When he forgets what he has
learned in the Rhetoric class, and falls back on his own memories and
likings, the poet in him reappears. In _The Castle of Indolence_,
published just before his death in 1748, he imitates Spenser. One stanza
of this poem is more famous than all the rest; it is pure and high
romance:
As when a shepherd of the Hebrid-Isles,
Placed far amid the melancholy main,
(Whether it be lone fancy him beguiles,
Or that aerial beings sometimes deign
To stand embodied to our senses plain),
Sees on the naked hill, or valley low,
The whilst in ocean Phoebus dips his wain,
A vast assembly moving to and fro;
Then all at once in air dissolves the wondrous show.
Many who are familiar with this simile have never been at the pains to
remember, or enquire, what it illustrates. Indeed its appearance in the
poem is almost startling, as if it were there for no purpose but to
prophesy of the coming glories of English poetry. The visitors to the
Castle of Indolence are met at the gate by the porter, who supplies them
with dressing-gowns and slippers, wherein to take their ease. They then
stroll off to various parts of the spacious grounds, and their
disappearance is the occasion for this wonderful verse. Thomson cared no
more than his readers for the application of the figure; what possessed
him was his memory of the magic twilight on the west coast of Scotland.
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