The chief contribution of Gay and Ramsay to the growing love of Nature in poetry had to do with the natural man in natural scenes, rather than with the natural scene itself. Gay’s service in the way of external Nature was largely the outcome of his fidelity to the fact. Ramsay did more. He not only gave separate pictures both beautiful and true, but he somehow fused them with the human elements of his pastoral in such a way that we cannot think of the racy love-scenes apart from their fresh and lovely surroundings. In 1725, or shortly before, were written three poems on Winter.[250] They are important as marking the first real turning from the softer to the sterner aspects of Nature. Dr. Armstrong’s poem was inspired by a winter spent among the wild romantic scenes about the River Esk. His later poetry is not important so far as the use of Nature is concerned. He became a great admirer of Thomson whose style he imitated with some success, but he shows little of Thomson’s sensitiveness to natural beauty. His point of view is that of the physician and his hatred of the town is based on his objection to smoke and bad air,[251] while his summons to the mountains rests on the value of exercise and oxygen.[252] One of the most effective passages is his apostrophe to the Liddal, that stream “unknown to song, where he played when life was young.”[253] The only poem on which we need to dwell is the “Winter,” which, though often unintelligible from its inflated and periphrastic form of expression, has yet a rugged vigor and originality. It shows occasionally a homely realism suggestive of Crabbe, as in the description of the shivering clown. The observation is most of it first-hand. The description of the birds that, when the storm comes on, With domestic tameness, hop and flutter Within the roofs of persecuting man, suggest Thomson’s famous redbreast. Note also the truth of lines such as these: when the murk clouds Roll’d up in heavy wreaths, low-bellying, seem To kiss the ground, and all the waste of snow Looks blue beneath them; or these: huge sheets of loosen’d ice Float on their bosoms to the deep, and jar And clatter as they pass; or, to strike a lovelier note, this closing hint of the coming spring: Hark! how loud The cuckoo wakes the solitary wood! The whole poem is characterized by a delight in the wildest phases of winter weather and it shows an originality of conception, a fulness of observation, and an occasional strength of expression remarkable in a boy not yet sixteen.