82 
NATURE NOTES. 
“ Here let us trace the matchless vale of Thames, 
Enchanting vale ! beyond whate’er the Muse 
Has of Achaia or Hesperia sung, 
Fair-winding up to where the Muses haunt 
In Twickenham’s bowers, and for their Pope implore 
The healing God ; to royal Hampton’s pile ; 
To Claremont’s terraced height, and Esher’s groves ; 
Now to the sister-hills that skirt the plain, 
To lofty Harrow now, and now to where 
Majestic Windsor lifts his princely brow.” 
Of the beauty of this vale a resident in it has been often 
heard to say, when admiring some beautiful scenes visited by him 
in his holidays, that whenever he got home and saw a sunset or 
moonlight over the valley of the Thames, he was wont to say 
that, after all, no scenery anywhere, whether in Switzerland, or 
Norway, or anywhere else, seemed so lovely to spend one’s life 
in as that which lay around his own home. While Thomson 
was living in Richmond he was quietly labouring over his master- 
piece, “ The Castle of Indolence,” which, however, he did not 
produce till his death, in 1748, and then in an unfinished state. 
This fine poem is one which, though in a playful tone, struck, 
with its underlying earnestness, the deeper notes of life ; and 
it is written in the finest stanza that has ever been used in 
any language, ancient or modern, a stanza that adapts itself 
with equal readiness to almost all kinds of poetry, and takes its 
name (the Spenserian stanza) from the great poet who used it with 
such transcendent skill in his “ Faery Queen.” The following 
stanza from this poem, which expresses the poet’s noble protest 
against the belief that wealth can confer happiness, will show 
the way in which Nature-poets in general treat their subject : — 
“ I care not. Fortune, what you me deny ; 
You cannot rob me of free Nature’s grace ; 
You cannot shut the windows of the sky. 
Through which .Aurora shows her brightening face ; 
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace 
The woods and lawns by living streams at eve ; 
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace. 
And I their toys to the great children leave : 
Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave.” 
It is interesting to note that at the very time when Thomson 
was writing about leaving their toys to the great children, his 
brother-poet was developing the same idea, in his totally 
different style, in this beautiful vignette : — 
“ Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law. 
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw ; 
Some livelier object gives his youth delight, 
A little louder, but as empty (juite ; 
Scarfs, garters, gold, allure his ri[)er age. 
And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age ; 
Pleased with his l>auble last, as that before. 
Till tired, he sleeps, and life’s poor pl.ay is o’er.” 
