he shining waste,
The furry nations harbour: tipt with jet
Fair ermines, spotless as the snows they press;
Sables of glossy black; and dark embrown'd
Or beauteous, streak'd with many a mingled hue,
Thousands besides, the costly pride of courts.

The description of a thaw is equally picturesque. The following lines
consequent upon it are excellent.

--Those sullen seas
That wash th'ungenial pole, will rest no more
Beneath the shackles of the mighty North;
But rousing all their waves resistless heave.--
And hark! the lengthen'd roar continuous runs
Athwart the rested deep: at once it bursts
And piles a thousand mountains to the clouds.
Ill fares the bark, with trembling wretches charg'd,
That tost amid the floating fragments, moors
Beneath the shelter of an icy isle,
While night o'erwhelms the sea, and horror looks
More horrible. Can human force endure
Th' assembled mischiefs that besiege 'em round!
Heart-gnawing hunger, fainting weariness,
The roar of winds and waves, the crush of ice,
Now ceasing, now renew'd with louder rage,
And in dire ecchoes bellowing round the main.

As the induction of Mr. Thomson's Winter has been celebrated for its
sublimity, so the conclusion has likewise a claim to praise, for the
tenderness of the sentiments, and the pathetic force of the expression.

'Tis done!--Dread winter spreads her latest glooms,
And reigns tremendous o'er the conquer'd year.
How dead the vegetable kingdom lies!
How dumb the tuneful! horror wide extends
Her desolate domain. Behold, fond man!
See here thy pictur'd life; pass some few years,
Thy flow'ring spring, thy summer's ardent strength,
Thy sober autumn fading into age,
And page concluding winter comes at last,
And shuts the scene.--

He concludes the poem by enforcing a reliance on providence, which will
in proper compensate for all those seeming severities, with which good
men are often oppressed.

--Ye good distrest!
Ye noble few! who here unbending stand
Beneath life's pressure, yet bear up awhile,
And what your bounded view which only saw
A little part, deemed evil, is no more:
The storms of Wintry time will quickly pass,
And one unbounded Spring encircle all.

The poem of Winter meeting with such general applause, Mr. Thomson was
induced to write the other three seasons, which he finished with equal
success. His Autumn was next given to the public, and is the mos