Poems by James Thomson

All Poems Original Poems Translations

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Nothing Formed In Vain

Let no presuming impious railer tax

Creative wisdom, as if aught was form'd

In vain, or not for admirable ends.

Shall little haughty ignorance pronounce

His works unwise, of which the smallest part

Excceeds the narrow vision of her mind?

As if, upon a full-proportion'd dome,

On swelling columns heav'd, the pride of art!

by James Thomson

Insects In Summer

Waked by his warmer ray, the reptile young

Came wing'd abroad; by the light air upborne

Lighter, and full of soul. From every chink

And secret corner, where they slept away

The wintry storms; or rising from their tombs

To higher life; by myriads, forth at once,

Swarming they pour; of all the varied hues

Their beauty-beaming parent can disclose.

by James Thomson

Hymn On Solitude

Hail, mildly pleasing Solitude,

Companion of the wise and good,

But from whose holy piercing eye

The herd of fools and villains fly.

Oh! how I love with thee to walk,

And listen to thy whispered talk,

Which innocence and truth imparts,

And melts the most obdurate hearts.

by James Thomson

Lavinia

The lovely young Lavinia once had friends;

And fortune smiled deceitful on her birth:

For, in her helpless years deprived of all,

Of every stay, save innocence and Heaven,

She, with her widow'd mother, feeble, old,

And poor, lived in a cottage, far retired

Among the windings of a woody vale;

By solitude and deep-surrounding shades,

by James Thomson

The Effects of Spring on Nature

See where the winding vale its lavish stores,

Irriguous, spreads. See, how the lily drinks

The latent rill, scarce oozing through the grass,

In fair profusion, decks. Long let us walk,

Where the breeze blows from yon extended field

Of blossom'd beans. Arabia cannot boast

A fuller gale of joy, than, liberal, thence

Breathes through the sense, and takes the ravish'd soul.

by James Thomson

The Morning Lark

Feather'd lyric, warbling high,

Sweetly gaining on the sky,

Op'ning with thy matin lay

(Nature's hymn) the eye of day,

Teach my soul, on early wing,

Thus to soar and thus to sing.

While the bloom of orient light

Gilds thee in thy tuneful flight,

by James Thomson

Evening In Autumn

The western sun withdrawn the shorten'd day,

And humid evening, gliding o'er the sky

In her chill progress, to the ground condensed

The vapours throws. Where creeping waters ooze,

Where marshes stagnate, and where rivers wind,

Cluster the rolling fogs, and swim along

The dusky-mantled lawn. Meanwhile the moon,

Full-orb'd, and breaking through the scatter'd clouds,

by James Thomson

Sheep-Sheering

In one diffusive band,

They drive the troubled flocks, by many a dog

Compell'd to where the mazy-running brook

Forms a deep pool; this bank abrupt and high,

And that fair-spreading in a pebbled shore,

Urged to the giddy brink, much is the toil,

The clamour much, of men, and boys, and dogs,

Ere the soft fearful people to the flood

by James Thomson

A Poem Sacred to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton

Shall the great soul of Newton quit this earth,

To mingle with his stars; and every muse,

Astonish'd into silence, shun the weight

Of honours due to his illustrious name?

But what can man?—Even now the sons of light,

In strains high-warbled to seraphic lyre,

Hail his arrival on the coast of bliss.

Yet am not I deterr'd, though high the theme,

by James Thomson

Spring Showers

The north-east spends his rage; he now shut up

Within his iron cave, th' 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,

by James Thomson

A Hymn

These, as they change, Almighty Father, these

Are but the varied God. The rolling year

Is full of thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring

Thy beauty walks, Thy tenderness and love.

Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm;

Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles,

And every sense, and every heart is joy.

Then comes Thy glory in the summer months,

by James Thomson

Rule, Britannia! (With Variations)

When Britain first, at heaven's command,

Arose from out the azure main;

This was the charter of the land,

And guardian Angels sung this strain:

"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;

Britons never will be slaves.

The nations, not so blest as thee,

Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall:

by James Thomson