Page images
PDF
EPUB

JAMES THOMSON.

JAMES THOMSON was born at Ednam, Roxburghshire, Scotland, September 11, 1700. His father was minister of the parish, and James was sent to school at Jedburgh and at the University of Edinburgh. He was intended for the church, and went through a full theological

course.

When a schoolboy, he had attracted the attention of his teachers by his propensity for poetical composition, and they had encouraged him in it and corrected his effusions. During his theological studies, the explanation of a psalm was required of him as a probationary exercise, and he gave it in language so elegant that he was reproved for using a diction which his prospective auditors would not be likely to understand. This, together with the advice of a lady, a friend of his mother's, was enough to turn him from a profession which he had not heartily chosen, and he determined to devote himself to literature.

He went to London in 1725, carrying in his pocket the manuscript of his "Winter," though the poem was then in a somewhat fragmentary state. He showed it to his college-friend Mallet, whom he had fallen in with, and by his advice put it in order and published it, selling the copyright for three,guineas. The poem did not attract much attention until a Mr. Whateley discovered its merits and brought it into notice. Then Sir Spencer Compton, to whom it was dedicated, befriended the poet and made him a present of twenty guineas. He also obtained an introduction to Pope, and the Lord-Chancellor, and other celebrated men; and the poem went through several editions.

In 1727 he published "Summer," and in the same year his "Poem, Sacred to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton" and his "Rule Britannia." "Spring" was published in 1728, and in 1730, "Autumn" having been completed, the entire poem of "The Seasons" was issued collectively, and it has maintained to this day its place as an English classic.

cess was entirely destroyed when an unfortunate line of it

"O Sophonisba, Sophonisba, O!” was parodied by a wag in the pit, who sung out responsive

"O Jemmy Thomson, Jemmy Thomson, O!"

In 1730 Thomson went to the Continent as the tutor of a son of the Lord-Chancellor Talbot, where he travelled three years. On the death of his pupil, he returned to London, and the Chancellor made him Secretary of the Briefs, which gave him a comfortable income. The Chancellor died in 1737, and Thomson lost his office, but was granted a pension of £100 by the Prince of Wales, to whom he had dedicated his poem "Liberty," which he had planned while abroad. This poem is a long, discursive performance, a sort of versified history of civilization in Greece, Italy, Britain, etc., with the usual machinery of visions, goddesses, etc. It was not very successful, though the author considered it bis greatest work.

In 1738 Thomson turned again to dramatic composition, producing "Agamemnon," which Johnson says was "endured, but not favored," followed by "Edward and Eleonora " and "Tancred and Sigismunda." The last-named tragedy, brought out in 1745, met with some measure of success.

In 1746 he wrote "The Castle of Indolence," published in the spring of 1748, which is perhaps his finest poem; and about the same time his friend Lyttleton, having come into power, gave him the office of Surveyor-General of the Leeward Islands, worth about £300 a year.

He was now in easy circumstances once more. But in August, 1748, having contracted a cold and neglected it, he fell into a fever and died. He was buried in the church of Richmond, without any memorial; but in 1762 a monument was erected to him in Westminster Abbey, from the profits of an edition of his works.

Thomson was large and ungainly in person, But Thomson was still poor, and almost the with little that was prepossessing in his appearonly remunerative literary work to be done in ance or manners, and he has also the reputation his day was writing for the stage. In 1729 he of having been one of the most indolent men produced a tragedy entitled "Sophonisba," that ever lived. But he was greatly beloved, which was put upon the boards at Drury Lane. and his society had a charm for all who were It had excited great expectations, but proved a intimate with him. He was genial, even-temweak performance, and its little chance of suc-pered, and kind-hearted, to an unusual degree.

RULE BRITANNIA !

WHEN Britain first, at Heaven's command,
Arose from out the azure main,

This was the charter of the land,

And guardian angels sing the strain:

Rule Britannia! Brittania rules the waves!
Britons never will be slaves.

The nations not so blest as thee,

Must, in their turn, to tyrants fall; Whilst thou shalt flourish, great and free, The dread and envy of them all. Rule Britannia! etc.

Still more majestic shalt thou rise,

More dreadful from each foreign stroke; As the loud blasts that tear thy skies Serve but to root thy native oak. Rule Britannia! etc.

Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame;
All their attempts to hurl thee down
Will but arouse thy generous flame,
And work their woe-but thy renown.
Rule Britannia! etc.

To thee belongs the rural reign;

Thy cities shall with commerce shine; All thine shall be the subject main, And every shore encircle thine. Rule Britannia! etc.

The Muses, still with Freedom found,
Shall to thy happy coast repair;
Blest Isle! with matchless beauty crowned,
And manly hearts to guard the fair.
Rule Britannia! etc.

ODE.

TELL me, thou soul of her I love,
Ah! tell me, whither art thou fled;
To what delightful world above,
Appointed for the happy dead?

Or dost thou, free, at pleasure roam, And sometimes share thy lover's woe; Where, void of thee, his cheerless home Can now, alas! no comfort know?

Oh! if thou hover'st round my walk,
While under every well-known tree
I to thy fancied shadow talk,
And every tear is full of thee;

Should then the weary eye of grief, Beside some sympathetic stream,

In slumber find a short relief,

O visit thou my soothing dream!

SONG.

FOR ever, Fortune, wilt thou prove
An unrelenting foe to love,
And when we meet a mutual heart,
Come in between, and bid us part?

Bid us sigh on from day to day,
And wish, and wish the soul away;
Till youth and genial years are flown,
And all the life of life is gone?

But busy, busy still art thou,
To bind the loveless joyless vow,
The heart from pleasure to delude,
To join the gentle to the rude.

For once, O Fortune, hear my prayer,
And I absolve thy future care;

All other blessings I resign,
Make but the dear Amanda mine.

TO THE REV. MR. MURDOCH, RECTOR OF STRADDISHALL, IN SUFFOLK, 1738. THUS safely low, my friend, thou canst not fall: Here reigns a deep tranquillity o'er all;

No noise, no care, no vanity, no strife;
Men, woods, and fields, all breathe untroubled life.
Then keep each passion down, however dear;
Trust me the tender are the most severe.
Guard, while 'tis thine, thy philosophic ease,
And ask no joy but that of virtuous peace;
That bids defiance to the storms of Fate,
High bliss is only for a higher state.

SONG.

HARD is the fate of him who loves,
Yet dares not tell his trembling pain,

But to the sympathetic groves,

But to the lonely listening plain.

Oh! when she blesses next your shade,
Oh! when her footsteps next are seen
In flowery tracts along the mead,
In fresher mazes o'er the green,

Ye gentle spirits of the vale,

To whom the tears of love are dear, From dying lilies waft a gale,

And sigh my sorrows in her ear.

Oh, tell her what she cannot blame,
Though fear my tongue must ever bind;
Oh, tell her that my virtuous flame
Is as her spotless soul refin'd.

Not her own guardian angel eyes
With chaster tenderness his care,
Not purer her own wishes rise,
Not holier her own sighs in prayer.

But if, at first, her virgin fear

Should start at love's suspected name, With that of friendship soothe her earTrue love and friendship are the same.

THE HAPPY MAN.

HE's not the Happy Man to whom is given,
A plenteous fortune by indulgent Heaven;
Whose gilded roofs on shining columns rise,
And painted walls enchant the gazer's eyes;
Whose table flows with hospitable cheer,
And all the various bounty of the year;
Whose valleys smile, whose gardens breathe
the Spring,

Whose carved mountains bleat, and forests
sing:

For whom the cooling shade in Summer twines, While his full cellars give their generous wines;

From whose wide fields unbounded Autumn
pours

A golden tide into his swelling stores:
Whose Winter laughs; for whom the liberal
gales

Stretch the big sheet, and toiling commerce
sails;

When yielding crowds attend, and pleasure

serves,

While youth, and health, and vigor string his

nerves.

Ev'n not at all these, in one rich lot combin'd,
Can make the Happy Man, without the mind;
Where Judgment sits clear-sighted and surveys
The chain of Reason with unerring gaze;
Where Fancy lives, and to the brightening eyes
His fairer scenes and bolder figures rise;
Where social Love exerts her soft command,
And plays the passions with a tender hand,
Whence every virtue flows, in rival strife,
And all the moral harmony of life.

THE SEASONS.

SPRING, 1728.

Et nunc omnis ager, nunc omnis parturit arbos,
Nunc frondent sylvæ, nunc formosissimus annus.

ARGUMENT.

Virg.

And see where surly Winter passes off,
Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts:
His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill,
The shatter'd forest, and the ravag'd vale;
While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch,
Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost,
The mountains lift their green heads to the sky.
As yet the trembling year is unconfirm'd,
And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze,
Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets
Deform the day delightless: so that scarce
The bittern knows his time, with bill engulf'd
To shake the sounding marsh; or from the shore
The plovers when to scatter o'er the heath,
And sing their wild notes to the listening waste.

At last from Aries rolls the bounteous Sun,
And the bright Bull receives him. Then no more
Th' expansive atmosphere is cramp'd with cold;
But, full of life and vivifying soul,

Lifts the light clouds sublime, and spreads them
thin,

Fleecy and white, o'er all-surrounding heaven.
Forth fly the tepid airs; and unconfin'd,
Unbinding earth, the moving softness strays.
Joyous, th' impatient husbandman perceives.
Relenting Nature, and his lusty steers
Drives from their stalls, to where the well-us'd
plow

Lies in the furrow, loosen'd from the frost.
There, unrefusing, to the harness'd yoke
They lend their shoulder, and begin their toil,
Cheer'd by the simple song and soaring lark.
Meanwhile incumbent o'er the shining share
The master leans, removes th' obstructing clay,
Winds the whole work, and sidelong lays the
glebe.

White through the neighboring field the sower
stalks,

With measur'd step; and liberal throws the grain

Into the faithful bosom of the ground:

The harrow follows harsh, and shuts the scene. Be gracious, Heaven! for now laborious man Has done his part. Ye fostering breezes, blow! Ye softening dews, ye tender showers, descend! And temper all, thou world-reviving Sun, Into the perfect year! Nor ye who live In luxury and ease, in pomp and pride, Think these lost themes unworthy of your ear: The subject proposed. Inscribed to the Count- Such themes as these the rural Maro sung ess of Hertford. The season is described as To wide-imperial Rome, in the full height it affects the various parts of Nature, ascend-Of elegance and taste, by Greece refin'd. ing from the lower to the higher; with digressions arising from the subject. Its influence on inanimate matter, on vegetables, on brute animals, and, last, on man; concluding with a dissuasive from the wild and irregular passion of love, opposed to that of a pure and happy kind.

COME, gentle Spring, ethereal Mildness, come,
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
While music wakes around, veil'd in a shower
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.

O Hertford, fitted or to shine in courts
With unaffected grace, or walk the plain
With innocence and meditation join'd
In soft assemblage, listen to my song,

In ancient times, the sacred plow employ'd
The kings, and awful fathers of mankind:
And some, with whom compar'd your insect-
tribes

Are but the beings of a summer's day,
Have held the scale of empire, rul'd the storm
Of mighty war, then, with unwearied hand,
Disdaining little delicacies, seiz'd
The plow, and greatly independent liv'd.

Ye generous Britons, venerate the plow;
And o'er your hills, and long withdrawing vales,
Let Autumn spread his treasures to the Sun,
Luxuriant and unbounded: as the Sea,
Far through his azure turbulent domain,
Your empire owns, and from a thousand shores
Wafts all the pomp of life into your ports,

Which thy own Season paints; when Nature all So with superior boon may your rich soil,

Is blooming and benevolent, like thee.

Exuberant Nature's better blessings pour

O'er every land, the naked nations clothe, And be th' exhaustless granary of a world!

Nor only through the lenient air this change,
Delicious, breathes; the penetrative Sun,
His force deep-darting to the dark retreat
Of vegetation, sets the steaming power
At large, to wander o'er the vernant Earth,
In various hues; but chiefly thee, gay Green!
Thou smiling Nature's universal robe!
United light and shade! where the sight dwells
With growing strength, and ever-new delight.

From the moist meadow to the wither'd hill,
Led by the breeze, the vivid verdure runs,
And swells, and deepens, to the cherish'd eye.
The hawthorn whitens: and the juicy groves
Put forth their buds, unfolding by degrees,
Till the whole leafy forest stands display'd,
In full luxuriance, to the sighing gales;
Where the deer rustle through the twining brake,
And the birds sing conceal'd. At once array'd
In all the colors of the flushing year,
By Nature's swift and secret-working hand,
The garden glows, and fills the liberal air
With lavish fragrance; while the promis'd fruit
Lies yet a little embryo, unperceiv'd
Within its crimson folds. Now from the town
Buried in smoke, and sleep, and noisome damps,
Oft let me wander o'er the dewy fields, [drops
Where freshness breathes, and dash the trembling
From the bent bush, as through the verdant maze
Of sweet-brier hedges I pursue my walk;
Or taste the smell of dairy; or ascend
Some eminence, Augusta, in thy plains,
And see the country, far diffus'd around,
One boundless blush, one white-empurpled shower
Of mingled blossoms; where the raptur'd eye
Hurries from joy to joy, and, hid beneath
The fair profusion, yellow Autumn spies.

If, brush'd from Russian wilds, a cutting gale
Rise not, and scatter from his humid wings
The clammy mildew; or, dry-blowing, breathe
Untimely frost; before whose baleful blast
The full-blown Spring through all her foliage
shrinks,

Joyless and dead, a wide-dejected waste.
For oft, engender'd by the hazy north,
Myriads on myriads, insect armies waft
Keen in the poison'd breeze; and wasteful eat
Through buds and bark, into the blacken'd core,
Their eager way. A feeble race! yet oft
The sacred sons of vengeance! on whose course
Corrosive famine waits, and kills the year.
To check this plague, the skilful farmer chaff,
And blazing straw, before his orchard burns;
Till, all involv'd in smoke, the latent foe
From every cranny suffocated falls:

Or scatters o'er the blooms the pungent dust
Of pepper, fatal to the frosty tribe:

Or, when th' envenom'd leaf begins to curl,
With sprinkled water drowns them in their nest,
Nor, while they pick them up with busy bill,
The little trooping birds unwisely scares.

Be patient, swains; these cruel-seeming winds Blow not in vain. Far hence they keep repress'd Those deepening clouds on clouds, surcharg'd with rain,

That, o'er the vast Atlantic hither borne,
In endless train, would quench the summer-blaze,
And, cheerless, drown the crude unripen'd year.

The north-east spends his rage; he now shut up

Within his iron cave, th' effusive south
Warms the wide air, and o'er the void of heaven
Breathes the big clouds with vernal showers distent
At first a dusky wreath they seem to rise,
Scarce staining ether; but by swift degrees,
in heaps on heaps, the doubling vapor sails
Along the loaded sky, and mingled deep
Sits on th' horizon round a settled gloom :
Not such as wintery-storms on mortals shed,
Oppressing life; but lovely, gentle, kind,
And full of every hope, and every joy,
The wish of Nature. Gradual sinks the breez
Into a perfect calm; that not a breath
Is heard to quiver through the closing woods,
Or rustling turn the many twinkling leaves
Of aspin tall. Th' uncurling floods, diffus'd
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 th' approaching sign to strike, at once
Into the general choir. Ev'n mountains, vales,
And forests, seem, impatient, to demand
The promis'd 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 th' 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 fir'd anticipates their growth;
And, while the milky nutriment distils,
Beholds the kindling country color 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
Th' illumin'd mountain, through the forest streams,
Shakes on the floods, and in a yellow mist,
Far smoking o'er th' interminable plain,
In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems.
Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs

around.

Full swell the woods; their very music wakes.
Mix'd in wild concert with the warbling brooks
Increas'd, the distant bleatings of the hills,
And hollow lows responsive from the vales,
Whence olending all the sweeten'd zephyr springa
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 disclos d
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 amaz'd
Beholds th' amusive arch before him fly,
Then vanish quite away. Still night succeeds,
A soften'd shade, and saturated earth

Awaits the morning-beam, to give to light,

The foul disorder. Senseless, and deform'd,
Convulsive anger storms at large; or pale,
And silent, settles into fell revenge.
Base envy withers at another's joy,
And hates that excellence it cannot reach.
Desponding fear, of feeble fancies full,
Weak and unmanly, loosens every power.

Rais'd through ten thousand different plastic tubes, Ev'n love itself is bitterness of soul,

The balmy treasures of the former day.

Then spring the living herbs, profusely wild,
O'er all the deep-green earth, beyond the power
Of botanists to number up their tribes :
Whether he steals along the lonely dale,
In silent search; or through the forest, rank
With what the dull incurious weeds account,
Bursts his blind way; or climbs the mountain-rock,
Fir'd by the nodding verdure of its brow:
With such a liberal hand has Nature flung
Their seeds abroad, blown them about in winds,
Innumerous mix'd them with the nursing mould,
The moistening current, and prolific rain.

But who their virtues can declare? who pierce,
With vision pure, into these secret stores,
Of health, and life, and joy? The food of man,
While yet he liv'd in innocence, and told
A length of golden years; unflesh'd in blood,
A stranger to the savage arts of life,
Death, rapine, carnage, surfeit, and disease;
The lord, and not the tyrant, of the world.
The first fresh dawn then wak'd the gladden'd

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

A pensive anguish pining at the heart;
Or, sunk to sordid interest, feels no more
That noble wish, that never-cloy'd desire,
Which, selfish joy disdaining, seeks alone
To bless the dearer object of its flame.
Hope sickens with extravagance; and grief,
Of life impatient, into madness swells;
Or in dead silence wastes the weeping hours.
These, and a thousand mixt emotions more,
From ever-changing views of good and ill,
Form'd infinitely various, vex the mind
With endless storm: whence, deeply rankling, grows
The partial thought, a listless unconcern,
Cold, and averting from our neighbor's good;
Then dark disgust, and hatred, winding wiles,
Coward deceit, and ruffian violence;

At last, extinct each social feeling, fell
And joyless inhumanity pervades

And petrifies the heart. Nature disturb'd
Is deem'd, vindictive, to have chang'd her course
Hence, in old dusky time, a deluge came:
When the deep-cleft disparting orb, that arch'd
The central waters round, impetuous rush'd,
With universal burst, into the gulf,

And o'er the high-pil'd hills of fractur'd earth
Wide dash'd the waves, in undulation vast;
Till, from the centre to the streaming clouds,
A shoreless ocean tumbled round the globe.
The Seasons since have, with severer sway,

Meantime the song went round; and dance and sport, Oppress'd a broken world: the Winter keen

Wisdom and friendly talk, successive, stole
Their hours away; while in the rosy vale
Love breath'd his infant sighs, from anguish free,
And full replete with bliss; save the sweet pain,
That, inly thrilling, but exalts it more.
Nor yet injurious act, nor surly deed,
Was known among those happy sons of Heaven;
For reason and benevolence were law.
Harmonious Nature too look'd smiling on.
Clear shone the skies, cool'd with eternal gales,
And balmy spirit all. The youthful Sun
Shot his best rays, and still the gracious clouds
Dropp'd fatness down; as o'er the swelling mead,
The herds and flocks, commixing, play'd secure.
This when, emergent from the gloomy wood,
The glaring lion saw, his horrid heart
Was meeken'd, and he join'd his sullen joy,
For music held the whole in perfect peace:
Soft sigh'd the flute; the tender voice was heard,
Warbling the varied heart; the woodlands round
Applied their quire; and winds and waters flow'd
In consonance. Such were those prime of days.
But now those white unblemish'd manners,
whence

The fabling poets took their golden age,
Are found no more amid these iron times,
These dregs of life! Now the distemper'd mind
Has lost that concord of harmonious powers,
Which forms the soul of happiness; and all
Is off the poise within: the passions all
Have burst their bounds; and reason, half extinct,
Or impotent, or else approving, sees

Shook forth his waste of snows; and Summer shot
His pestilential heats. Great Spring, before,
Green'd all the year; and fruits and blossoms

blush'd,

In social sweetness, on the self-came bough.
Pure was the temperate air; and even calm
Perpetual reign'd, save what the zephyrs bland
Breath'd o'er the blue expanse : for then nor storms
Were taught to blow, nor hurricanes to rage;
Sound slept the waters; no sulphureous glooms
Swell'd in the sky, and sent the lightning forth;
While sickly damps, and cold autumnal fogs,
Hung not, relaxing, on the springs of life.
But now, of turbid elements the sport,
From clear to cloudy tost, from hot to cold,
And dry to moist, with inward-eating change,
Our drooping days are dwindled down to nought,
Their period finish'd ere 'tis well begun.

And yet the wholesome herb neglected dies;
Though with the pure exhilarating soul
Of nutriment, and health, and vital powers,
Beyond the search of art, 'tis copious blest.
For, with hot ravine fir'd, ensanguin'd man
Is now become the lion of the plain,
And worse. The wolf, who from the nightly fold
Fierce drags the bleating prey, ne'er drunk her milk
Nor wore her warming fleece: nor has the steer,
At whose strong chest the deadly tiger hangs,
E'er plow'd for him. They too are temper'd high
With hunger stung and wild necessity,
Nor lodges pity in their shaggy breast.
But Man, whom Nature form'd of milder clay

« PreviousContinue »