It is to “The Seasons” (1726–30) that we must go if we wish to understand Thomson’s work as a poet of Nature. A brief analysis of the study of external Nature in these poems will serve to show both in what respects Thomson’s work was the outcome of a new spirit, and in what respects its affiliations are with the old. An important part of Thomson’s poetical endowment was his quick sensitiveness to the sights and sounds and odors of the world about him. He looked on Nature with the eye of an artist, but not of an artist in black and white. It was not form but color that attracted him. There are occasional descriptions, as of the garden in “Spring”[273] and of the precious stones in “Summer,”[274] where the lines glow like a painter’s palette, and throughout “The Seasons” there is a general impression of rich and varied coloring. That this impression is stronger than a list of the color terms used would seem to justify is due to two facts, both characteristic of Thomson’s work in general. In the first place he did not care for nicely discriminated shades or delicate tints. He loved broad masses of strong, clear color. He dwells with ever new delight on blue as seen in the sky or reflected in water, and on green, “smiling Nature’s universal robe.” In the second place he is especially rich in such words as indicate color in general without specification as to the kind. “The flushing year,” “every-coloured glory,” “the boundless blush of spring,” “the innumerous-coloured scene of things,” “unnumbered dyes,” “hues on hues,” are typical phrases. Motion also caught his eye more quickly than form. The dancing light and shade in a forest pathway, the waving of branches, the flow of water, the rapid flight or slow march of clouds, the golden, shadowy sweep of wind over ripened grain, count for much in the pleasurable impression made upon his mind by different scenes. It is evident that Thomson received more through his eye than through his ear, but he was very far from being indifferent to the sounds of Nature. The hum of bees, the low of cattle, the bleating of sheep are frequently noted. The songs of birds, while often represented by some general phase, as “the music of the woods,” or “woodland hymns,” are now and then more minutely specified, as in the fine description of the “symphony of spring.”[275] There is also effective representation of the sounds heard in storms, as in the summer thunderstorm.[276] The most frequent sounds are, as is inevitable in an English poet whose facts come from actual observation, those made by water, as the plaint of purling rills, the thunder of impetuous torrents, or the growling of frost-imprisoned rivers.