Analysis of The Study and Beauties of the Works of Nature

James Thomson 1700 (Port Glasgow) – 1748 (London)



O Nature! all-sufficient! over all!
Enrich me with the knowledge of Thy works!
Snatch me to heaven; Thy rolling wonders there,
World beyond world, in infinite extent,
Profusely scatter'd o'er the void immense,
Shew me; their motions, periods, and their laws,
Give me to scan; through the disclosing deep
Light my blind way; the mineral strata there;
Thrust, blooming, thence the vegetable world;
O'er that the rising system more complex,
Of animals; and higher still, the mind,
The varied scene of quick-compounded thought,
And where the mixing passions endless shift;
These ever open to my ravish'd eye;
A search, the flight of time can ne'er exhaust!
But if to that unequal; if the blood,
In sluggish streams about my heart, forbid
That best ambition; under closing shades,
Inglorious, lay me by the lowly brook,
And whisper to my dreams. From Thee begin,
Dwell all on Thee, with Thee conclude my song:
And let me never, never stray from Thee!


Scheme ABCDEFGCHIJKLMNOPQRSTU
Poetic Form
Metre 1101010101 0111010111 11110110101 1011010001 01010100101 11110100011 1111100101 11110100101 110101001 10101010110 1100010101 0101110101 0101010101 110101111 0101111101 1111010101 0101011101 1101010101 01001110101 0101111101 1111110111 0111010111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 933
Words 161
Sentences 8
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 22
Lines Amount 22
Letters per line (avg) 34
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 739
Words per stanza (avg) 159
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

49 sec read
64

James Thomson

James Thomson, who wrote under the pseudonym Bysshe Vanolis, was a Scottish Victorian-era poet famous primarily for the long poem The City of Dreadful Night, an expression of bleak pessimism in a dehumanized, uncaring urban environment. more…

All James Thomson poems | James Thomson Books

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