In Still Retreats

Beatus ille, suave mari magno... A mise en abyme from James Thomson's   The Seasons (Autumn):

 

 

 

Let others brave the flood in quest of gain,

And beat, for joyless months, the gloomy wave.

Let such as deem it glory to destroy,

Rush into blood, the sack of cities seek;

Unpierc'd, exulting in the widow's wail,

The virgin's shriek, and infant's trembling cry.

Let some, far distant from their native soil,

Urg'd or by want or hardened avarice,

Find other lands beneath another sun.

Let this through cities work his eager way,

By legal outrage and establish'd guile,

The social sense extinct; and that ferment

Mad into tumult the seditious herd,

Or melt them down to slavery. Let these

Insnare the wretched in the toils of law,

Fomenting discord, and preplexing right,

An iron race! And those of fairer front,

But equal inhumanity, in courts,

Delusive pomp, and dark cabals, delight:

Wreath the deep bow, diffuse the lying smile,

And tread the weary labyrinth of state.

While he, from all the stormy passions free

That restless Men involve, hears, and but hears,

At distance safe, the human tempest roar,

Wrapt close in conscious peace. The fall of kings,

The rage of nations, and the crush of states,

Move not the Man, who, from the world escap'd,

In still retreats, and flowery solitudes,

To Nature's voice attends, from month to month,

And day to day, thro' the revolving year,

Admiring, sees her in her every shape;

Feels all her sweet emotions at his heart;

Takes what she liberal gives, nor thinks of more.

He, when young Spring protrudes the bursting gems,

Marks the first bud, and sucks the healthful gale

Into his freshened soul; her genial hours

He full enjoys, and not a beauty blows,

And not an opening blossom breathes in vain.

In Summer he, beneath the living shade,

Such as o'er frigid Tempe want to wave,

Or Hemus cool, reads what the Muse, of these

Perhaps, has in immortal numbers sung;

Or what she dictates writes: and, oft an eye

Shot round, rejoices in the vigorous year.

When Autumn's yellow lustre gilds the world,

And tempts the sickled swain into the field,

Seiz'd by the general joy, his heart distends

With gentle throes; and, thro' the tepid gleams

Deep musing, then he best exerts his song.

Even Winter wild to him is full of bliss.

The mighty tempest, and the hoary waste,

Abrupt, and deep, stretch'd o'er the buried earth,

Awake to solemn thought. At night the skies,

Disclos'd, and kindled, by refining frost,

Pour every lustre on th'exalted eye.

A friend, a book, the stealing hours secure,

And mark them down for wisdom. With swift wing,

O'er land and sea imagination roams;

Or truth, divinely breaking on his mind,

Elates his being, and unfolds his powers;

Or in his breast heroic virtue burns.

The touch of kindred too and love he feels;

The modest eye, whose beams on his alone

Ecstatic shine; the little strong embrace

Of prattling children, twin'd around his neck,

And emulous to please him, calling forth

The fond parental soul. Nor purpose gay,

Amusement, dance, or song, he sternly scorns;

For happiness and true philosophy

Are of the social still, and smiling kind.

This is the life which those who fret in guilt,

And guilty cities, never knew; the life,

Led by primeval ages, uncorrupt,

When angels dwelt, and God himself, with Man!

 

Oh Nature! all sufficient! Over all!

Enrich me with the knowledge of thy works!

Snatch me to heaven; thy rolling wonders there,

World beyond world, in infinite extent,

Profusely scattered o'er the blue immense,

Shew me; their motions, periods, and their laws,

Given me to scan; thro' the disclosing deep

Light my blind way: the mineral strata there;

Thrust, blooming, thence the vegetable world;

O'er that the rising system, more complex,

Of animals; and higher still, the mind,

The varied scene of quick compounded thought,

And where the mixing passions endless shift;

These ever open to my ravish'd eye;

A search, the flight of time can ne'er exhaust!

But if to that unequal; if the blood,

In sluggish streams about my heart, forbid

That best ambition; under closing shades,

Inglorious, lay me by the lowly brook,

And whisper to my dreams. From Thee begin,

Dwell all on Thee, with Thee conclude my song;

And let me never, never stray from Thee!

 

But Absent

From James Thomson's The Seasons  (Spring):

But absent, what fantastic woes, arrous'd,
Rage in each thought, by restless musing fed,
Chill the warm cheek, and blast the bloom of life?
Neglected fortune flies; and sliding swift,
Prone into ruin, fall his scorn'd affairs. ⁠1005
'Tis nought but gloom around: the darken'd sun
Loses his light: the rosy-bosom'd Spring
To weeping fancy pines; and yon bright arch,
Contracted, bends into a dusky vault.

All Nature fades extinct; and she alone ⁠1010
Heard, felt, and seen, possesses every thought,
Fills every sense, and pants in every vein.
Books are but formal dulness, tedious friends;
And sad amid the social band he fits,
Lonely, and unattentive. From his tongue ⁠1015
Th' unfinish'd period falls: while borne away
On swelling thought, his wafted spirit flies
To the vain bosom of his distant fair;
And leaves the semblance of a lover, fix'd
In melancholy site, with head declin'd, ⁠1020
And love-dejected eyes. Sudden he starts,
Shook from his tender trance, and restless runs
To glimmering shades, and sympathetic glooms;
Where the dun umbrage o'er the falling stream,
Romantic, hangs; there thro' the pensive dusk ⁠1025
Strays, in heart-thrilling meditation lost,
Indulging all to love: or on the bank
Thrown, amid drooping lilies, swells the breeze
With sighs unceasing, and the brook with tears,
Thus in soft anguish he consumes the day, ⁠1030
Nor quits his deep retirement, till the moon
Peeps thro' the chambers of the fleecy east,
Enlightened by degrees, and in her train
Leads on the gentle hours; then forth he walks,
Beneath the trembling languish of her beam, ⁠1035
With soften'd soul, and wooes the bird of eve
To mingle woes with his: or, while the world
And all the sons of Care lie hush'd in sleep,
Associates with the midnight shadows drear;
And, sighing to the lonely taper, pours ⁠1040
His idly-tortur'd heart into the page,
Meant for the moving messenger of love;
Where rapture burns on rapture, every line
With riling frenzy fir'd. But if on bed

Delirious flung, sleep from his pillow flies.⁠1045
All night he tosses, nor the balmy power
In any posture finds; till the grey morn
Lifts her pale lustre on the paler wretch,
Exanimate by love: and then perhaps
Exhausted Nature sinks a while to rest,⁠1050
Still interrupted by distracted dreams,
That o'er the sick imagination rise,
And in black colours paint the mimic scene.
Oft with th' enchantress of his soul he talks;
Sometimes in crouds distress'd; or if retir'd⁠1055
To secret-winding flower-enwoven bowers,
Far from the dull impertinence of Man,
Just as he, credulous, his endless cares
Begins to lose in blind oblivious love,
Snatch'd from her yielded hand, he knows not how,⁠1060
Thro' forests huge, and long untravel'd heaths
With desolation brown, he wanders waste,
In night and tempest wrapt; or shrinks aghast,
Back, from the bending precipice; or wades
The turbid stream below, and strives to reach⁠1065
The farther shore; where succourless, and sad,
She with extended arms his aid implores,
But strives in vain; borne by th' outrageous flood
To distance down, he rides the ridgy wave,
Or whelm'd beneath the boiling eddy sinks.⁠

—oOo—

The Great Theatre of Nature

 

Although each of the SEASONS appears to have been intended as a complete piece, and contains within itself the natural order of beginning, middle, and termination, yet, as they were at length collected and modelled by their author, they have all a mutual relation to each other, and concur in forming a more comprehensive whole. The annual space in which the earth performs its revolution round the sun is so strongly marked by nature for a perfect period, that all mankind have agreed in forming their computations of time upon it. In all the temperate climes of the globe, the four seasons are so many progressive stages in this circuit, which, like the acts in a well-constructed drama, gradually disclose, ripen, and bring to an end the various business transacted on the great theatre of Nature. The striking analogy which this period with its several division bears to the course of human existence, has been remarked and pursued by writers of all ages and countries. Spring has been  represented as the youth of the year—the season of pleasing hope, lively energy, and rapid increase. Summer has been resembled to pefect manhood—the season of steady warmth, confirmed strength, and unremitting vigour. Autumn, which , while it bestows the rich products of full maturity, is yet ever hastening to decline, has been aptly compared to that period, when the man, mellowed by age, yields the most valuable fruits of experience and wisdom, but daily exhibits increasing symptoms of decay. The cold, cheerless, and sluggish Winter has almost without a metaphor been termed the decrepid and hoary old age of the year. Thus the history of the year, pursued through its changing seasons, is that of an individual, whose existence is marked by a progressive course from its origin to its termination. It is thus represented by our Poet; this idea preserves an unity and connection through his whole work, and the accurate observer will remark a beautiful chain of circumstances in his description, by which the birth, vigour, decline, and extinction of the vital principle of the year are pictured in the most lively manner.

This order and gradation of the whole runs, as has been already hinted, through each division of the poem. Every season has its incipient, confirmed, and receding state, of which its historian ought to give distinct views, arranged according to the succession in which they appear. Each, too, like the prismatic colours, is indistinguishably blended in its origin and termination with that which precedes, and which follows it; and it may be expected from the pencil of an artist to hit off these mingled shades so as to produce a pleasing and picturesque effect. Our poet has not been inattentive to these circumstances in the conduct of his plan. His SPRING begins with a view of the season as yet unconfirmed, and partaking of the roughness of Winter*; and it is not till after several steps in gradual progression, that it breaks forth in all its ornaments, as the favourite of Love and Pleasure. His AUTUMN, after a rich prospect of its bounties and splendours, gently fades into "the sere, the yellow leaf," and the rising storm, sinks into the arms of Winter. It is remarkable, that in order to produce something of a similar effect in his SUMMER, a season which, on account of its uniformity of character, does not admit of any stronly-marked gradations, he has comprised the whole of his description within the limits of a single day, pursuing the course of the sun from its rising to its setting. A Summer's day is, in reality, a just model of the entire season. Its beginning is moist and temperate; its middle, sultry and parching; its close, soft and refreshing. By thus exhibiting all the vicissitudes of Summer under one point of view, they are rendered much more striking than could have been done in a series of feebly contrasted and scarcely distinguishable periods.

* A descriptive piece, in which this very interval of time is represented, with all the accuracy of a naturalist, and vivid colouring of a poet, has lately appeared in a poem of Mr. Warton's, entitled "The First of April."

 

 

J. Aikin, M.D. From: The Seasons, by James Thomson.  A New Edition. Adorned with a set of engravings from original designs. To which is prefixed, An Essay on the Plan and Character of the Poem, by J. Aikin, M.D. London: Printed for J. Murray, No. 32, Fleet Street. MDCCXCIV. p. xii-xv.

From The City of Dreadful Night

In The Cambridge History of English Literature:

(... )  all that is most authentic and arresting in the poetry of James Thomson is absolutely “without hope, and without God in the world.” It is the poetry of sheer, overmastering, inexorable despair—a passionate, and almost fierce, declaration of faith in pessimism as the only true philosophy of life. Here we have one who unequivocally affirms
          

that every struggle brings defeat
Because Fate holds no prize to crown success;
That all the oracles are dumb or cheat
Because they have no secret to express;
That none can pierce the vast black veil uncertain
Because there is no light behind the curtain;
That all is vanity and nothingness.

—oOo—

  This little life is all we must endure,
  The grave's most holy peace is ever sure,                 
    We fall asleep and never wake again;
  Nothing is of us but the mouldering flesh,
  Whose elements dissolve and merge afresh
    In earth, air, water, plants, and other men.

  We finish thus; and all our wretched race                
  Shall finish with its cycle, and give place
    To other beings with their own time-doom:
  Infinite aeons ere our kind began;
  Infinite aeons after the last man
    Has joined the mammoth in earth's tomb and womb.         

  We bow down to the universal laws,
  Which never had for man a special clause
    Of cruelty or kindness, love or hate:
  If toads and vultures are obscene to sight,
  If tigers burn with beauty and with might,              
    Is it by favour or by wrath of Fate?

  All substance lives and struggles evermore
  Through countless shapes continually at war,
    By countless interactions interknit:
  If one is born a certain day on earth,                  
  All times and forces tended to that birth,
    Not all the world could change or hinder it.

  I find no hint throughout the Universe
  Of good or ill, of blessing or of curse;
    I find alone Necessity Supreme;                 
  With infinite Mystery, abysmal, dark,
  Unlighted ever by the faintest spark
    For us the flitting shadows of a dream.

The City of Dreadful Night

—oOo—