By the banks of the crystal-streamed Esk, Where the Wauchope her yellow wave joins.[419] His chief use of Nature is in the passages where he gives these early associations, and in the many similitudes in his “Elegies.” He always sees Nature in a pathetic or joyous union with past experiences in his own life or in that of others. Grainger’s chief poem, “The Sugar Cane,” appeared in 1764. The theme and outline are presented in the first four lines: What soil the cane affects; what care demands; Beneath what signs to plant; what ills await; How the hot nectar best to crystallize; And Afric’s sable progeny to treat. Grainger recognizes as his poetical masters, Maro, the “pastoral Dyer” (“The Fleece”), “Pomona’s bard” (“Cyder”), Smart (“The Hop Garden”), and Somerville (“The Chace”). “The Sugar Cane” is a purely didactic poem and is no real contribution to the new feeling toward Nature. The first part of the “Ode to Solitude,” a long ode beginning, O Solitude, Romantic maid, is another example of the sentimental view of Nature, with frequent and obvious imitations of Milton; but the last half of the poem declares that only the old and feeble should seek the solitude of the country, that shades are no medicine for a troubled mind, and, in general, that the proper business of mankind is man. Chronologically Macpherson’s “Poems of Ossian” belong in the five years before the publication of Percy’s “Reliques” (1765), and they are a part of the same general stream of influence, the revival of folklore. These poems are epic in character, their aim being the celebration of the exploits of Celtic heroes. They are of importance in this study because the adventures of Fingal, Ossian, Oscar, and Gaul are throughout closely associated with natural scenery of a wild and romantic sort.[420] Mist-covered mountains, storm-swept skies, rough streams, desolate shores, dim moonlight nights, are the most frequent scenic details, and they are so wrought into the story that the human tragedy and the scene where it was enacted cannot be thought of apart. The three ways in which Nature is used in these poems, as dramatic background, in similitudes, and in apostrophes, will serve to illustrate both the prominence given to Nature and the close union between human emotions and the varying phenomena of the external world. A fine example of a bright description to usher in a sudden contrasting portent of disaster is in the opening lines of “Temora”: The blue waves of Erin roll in light. The mountains are covered with day. Trees shake their dusky heads in the breeze. Gray torrents pour their noisy streams. Two green hills, with aged oaks, surround a narrow plain. The blue course of a stream is there. The song that was “lovely, but sad, and left silence in Carric-Thura,” has an autumn picture as its fit setting: