikes / The illumined mountain’, glowing ‘in a yellow mist’ as it ‘In
twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems’ of all the settled raindrops clinging
to the plants. Beautiful, isn’t it? And then, ‘Moist, bright, and green, the
landscape laughs around’, and the birds sing as in the woods ‘every music wakes’
to blend with ‘the distant bleatings’ of sheep and the ‘hollow lows’ of cattle
in the valleys. And crowning all, a
rainbow appears:
 |
| Engraving from 'Spring' in the 1876 illustrated edition of Thomson's Seasons. |
Bestriding earth, the grand ethereal bow
Shoots up immense, and every hue unfolds,
In fair proportion, running from the red,
To where the violet fades into the sky.’
The reference to Newton alludes to his discovery
of the refractive properties of light, in which a glass prism can separate ‘The
various twine of light, […]/ From the white mingling maze’. It’s a nice touch of science in this
otherwise eminently poetic description.
But the last word goes not to Newton, but to the ‘wondering’ boy who
longs to catch hold of the rainbow, which fades and pulls away as he tries
to grasp it. It’s a good image for the whole
purpose of this kind of nature poetry, which aims to capture the intangible
beauty of a world that must be experienced to be fully enjoyed and
appreciated. Through the words of Thomson,
even those not fortunate enough to live in the countryside can capture a sense
of that experience of the natural environment.
Happy Reading!!
You can
find this poem…
…with great difficulty. For some strange reason, it doesn’t seem to be
in popular print anymore. Which is a
huge shame because it’s an absolute masterpiece!! Here are a few suggestions of starting
points, though:(Not perhaps the most attractive font in the world, but this does seem to include the whole poem! And lots of other lovely Thomson material too!! Go forth and read folks!)
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-four-seasons-summer/
(This only contains one of Thomson’s four seasonal poems, ‘Summer’, but still it’s a start!)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/james-thomson#about
(Poetry foundation: contains extracts from ‘Spring’ and ‘Winter’. Also includes Thomson’s other famous poem, ‘Rule Britannia’, from which comes the seminal Last of the Proms anthem!)
There are also umerous old/antique copies of this
poem available from second-hand retailers online and on the high street, some
of them not too expensive. There was an annotated
Oxford edition of the text published in the 1980s, but even today this is
priced for only the most enthusiastic of readers.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Thomson-Scottish-poet-1700-1748
(A biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica that is shockingly short for such an important chap! But it does have lots of the most important dates)
(Wikipedia – a rather longer biography, so might actually be more interesting than Britannica’s entry)
(Interesting blogpost about illustrated versions of Thomson’s poem)
(Another nice blogpost about the influence of Thomson’s Seasons upon later romantic poets to whom time has been somewhat kinder, such as Coleridge)
https://www.waterstones.com/book/weatherland/alexandra-harris/9780500292655
(I believe there's also a rather nice section on Thomson in Alexandra Harris's fab new award-winning book Weatherland. The link connects to Waterstones website, though of course it is available at all good bookstores, online and on the high street!! I haven't read this yet, but it's on my list... )
Copyright notice: All images used in this blogpost are the property of the author. I'm happy for others to use these images for educational or research purposes free of charge, on condition that due acknowledgement is given.
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