James Thomson

Sourced

• Come then, expressive silence, muse His praise.
  • Hymn, line 118 (1730)

• Forever, Fortune, wilt thou prove
  An unrelenting foe to love,
  And, when we meet a mutual heart,
  Come in between and bid us part?
  • To Fortune

• When Britain first, at Heaven's command,
  Arose from out the azure main,
  This was the charter of the land,
  And guardian angels sung this strain:
  'Rule, Britannia, Britannia rule the waves;
  Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.'
  • Alfred, Act II, sc. v (1740)

• A bard here dwelt, more fat than bard beseems,
  Who, void of envy, guile, and lust of gain,
  On virtue still, and nature's pleasing themes,
  Poured forth his unpremeditated strain.
  • The Castle of Indolence, canto I, st. 6 (1748)

The Seasons (1726-1730)

• I know no subject more elevating, more amazing, more ready to the poetical enthusiasm, the philosophical reflection, and the moral sentiment than the works of nature. Where can we meet such variety, such beauty, such magnificence?
  • Preface

Winter (1726)

• See, Winter comes to rule the varied year,
  Sullen and sad.
  • l. 1

• Welcome, kindred glooms!
  Congenial horrors, hail!
  • l. 5-6

• Cruel as death, and hungry as the grave.
  • l. 393

• There studious let me sit,
  And hold high converse with the mighty dead.
  • l. 431-432

Summer (1727)

• Ships dim-discovered dropping from the clouds.
  • l. 946

• Sighed and looked unutterable things.
  • l. 1118

Spring (1728)

• Come, gentle Spring! ethereal mildness, come.
  • l. 1

• The negligence of Nature wide and wild,
  Where, undisguised by mimic art, she spreads
  Unbounded beauty to the roving eye.
  • l. 71-73

• Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
  To teach the young idea how to shoot.
  • l. 1149-1150

• An elegant sufficiency, content,
  Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books.
  • l. 1158-1159

Autumn (1730)

• Crowned with the sickle, and the wheaten sheaf,
  While Autumn, nodding o'er the yellow plain,
  Comes jovial on.
  • l. 1-3

• Poor is the triumph o’er the timid hare!
  Scared from the corn, and now to some lone seat
  Retired—
  • l. 71-73

• For loveliness
  Needs not the foreign aid of ornament,
  But is when unadorned adorned the most.
  • l. 208-210

• Or where the Northern ocean, in vast whirls,
  Boils round the naked melancholy isles
  Of farthest Thulè, and th' Atlantic surge
  Pours in among the stormy Hebrides.
  • l. 871-874