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 course of the river Clyde pointed out a natural and perspicuous arrangement of the different scenes; a quality in which the local poem is generally defective, as it is difficult to discover, in many landscapes, a point from which the description commences better than from another. (Leyden 28-29)

For Wilson the river provides a natural path through the landscape and a nodal point from which that linguistic and experiential journey can begin. Furthermore, the landscape of rivers and river valleys would come to be considered as being visually the most pleasing of all "picturesque" landscapes, as is exemplified in the writings of the traveller and aesthetician William Gilpin:

I have often thought, that if a person wished particularly to amuse himself with picturesque scenes, the best method he could take, would be to place before him a good map of England; and to settle in his head the course of all the chief rivers of the country. These rivers should be the great directing lines of his excursions. On the banks he would be sure, not only to find the most beautiful views; but would also obtain a compleat system of every kind of landscape, (original vol.1, section XLV: 202)

For Gilpin, the scenery formed around a river gave satisfaction visually, emotionally, and also practically, by educating the observer in different forms of landscape. The temporal and spatial movement provided by the line of the river is recommended in Gilpin's theory of travel and aesthetics as one that facilitates understanding of the natural world. Thomson's poem, which predates Gilpin's work by half a century, recognizes and celebrates the same qualities.

There are two major river descriptions in The Seasons, both intense in visual and aural description. The first is the summer river:

Smooth to the shelving Brink a copious Flood

Rolls fair, and placid; where collected all

In one impetuous Torrent, down the Steep

It thundering shoots, and shakes the Country round.

At first, an azure Sheet, it rushes broad;

Then whitening by Degrees, as prone it falls,

And from the loud-resounding Rocks below

Dash'd in a Cloud of Foam, it sends aloft

A hoary Mist, and forms a ceaseless Shower.

Nor can the tortur'd Wave here find Repose:

But, raging still amid the shaggy Rocks,

Now flashes o'er the scatter'd Fragments, now

Aslant the hollow'd Channel rapid darts;

And falling fast from gradual Slope to Slope,

With wild infracted Course, and lessen'd Roar,

It gains a safer Bed, and steals, at last,

Along the Mazes of the quiet Vale. ("Summer" 590-606)

This richly adjectival description is sensuous, the colors and textures themselves implying the river's progress through a landscape that in itself is barely alluded to. The river begins "smooth," "fair," and "placid," an "azure Sheet," obviously travelling over flat land. Then, "whitening," it becomes "shaggy" as it falls "in one impetuous Torrent," presumably down a hill or mountainside. As it finally reaches a "safer Bed" the river rests in the "quiet Vale," now a familiar point in Thomson's landscape description that repeatedly settles the eye in the plain or valley bottom after its hectic excursions. The verbs in the description enhance the intensity of the river's movement as it "rolls," "shoots," "shakes," "rushes," "falls," "flashes," "darts," and "steals" its way along. We understand the terrain of the landscape even though Thomson's description concentrates absolutely on the river itself rather than the setting it travels through. The syntax of the lines sustains the progression expressed by the language; Thomson employs enjambment so that his poetry flows as does the river, the entire seventeen-line passage being contained within only three sentences. Thomson at once conveys the various compositional stages of landscape that the river passes through while on an intimate level sensuously demonstrating his own imaginative engagement with that landscape, his poetry feeling its way over the steeps and plains just as does the water of the river.7