'A Nocturnal Reverie' - Anne Finch

‘In such a Night let Me abroad remain,
Till Morning breaks, and All's confus'd again;
Our Cares, our Toils, our Clamours are renew'd.
Or Pleasures, seldom reach'd, again pursu'd.

‘A Nocturnal Reverie’ (published 1713)

Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea (1661-1720)

 

Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea.
Portrait by Peter Cross, c. 1690,
(National Portrait Gallery, London). 

A quick search online will soon tell you that Anne Finch’s ‘A Nocturnal Reverie’ is very far from being unknown. The most basic of surveys will rapidly uncover various readings of the text and historical material relating to Finch herself. I have chosen this poem to look at this week not because it hasn’t been written about much, but rather because of its essentially cathartic quality, and for its sense of finding peace in a chaotic, troubled world.

The poem is essentially one huge sentence, all describing an imaginary night spent savouring the beauties of the natural world:

‘In such a Night, when every louder Wind

Is to its distant Cavern safe confin’d;’
(lines 1-2)

The reference to every ‘Wind’ being held within a ‘Cavern’ is an allusion to the cave of the wind god Aeolus in classical Greek mythology; instead of violent winds ‘only gentle Zephyr fans his Wings’. Meanwhile, the nightingale (represented by ‘lonely Philomel’) either softly sings, or from the vantage of ‘some Tree’ she raises her melodic voice to guide ‘the Wand’rer right’ (lines 4-6). The night is mostly clear, since the ‘passing Clouds give place’, or else only ‘thinly vail the Heav’ns’ (lines 7 & 8). The viewer’s gaze returns to earth via a reflection ‘in some River, overhung with Green’ of the ‘waving Moon’ (lines 9 & 10). The riverside grass is now ‘freshen’d’ by the moist night air and the ‘cool Banks’ of the river now ‘invite’ the wanderer to rest (lines 11 & 12). Within this tranquil oasis, various country flowers bloom including the ‘Woodbind, and the Bramble-Rose’ alongside the ‘sleepy Cowslip’ and the ‘Foxglove’ (lines 13-16).

The personification begun with the idea of the Cowslip being ‘sleepy’ is now continued through the likening of the ‘scatter’d Glow-worms’ to ‘trivial Beauties’ in society who must ‘watch their Hour to shine’; the inference is that only the most ‘perfect Charms’ can withstand the unforgiving light of day, and the whole thing is turned into a clever compliment to Finch’s friend the Countess of Salisbury whom, she writes ‘stands the Test of every Light’. It’s an unusual detour in a poem that focuses primarily upon nighttime as beautiful, and thus offers the possibility that some of the appeal of the night is owing to the limitations it imposes upon visual perception.

Now, sweet ‘Odours’ can wander ‘uninterrupted’ through the air, and shadows are softened because they offer less contrast within the ‘darken’d Goves’. This is a world of shadows now, where the ‘lengthen’d Shade’ or shadow of an ambling horse becomes an object of ‘fear’ until the sound of ‘torn up Forage in his Teeth’ is heard (lines 29-32). From this momentary glimpse of the fearfulness of the dark, Finch returns us swiftly to the peacefulness of twilight as sheep and cows eat, and birds call in a ‘shortliv’d Jubilee’ of tranquillity enjoyed ‘whilst Tyrant-man does sleep’ (lines 33-38). Sharing in this idyllic, untroubled condition Finch identifies this nocturne as a space in which to experience ‘a sedate Content’ that nonetheless does not inhibit the ‘silent Musings’ that prompt ‘the Mind to seek / Something, too high for Syllables to speak’ (lines 39-42). By becoming immersed within the natural world, a sense of sublimity is achieved and the wanderer’s soul is finally, for a moment, ‘free’. ‘In such a Night,’ Finch writes, ‘let Me abroad remain, / Till Morning breaks, and All’s confus’d again’ (lines 47-48).

Happy Reading everyone!

Other poems by Anne Finch can be found here:

http://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/works/o4784-w0860.shtml

(A superb and totally free database of eighteenth-century poetry – there’s a beautifully presented copy of Finch’s poem here, as well as hundreds of other eighteenth-century poems throughout the site.)

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/anne-finch#about

(Poetry Foundation online: great free resource!!)

Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, Selected Poems, ed. by Denys Thompson (Carcanet Press Ltd, 2003)

(this is pretty much what it says on the tin: selected poems by Anne Finch)

Roger Lonsdale (ed.), Eighteenth-century women poets: an Oxford anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)

 – The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)

(both are available from numerous book shops online and on the high street, and both are truly excellent volumes! There are plenty of economical priced second-hand copies of this available online too)

You can find out more about Anne Finch here:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Finch,_Countess_of_Winchilsea
(Wikipedia – usually a good starting point, and it’s free!)

Barbara McGovern, ‘Finch, Anne, countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/9426 [accessed 16 July 2015]

(sadly, this resource is accessible by subscription only)

Resources used in the composition of this blogpost:

 

Claire Pickard, Literary Jacobitism: The Writings of Jane Barker, Mary Caesar and Anne Fich, DPhil Thesis (Oxford, 2006) https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:85514fc9-6f0c-4992-ae8c-2666dc1f7ede/download_file?safe_filename=602157226_Redacted.pdf&file_format=application%2Fpdf&type_of_work=Thesis

Katherine M. Quinsey, ‘Nature, Gender, and Genre in Anne Finch’s Poetry: “A Nocturnal Reverie”’, Lumen, 26 (2007), 63-77

https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/lumen/2007-v26-lumen0255/1012061ar.pdf

'The Seasons' - James Thomson

Gradual sinks the breeze

Into a perfect calm; that not a breath
Is 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 

The hollow lows responsive from the vales,
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 To catch the falling glory; but amazed
Beholds the amusive arch before him fly,
Then vanish quite away.

(Excerpt from ‘Spring’)

The Seasons James Thomson (1700-1748)
1728-30



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, Beneath the umbrageous multitude of leaves.’

(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.

‘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.’



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:

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800951.txt

(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.

 

You can find out more about Thomson and his work:

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)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Thomson_(poet,_born_1700)

(Wikipedia – a rather longer biography, so might actually be more interesting than Britannica’s entry)

https://c18media.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/illustrations-and-the-seasons-by-james-thomson-2/

(Interesting blogpost about illustrated versions of Thomson’s poem)

https://wordsworth.org.uk/blog/2014/12/03/james-thomson-and-the-romantics/

(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.