James Thomson (poet, born 1700)

James Thomson (September 11, 1700 – August 27, 1748) was a Scottish poet and playwright.

Quotes

At the throng'd levee bends the venal tribe:
With fair but faithless smiles each varnish'd o'er,
Each smooth as those that mutually deceive,
And for their falsehood each despising each.
- Liberty, Pt. v, l. 190 (1734); reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 144

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; song reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Whoe'er amidst the sons
Of reason, valour, liberty, and virtue
Displays distinguish'd merit, is a noble
Of Nature's own creating.
- Coriolanus, Act iii, scene 3; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

O Sophonisba! Sophonisba, O!
- Sophonisba, Act iii, scene 2; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). The line was altered after the second edition to "O Sophonisba! I am wholly thine."

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, rule the waves;
Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.'
- Alfred, Act II, sc. v (1740)

Hymn (1730)

These as they change, Almighty Father! these
Are but the varied God. The rolling year
Is full of Thee.
- l. 1

Shade, unperceiv'd, so softening into shade.
- l. 25

From seeming evil still educing good.
- l. 114

But I lose
Myself in Him, in Light ineffable!
Come then, expressive Silence, muse His praise.
These, as they change, Almighty Father, these
Are but the varied God. The rolling Year
Is full of Thee.
- l. 116

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

Thither the household feathery people crowd,
The crested cock, with all his female train.
- l. 87

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

The kiss, snatch'd hasty from the sidelong maid.
- l. 625

Summer (1727)

The meek-ey'd Morn appears, mother of dews.
- l. 47

Falsely luxurious, will not man awake?
- l. 67

But yonder comes the powerful king of day,
Rejoicing in the east.
- l. 81

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

And Mecca saddens at the long delay.
- l. 979

For many a day, and many a dreadful night,
Incessant lab'ring round the stormy cape.
- l. 1002

Sighed and looked unutterable things.
- l. 1188

Flocks thick-nibbling through the clovered vale.
- l. 1235

Even from the body's purity, the mind
Receives a secret sympathetic aid.
- l. 1269

A lucky chance, that oft decides the fate
Of mighty monarchs.
- l. 1285

So stands the statue that enchants the world,
So bending tries to veil the matchless boast,
The mingled beauties of exulting Greece.
- l. 1346

Who stemm'd the torrent of a downward age.
- l. 1515

Among the crooked lanes, on every hedge,
The glow-worm lights his gem; and through the dark,
A moving radiance twinkles.
- l. 1682

Tutor'd by thee, hence Poetry exalts
Her voice to ages; and informs the page
With music, image, sentiment, and thought,
Never to die! the treasure of mankind!
Their highest honour, and their truest joy!
- l. 1752

Spring (1728)

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

Senseless, and deformed,
Convulsive Anger storms at large; or pale,
And silent, settles into fell revenge.
- l. 28
- Variant:
  Base Envy withers at another's joy,
  And hates that excellence it cannot reach.

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

The Hawthorn whitens; and the juicy Groves
Put forth their buds, unfolding by degrees,
Till the whole leafy Forest stands displayed,
In full luxuriance, to the sighing gales.
- l. 90

'Tis silence all,
And pleasing expectation.
- l. 160

Base Envy withers at another’s joy,
And hates that excellence it cannot reach.
- l. 283

Desponding Fear, of feeble fancies full,
Weak and unmanly, loosens every power.
- l. 286

Pure was the temperate Air, an even Calm
Perpetual reign'd, save what the Zephyrs bland
Breath'd o'er the blue expanse.
- l. 323

But should you lure
From his dark haunt, beneath the tangled roots
Of pendent trees, the Monarch of the brook,
Behoves you then to ply your finest art.
- l. 420

But who can paint
Like Nature? Can imagination boast,
Amid its gay creation, hues like hers?
- l. 465

The daisy, primrose, violet darkly blue;
And polyanthus of unnumbered dyes.
- l. 529

From the soft wing of vernal breezes shed,
Anemones, auritulas, enriched
With shining meal o'er all their velvet leaves.
- l. 533

While I deduce,
From the first note the hollow cuckoo sings,
The symphony of spring.
- l. 576

What, but God?
Inspiring God! who boundless Spirit all,
And unremitting Energy, pervades,
Adjusts, sustains, and agitates the whole.
- l. 849

Amid the roses fierce Repentance rears
Her snaky crest.
- l. 996

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

An elegant sufficiency, content,
Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books,
Ease and alternate labour, useful life,
Progressive virtue, and approving Heaven!
- l. 1158

Autumn (1730)

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

Home is the resort
Of love, of joy, of peace, and plenty; where
Supporting and supported, polished friends
And dear relations mingle into bliss.
- l. 65

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

Think, oh, grateful think!
How good the God of Harvest is to you;
Who pours abundance o'er your flowing fields,
While, those unhappy partners of your kind
Wide-hover round you, like the fowls of heaven,
And ask their humble dole.
- l. 169

Her polish'd limbs,
Veil'd in a simple robe, their best attire;
Beyond the pomp of dress; for Loveliness
Needs not the foreign aid of ornament,
But is, when unadorn'd, adorn'd the most.
- l. 202

He saw her charming, but he saw not half
The charms her downcast modesty conceal'd.
- l. 229

For still the world prevail'd, and its dread laugh,
Which scarce the firm philosopher can scorn.
- l. 233

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

Age too shines out: and, garrulous, recounts the feats of youth.
- l. 1231

But while listening Senates hang upon thy tongue,
Devolving through the maze of eloquence
A roll of periods, sweeter than her song.
- l. ?

The lovely young Lavinia once had friends;
And fortune smil'd, deceitful, on her birth.
- l. ?

The Castle of Indolence (1748)

A pleasing land of drowsyhed it was,
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
Forever flushing round a summer sky:
There eke the soft delights that witchingly
Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast,
And the calm pleasures always hover'd nigh;
But whate'er smack'd of noyance or unrest
Was far, far off expell'd from this delicious nest.
- Canto I, Stanza 6

They who are pleased themselves must always please.
- Canto I, Stanza 15

The best of men have ever loved repose:
They hate to mingle in the filthy fray;
Where the soul sours, and gradual rancour grows,
Imbitter'd more from peevish day to day.
- Canto I, Stanza 17

He ceased; but still their trembling ears retained
The deep vibrations of his witching song.
- Canto I, Stanza 20

O fair undress, best dress! it checks no vein,
But every flowing limb in pleasure drowns,
And heightens ease with grace.
- Canto I, Stanza 26

Plac'd far amid the melancholy main.
- Canto I, Stanza 30

Scoundrel maxim.
- Canto I, Stanza 50

But what most showed the vanity of life
Was to behold the nations all on fire.
- Canto I, Stanza 55

A bard here dwelt, more fat than bard becomes
Who void of envy, guile and lust of gain,
On virtue still and nature's pleasing themes
Poured forth his unpremeditated strain.
- Canto I, Stanza 68 (Last line said to be "writ by a friend of the author.")

A little, round, fat, oily man of God.
- Canto I, Stanza 69

Their only labour was to kill the time;
And labour dire it is, and weary woe,
They sit, they loll, turn o'er some idle rhyme,
Then, rising sudden, to the glass they go,
Or saunter forth, with tottering steps and slow.
- Canto I, Stanza 72

I care not, Fortune, what you me deny;
You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace,
You cannot shut the windows of the sky,
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve.
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace,
And I their toys to the great children leave:
Of fancy, reason, virtue, naught can me bereave.
- Canto II, Stanza 3

Ah! what avail the largest gifts of Heaven,
When drooping health and spirits go amiss?
How tasteless then whatever can be given!
Health is the vital principle of bliss,
And exercise, of health.
- Canto II, Stanza 55

Quotes about James Thomson

Thomson is the best of our descriptive poets: for he gives most of the poetry of natural description. Others have been quite equal to him, or have surpassed him, as Cowper for instance, in the picturesque part of his art, in marking the peculiar features and curious details of objects;—no one has yet come up to him in giving the sum total of their effects, their varying influences on the mind.
- William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets (1818), p. 171

Nature in his descriptions is seen growing around us, fresh and lusty as in itself. We feel the effect of the atmosphere, its humidity or clearness, its heat or cold, the glow of summer, the gloom of winter, the tender promise of the spring, the full overshadowing foliage, the declining pomp and deepening tints of autumn. He transports us to the scorching heat of vertical suns, or plunges us into the chilling horrors and desolation of the frozen zone. We hear the snow drifting against the broken casement without, and see the fire blazing on the hearth within. The first scattered drops of a vernal shower patter on the leaves above our heads, or the coming storm resounds through the leafless groves. In a word, he describes not to the eye alone, but to the other senses, and to the whole man. He puts his heart into his subject, writes as he feels, and humanises whatever he touches. He makes all his descriptions teem with life and vivifying soul.
- William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets (1818), p. 172

His faults were those of his style—of the author and the man; but the original genius of the poet, the pith and marrow of his imagination, the fine natural mould in which his feelings were bedded, were too much for him to counteract by neglect, or affectation, or false ornaments. It is for this reason that he is, perhaps, the most popular of all our poets, treating of a subject that all can understand, and in a way that is interesting to all alike, to the ignorant or the refined, because he gives back the impression which the things themselves make upon us in nature. "That," said a man of genius, seeing a little shabby soiled copy of Thomson's Seasons lying on the window-seat of an obscure country alehouse—"That is true fame!"
- William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets (1818), pp. 172-173

‘The Seasons’ may be regarded as inaugurating a new era in English poetry.
- Thomas Seccombe, 'Thomson, James', Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. LVI. Teach—Tollet, ed. Sidney Lee (1898), p. 251

In France ‘The Seasons’ proved no less ‘a revelation’ than in England... Voltaire, in his amiable mood, spoke highly of its simplicity and the love of mankind which it exhibited. Montesquieu raised a sylvan monument to Thomson, whose poem contributed materially to the ‘rural delirium’ of Rousseau.
- Thomas Seccombe, 'Thomson, James', Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. LVI. Teach—Tollet, ed. Sidney Lee (1898), p. 252

Hazlitt and Coleridge, two very safe guides, regard Thomson as pre-eminently ‘the born poet.’ Dr. Johnson (to whom as an unorthodox Scot of liberal opinions Thomson was by no means dear) admitted that ‘he could not have viewed two candles burning but with a poetical eye.’ In this respect, in the possession of the true poetic temperament, he has been surpassed not even by Tennyson. Unfortunately, unlike his successor, he allowed the false taste of the day to intercept his utterance before it was complete. In addition to the poet's vision he had the poetic gift of observation at first hand, but in giving expression to these faculties he was content to employ the right phrase relatively to his time, and so the absolutely right eluded him. That a true poet should have been so content may be attributed in part to the sensitiveness of a provincial to the imputation of rudeness, in part to his kindly, sociable, and easy-going temperament, and the predominant influence of his much-esteemed ‘Mr. Pope.’ The result is that ‘The Seasons,’ which ‘gave the signal for a revolution destined to renew European literature,’ yet comes short in itself of being a perfect masterpiece.
- Thomas Seccombe, 'Thomson, James', Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. LVI. Teach—Tollet, ed. Sidney Lee (1898), p. 252

Amongst the latest of Mr. Thomson's productions is his Castle of Indolence, a poem of so extraordinary merit, that perhaps we are not extravagant, when we declare, that this single performance discovers more genius and poetical judgment, than all his other works put together.
- Robert Shiels, 'The Life of Mr. James Thomson', The Lives of the Poets of Great-Britain and Ireland. Vol. V (1753), p. 205

The Seasons, and still more the Castle of Indolence, entitle Thomson to be ranked among the good English Poets: nor should it be forgotten that the song of Rule Britannia is his, a song which will be the political hymn of this country as long as she maintains her political power.
- Robert Southey, Specimens of the Later English Poets, With Preliminary Notices, Vol. II (1807), p. 107

External links

Encyclopedic article on James Thomson (poet, born 1700) on Wikipedia
Media related to James Thomson on Wikimedia Commons
Works related to Author:James Thomson (1700-1748) on Wikisource