Landscapes "Dynamically in Motion": Revisiting Issues of Structure and Agency in Thomson's The Seasons

Papers on Language and Literature, Winter 2005 by Kinsley, Zoë

The predominant image throughout The Seasons is that of the sun, an embodiment of the power of God, whose rays are the life-giving source of the poem. Jean Hagstrum has said that Thomson has given us "what may be the best poetic light-imagery in English outside Milton and what is perhaps the richest imagery of natural light ever written" (252). It is the light of the sun that grants or denies man's observation, and as an image it is charged with vibrant energy. The movement of the sun across the landscape is central to the organization of the poem; the description follows its progressive illumination of the scene, portraying each aspect of the landscape as it is revealed.

The following example from "Spring" typifies the way Thomson energizes the sun in The Seasons:

The sun is "penetrative," exploring every aspect of the landscape and enabling the eye to do the same. The progress is rapid and is accentuated by the alliteration of "deep-darting to the dark retreat." The sun's movement is a catalyst for further activity in the natural world, energizing the aspects of nature over which it passes, initiating the "steaming power" of the flow of sap within plants and the movement of liquid that causes variation in color.4 The anthropomorphization of the sun, given emphasis by the foregrounding of "His," constitutes the transference of the self of the "poet" to the sun, the active agent in the passage. This is typical of Thomson's organizing technique throughout the poem: the natural movement through the landscape is defined as experiential, the organic agent being directly identified with the individual.

Only a hundred lines later the sun is again the dominant image in Thomson's description. he has described the rain that freshens and nourishes nature in a passage that culminates in images of rich fecundity. The sun then breaks through the clouds, and Thomson progressively identifies the different features of the landscape as the language rolls with the spreading sun across the scene:

Thus all day long the full-distended Clouds

Indulge their genial Stores, and well-shower'd Earth

Is deep enrich'd with vegetable Life;

Till, in the western Sky, the downward Sun

Looks out, effulgent, from amid the Flush

Of broken Clouds, gay-shifting to his Beam.

The rapid Radiance instantaneous strikes

Th' illumin'd Mountain, thro' the Forest streams,

Shakes on the Floods, and in a yellow Mist,

Far smoaking o'er th' interminable Plain,

In twinkling Myriads lights the dewy Gems.

Moist, bright, and green, the Landskip laughs around.

("Spring" 186-97)

Again the personified sunlight breaks the scene with immediacy, and its swift movement across the landscape is enhanced by Thomson's choice of language: the "rapid Radiance" recalls the "deep darting" rays of the earlier passage and also anticipates the intense progress of the "Summer" river as it "darts" "rapid" through the channel of its course. The advancement of the sun's rays gives Thomson an organizing structure by which his description moves through the various plains of composition, from background to foreground. The sunlight first hits the mountains and then advances towards the spectator through forest, over rivers, to settle on the plains where it lingers, "twinkling" in the dew. Thomson's choice of verbs is crucial to the pace and momentum of this passage. After striking the mountaintops, the light "streams" through the forest, suggesting a swift motion down the mountain side. That the sunlight "shakes" on the floods suggests the rapid movement of the rivers and the varying effects of the light hitting the broken water. The "mist" "Far smoaking"5 on the plain at once gives expression to the effects of the sunlight on the wet vegetation yet also implies a gentler pace as the sunlight reaches level ground and reveals the entire landscape. The reader has been guided through the parts of nature to a picture of its "laughing" whole.6