In the last century any subject was deemed suitable for poetry, and the Welsh poet, John Dyer, who was born about 1698, found in his later life poetical materials in _The Fleece_ (1757), a poem in four books of blank verse. His genius for descriptive poetry and his passionate and intelligent delight in natural objects are seen more pleasantly in _Grongar Hill_ (published in the same year as Thomson's _Winter_), a poem not without grammatical inaccuracies, one of which deforms the first couplet, but full of poetical feeling. In an ease of composition which runs into laxity he reminds us occasionally of George Wither. His chief merit is, that while independent of Thomson, he was inspired by the same love, and wrote with the same aim. Dyer is not content with bare description, but likes to moralize on the landscape he surveys. Thus, when looking on a ruined tower, the poet exclaims: 'Yet time has seen, that lifts the low, And level lays the lofty brow, Has seen this broken pile compleat, Big with the vanity of state; But transient is the smile of fate! A little rule, a little sway, A sunbeam in a winter's day,' Is all the proud and mighty have Between the cradle and the grave.' Dyer who is best seen in the octosyllabic metre, chose it also for _The Country Walk_, a poem in which, notwithstanding an occasional lapse into the conventional diction of the period, the rural pictures are drawn from life. He takes the reader into the farm-yard and fields as he writes: 'I am resolved this charming day In the open field to stray, And have no roof above my head But that whereon the gods do tread. Before the yellow barn I see A beautiful variety Of strutting cocks, advancing stout, And flirting empty chaff about; Hens, ducks, and geese, and all their brood, And turkeys gobbling for their food; While rustics thrash the wealthy floor, And tempt all to crowd the door. * * * * * And now into the fields I go, Where thousand flaming flowers glow, And every neighbouring hedge I greet With honey-suckles smelling sweet; Now o'er the daisy meads I stray And meet with, as I pace my way, Sweetly shining on the eye A rivulet gliding smoothly by, Which shows with what an easy tide The moments of the happy glide.' _An Epistle to a Friend in Town_, records his satisfaction with the country retirement in which his days are passed. In a rather awkward stanza he says that he is more than content, and is indeed charmed with everything, and the lines close with the moralizing that was dear to Dyer's heart: