70 
NATURE NOTES. 
poetry, and both are well worthy of our attention. It was in his 
native Jed, that ran past his father’s garden, or in some other 
affluent of Teviot or Tweed, that the poet had seen the mountain 
spate, that sudden and disastrous flood caused by heavy rainfall, 
which he sketches in these wonderfully vigorous lines, which are 
so graphic as to be instantly suggestive of the whole scene : — 
“ Wide o’er the brim, with many a torrent swelled, 
And the mixed ruin of its banks o’erspread. 
At last the roused up river pours along 
Resistless, roaring : dreadful down it comes 
From the rude mountain and the mossy wild. 
Tumbling through rocks abrupt, and sounding far ; 
Then o’er the sanded valley floating spreads. 
Calm, sluggish, silent ; till, again constrained, 
Between two meeting hills it bursts away. 
Where rocks and woods o’erhang the turbid streams : 
There, gathering triple force, rapid and deep. 
It boils, and wheels, and foams, and thunders through.” 
These graphic lines of pure description of one of Nature’s 
scenes are from “Winter,” the earliest written of “ The Seasons,” 
which was planned and begun at Barnet, when Thomson was on 
his way to Richmond. With these we may well compare the 
opening lines of “ Spring,” written when the Poet had arrived 
and settled in Richmond ; — 
“Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come ; 
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud. 
While music wakes around, veiled in a shower 
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.” 
It is worth while to dwell for a moment on the beautiful 
imaginative character of these lines, where the poet blends figure 
and feeling, which, though evasively bewildering to the imagi- 
nation, admirably suggests a sense of the presence of spring. 
Instead of saying, in a prosaic way, that he means to describe 
the mild winds and refreshing rains, the flowers and song-birds, 
and other features of the spring-season, he imagines a goddess 
descending from heaven in response to his call, garlanded with 
roses and surrounded with music. The image of the goddess is 
purposely obscured with the cloud and the veil, to harmonise 
with the shy graces of early springtime. It was in suchwise that 
Nature was pictured by Thomson, who loved her for her own 
sake, — true inaugurator, as he was, of the modern school of 
Nature-delineation. 
When Thomson came to London, the school of Pope was 
paramount ; but “ Winter” was written before the poet had felt 
the influence of the classical school of poetry. When, however, 
“ Autumn” was produced, he had been five years in the neighbour- 
hood of Richmond, where he had lived all the time in a literary 
atmosphere, and had become intimate with Pope, who had 
grown warmly attached to him ; thus in that poem the influence 
of Pope is clearly shown ; and his aid and influence were 
