Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends, At first thin wavering; till at last the flakes Fall broad, and wide, and fast, dimming the day With a continual flow. The cherished fields Put on their winter-robe of purest white. 'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts Along the mazy current. Low the woods Bow their hoar head; and, ere the languid sun Faint from the west emits his evening ray, Earth's universal face, deep-hid and chill, Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide The works of man. Drooping, the laborer-ox Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven, Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around The winnowing store, and claim the little boon Which Providence assigns them. One alone, The redbreast, sacred to the household gods, Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky, In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man His annual visit. Half-afraid, he first Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor, Eyes all the smiling family askance, And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is-- Till, more familiar grown, the table-crumbs Attract his slender feet. (THOMSON: _The Seasons; Winter_. 1726.) Thomson's _Seasons_ was undoubtedly the most influential of the poems of the blank-verse revival of this period. Saintsbury says: "His blank verse in especial cannot receive too much commendation. With that of Milton, and that of the present Poet Laureate [Tennyson], it must rank as one of the chief original models of the metre to be found in English poetry." (Ward's _English Poets_, vol. iii. p. 169.) Other influential poems of the same period, written in blank verse, were Glover's _Leonidas_ (1737), Young's _Night Thoughts_ (1742-1744), and Akenside's _Pleasures of the Imagination_ (1744). Much earlier than these had come the curious poem of John Philips on _Cider_ (1708). Philips is praised by Thomson as the successor of Milton in some lines of _Autumn_: "Philips, Pomona's bard, the second thou Who nobly durst, in rhyme-unfetter'd verse With British freedom sing the British song." In general, the blank verse of all these poets shows the influence of the couplet and lacks flexibility. Thus Mr. Symonds says: "The use of the couplet had unfitted poets for its composition. Their acquired canons of regularity, when applied to loose and flowing metre, led them astray.... Hence it followed, that when blank verse began again to be written, it found itself very much at the point where it had stood before the appearance of Marlowe. Even Thomson ... wrote stiff and languid blank verse with monosyllabic terminations and monotonous cadences--a pedestrian style." (_Blank Verse_, pp. 61, 62.)[33]