SPECIMEN OF THE ALTERATIONS
MADE BY THOMSON IN THE EARLY EDITIONS OF
'Tis done! - dread Winter has subdu'd the Year, And reigns, tremendous, o'er the desart plains! How dead the Vegetable Kingdom lies!
How dumb the tuneful! Horror wide extends
His solitary empire-now, fond Man!
Behold thy pictur'd life: Pass some few Years,
Thy flowering Spring, thy short-liv'd Summer's strength, Thy sober Autumn, fading into age,
And pale, concluding Winter shuts thy scene,
And shrouds Thee in the Grave. Where now are fled
Those Dreams of Greatness? those unsolid Hopes
Of Happiness? those longings after Fame?
Those restless Cares? those busy, bustling Days?
Those Nights of secret Guilt? those veering thoughts,
Fluttering 'twixt Good, and Ill, that shar'd thy Life?
All, now, are vanish'd! Virtue, sole, survives
Immortal, Mankind's never-failing Friend,
His Guide to Happiness on high — and see!
'Tis come, the Glorious Morn! the second Birth
Of Heaven, and Earth! — awakening Nature hears
Th' Almighty Trumpet's Voice, and starts to Life,
Renew'd, unfading. Now, th' Eternal Scheme,
That Dark Perplexity, that Mystic maze,
Which Sight cou'd never trace, nor Heart conceive,
To Reason's Eye, refined, clears up apace.
Angels, and Men, astonish'd pause-and dread
To travel thro' the Depths of Providence,
Untry'd, unbounded.
And, prostrate in the Dust, adore that Power,
And Goodness, oft arraign'd. See now the cause,
Why conscious worth, oppress'd, in secret, long,
Mourn'd, unregarded: why the good Man's share
In Life, was Gall, and Bitterness of Soul:
Why the lone Widow, and her Orphans, pin'd
In starving Solitude; while Luxury,
In Palaces, lay prompting her low thought
To form unreal Wants: Why Heaven-born Faith,
And Charity, prime Grace, wore the red marks
Of Persecution's Scourge: Why licens'd Pain,
That cruel Spoiler, that embosom'd Foe,
Imbitter'd all our Bliss. Ye Good Distrest!
Ye noble Few! that here,
Beneath Life's Pressures
And all your woes are past.
unbending, stand
-yet a little while,
Time swiftly fleets,
And wish'd Eternity, approaching, brings
Life undecaying, Love without Allay,
Pure flowing Joy, and Happiness sincere.
The concluding lines of Winter, taken from the 2d Edit. 1726,- those words printed in italic show how much has been altered by the author.
THIS poem being writ in the manner of Spenser, the obsolete words, and a simplicity of diction in some of the lines, which borders on the ludicrous, were necessary to make the imitation more perfect. And the style of that admirable poet, as well as the measure in which he wrote, are, as it were, appropriated by custom to all allegorical Poems writ in our language; just as in French, the style of Marot, who lived under Francis the First, has been used in tales, and familiar epistles, by the politest writers of the age of Louis the Fourteenth.
The castle hight of Indolence,
And its false luxury;
Where for a little time, alas!
We lived right jollily.
O MORTAL man, who livest here by toil,
Do not complain of this thy hard estate;
That like an emmet thou must ever moil,
Is a sad sentence of an ancient date;
And, certes, there is for it reason great;
For, though sometimes it makes thee weep and
wail,
And curse thy star, and early drudge and late; Withouten that would come a heavier bale, Loose life, unruly passions, and diseases pale.
In lowly dale, fast by a river's side,
With woody hill o'er hill encompass'd round,
A most enchanting wizard did abide,
Than whom a fiend more fell is no where found.
It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground;
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