Page:The Seasons - Thomson (1791).djvu/49

Rh With new-born songs the leafy groves resound; The full-fled flocks amid the laughing meads Their weary bodies lay, while wide-distent The plenteous udder teems with milky juice; And o'er the grass, as their young hearts beat high, Swell'd by the pure and generous streams they drain, Frolic the wanton lambs with joints infirm.

period of is marked by fewer and less striking changes in the face of Nature. A soft and pleasing languor, interrupted only by the gradual progression of the vegetable and animal tribes towards their state of maturity, forms the leading character of this Season. The active fermentation of the juices, which the first access of genial warmth had excited, now subsides: and the increasing heats rather inspire faintness and inaction than lively exertions. The insect race alone seem animated with peculiar vigour under the more direct influence of the fun; and are therefore with equal truth and advantage introduced by the Poet to enliven the silent and drooping scenes presented by the other forms of animal Nature. As this source, however, together with whatever else our summers afford, is insufficient to furnish novelty and business enough for this act of the drama of the year, the Poet judiciously opens a new field, profusely fertile in objects suited to the glowing colours of descriptive poetry. By an easy and natural transition, he quits the chastized summer of our temperate clime for those regions where a perpetual summer reigns, exalted by such superior degrees of solar heat as give an entirely new face to almost every part of Nature. The terrific grandeur prevalent in some of these, the exquisite richness and beauty in others, and the novelty in all, afford such a happy variety for the poet's selection, that we need not wonder if some of his noblest pieces are the product of this delightful excursion. He returns, however, with apparent satisfaction to take a Rh