Comment on
Thomson’s concern for the environment as evident in his poem ‘Spring’.
Published
in 1730, James Thomsons’s Seasons
would have a profound effect on English Literature throughout the remainder of
the eighteenth century. Divided into four sections-, each corresponding to a
specific season, Thomson’s Seasons is
a lush and glorious poem. Thomson’s
‘Spring’ narrates the approach and arrival of a brief spring shower, finishing
with the inevitable rainbow splashed across the sky. It begins with a sense of anticipation: ‘‘Tis
silence all, / And pleasing expectation’.
The herds stop their grazing, and ‘The plumy people [the birds] streak
their wings with oil’ in preparation for the forthcoming rain. Importantly, the rain is also seen as a good
thing here as ‘E’en mountains, vales, / And forests seem impatient to demand /
The promised sweetness’ that the rain will bring.Finally ‘The clouds consign
their treasures to the fields’, and the world is ‘freshen’d’. In just three lines, Thomson forms an
exquisite and evocative image of wandering beneath the trees as the rain falls
overhead:
‘The stealing shower is scarce to patter heard,
By such as wander through the forest-walks, Beneath the umbrageous multitude of leaves.’
Yet neither is
this just a romantic description of the countryside: there’s a practical side
to it too. This ‘universal bounty’ or
‘milky nutriment’ will call to life ‘herbs, And fruits, and flowers’; that the
rain also causes ‘the kindling country [to] colour round’ is simply an added
bonus. It’s like when you think of how
vibrantly green the beautiful hills of Wales always look, because of the rain
from the mountains. Here too, the rain
is bringing out all the glorious colours of nature.
