As we have just seen, the animals that Thomson described were those that any country lad might know rather than those that had been canonically set apart for poetical service. The same independent judgment is evident in his study of other neglected realms in the world of Nature. He gloried in storms and winter. Though he now and then falls into the conventional phraseology, and speaks of winter as drear and awful, he yet in the same breath exclaims that he finds its horrors congenial. The contrast of a first winter in London turns his mind with full emphasis to the days of his youth when he wandered with unceasing joy through virgin snows, and listened to the roar of the winds and the bursting torrent, and watched the deep tempest brewing in the grim sky. Such experiences he remembers with joy for they “exalt the soul to solemn thought.”[292] Through all the descriptive portions of the “Winter” there is a vigorous, manly enthusiasm as tonic and bracing as the bright, frosty days themselves. Thomson’s pleasure in the sterner phenomena of Nature is further shown by his evident delight in tracing the progress of any storm, whether the thunder storm of summer,[293] the devastating wind and rain of autumn,[294] or the black gloom of a winter tempest.[295] These fierce tempests certainly are of more comparative importance in “The Seasons” than they are in Nature. Their frequent choice may be in part due to their dramatic qualities of rapidity and force. The crashing and hurtling of the elements was a subject not unsuited to Thomson’s splendid but ponderous and swelling style. But in the main it is only fair to suppose that he wrote of storms well because he had many times watched them with an interest that had made him remember them. With many other aspects of Nature was Thomson familiar. He knew much of the sky both by day and by night. His few short descriptions of the starry heavens are worth more than all Young’s far-sought epithets.[296] One phrase concerning the radiant orbs That more than deck, that animate the sky,[297] seems a conscious turning away from the old artificial conception. One of the finest moonlight passages[298] is reminiscent of Milton in two lines, Now through the passing cloud she seems to stoop, Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime, but the close, The whole air whitens with a boundless tide Of silver radiance, trembling round the world, is Thomson’s own, and is a good example of the full sweet harmony that marks his verse at its best. There are many passages and apparently casual phrases indicative of the closeness with which he watched clouds.[299] The doubling fogs that roll around the hills and wrap the world in a “formless gray confusion” through which the shepherd stalks gigantic is described with a Wordsworthian felicity and precision.[300]