sang its advent so passionately as in these strains?--

"The effusive south
Warms the wide air, and o'er the void of heaven
Breathes the big clouds with vernal showers distent.
At first a dusky wreath they seem to rise,
Scarce staining ether; but by swift degrees,
In heaps on heaps, the doubling vapour sails
Along the loaded sky, and mingling deep
Sits on th' horizon round a settled gloom:
Not such as wintry storms on mortals shed,
Oppressing life; but lovely, gentle, kind,
And full of every hope and every joy,
The wish of nature. Gradual sinks the breeze
Into a perfect calm, that not a breath
Is heard to quiver through the closing woods,
Or rustling turn the many-twinkling leaves
Of aspen tall. Th' uncurling floods diffused
In glassy breadth, seem through delusive lapse
Forgetful of their course. 'Tis silence all
And pleasing expectation. Herds and flocks
Drop the dry sprig, and, mute-imploring, eye
The falling verdure!"

All that follows is, you know, as good--better it cannot be--till we
come to the close, the perfection of poetry, and then sally out into the
shower, and join the hymn of earth to heaven--

"The stealing shower is scarce to patter heard
By such as wander through the forest walks,
Beneath th' umbrageous multitude of leaves.
But who can hold the shade, while heaven descends
In universal bounty, shedding herbs,
And fruits, and flowers, on Nature's ample lap?
Swift Fancy fired anticipates their growth;
And, while the milky nutriment distils,
Beholds the kindling country colour round."

Thomson, they say, was too fond of epithets. Not he, indeed. Strike out
one of the many there--and your sconce shall feel the crutch. A poet
less conversant with nature would have feared to say, "sits on the
horizon round _a settled gloom_," or rather, he would not have seen or
thought it was a settled gloom; and, therefore, he could not have said--

----"But lovely, gentle, kind,
And full of every hope and every joy,
_The wish of Nature._"

Leigh Hunt--most vivid of poets, and most cordial of critics--somewhere
finely speaks of a ghastly line in a poem of Keats'--

"Riding to Florence with the murder'd man;"

that is, the man about to be murdered--imagination conceiving as one,
doom and death. Equally great are the words--