‘Through the hush’d air the whitening shower descends, At first thin wav’ring, till at last the flakes Fall broad and wide, and fast, dimming the day With a continual flow. The cherish’d 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 ev’ning ray, Earth’s universal face, deep hid, and chill, Is one wide dazzling waste, that buries wide The works of man. Drooping, the lab’rer-ox Stands cover’d o’er with snow, and then demands The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heav’n, Tam’d by the cruel season, crowd around The winnowing store, and claim the little boon Which Providence assigns them. One alone, The red-breast, 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. The foodless wilds Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare, Though timorous of heart, and hard beset By death in various forms, dark snares and dogs, And more unpitying men, the garden seeks, Urg’d on by fearless want. The bleating kind Eye the bleak heav’n, and next, the glist’ning earth, With looks of dumb despair; then, sad dispers’d, Dig for the wither’d herb through heaps of snow.’ It is thus that Thomson always gives a _moral sense_ to nature. Thomson’s blank verse is not harsh, or utterly untuneable; but it is heavy and monotonous; it seems always labouring up-hill. The selections which have been made from his works in Enfield’s Speaker, and other books of extracts, do not convey the most favourable idea of his genius or taste; such as Palemon and Lavinia, Damon and Musidora, Celadon and Amelia. Those parts of any author which are most liable to be stitched in worsted, and framed and glazed, are not by any means always the best. The moral descriptions and reflections in the Seasons are in an admirable spirit, and written with great force and fervour.