The descriptions referred to below of early morning,[301] of sunset,[302] of evening,[303] and of night[304] may be perhaps taken as among the best examples of their sort in “The Seasons.” As a whole they show conclusively from what long intimacy with Nature Thomson wrote. The very freshness of morning breathes from the sunrise picture in “Summer” and the little picture in “Autumn” is more delicately suggestive than many a more pretentious description of the dawning day. The sunset after the rain in “Spring” is one of the best examples of Thomson’s power to paint word pictures. It would be difficult for any canvas to present a scene at once so mellow and radiant, and so transfused with the joy of a renovated earth. As exquisite in their way are the descriptions of the slow approach of “Sober Evening” with her circling shadows and the softly swelling breeze that stirs the stream and wood; and the later description of the strange uncertain mingling of light and darkness in a summer night in England. These passages and others that might be quoted show to what fine issues Thomson’s pen was sometimes touched, but it cannot be denied that his really intimate and exact knowledge of Nature and her ways could not hold all his descriptions subject to the charm of simplicity and truth. As further illustrative of Thomson’s knowledge of all that pertained to the country we have his admirably vivid and detailed accounts of the homely labors of a farmer’s life, as plowing,[305] sowing,[306] reaping,[307] hay making,[308] and sheep shearing.[309] Of these the sheep shearing is the most simply charming and natural. It is also the most noteworthy, because sheep and shepherds had long been the very substance out of which pastorals were woven so that in such descriptions the contrast between the new and the old way of looking at country life is sharply defined. Thomson’s pastoral queen and shepherd king are at the opposite pole from the sentimental, affected, useless nymphs and swains who had before posed as the guardians of English sheep. His shepherds are sturdy fellows, doing honest work and plenty of it, and as such they had no predecessors in English classical poetry. The sheep, too, are real animals. They have to be watched with a vigilance of which no flower-crowned swain playing on an oaten pipe would be capable. And they must be washed and sheared and branded. In winter they must be housed and fed, no matter what the dangers on the dark, stormy hills. It is this strong, refreshing air of reality in Thomson’s poetry, and his unfeigned respect and admiration for the actual country life in England that completed the work begun by the ugly satire of Swift and the mock pastorals of Gay, and made the old, conventional, pseudo-classic pastoral from that time on an impossibility in English poetry.