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Home  »  The English Poets  »  Extracts from The Seasons: The Sheep-washing, from ‘Summer’

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. III. The Eighteenth Century: Addison to Blake

James Thomson (1700–1748)

Extracts from The Seasons: The Sheep-washing, from ‘Summer’

OR rushing thence, in one diffusive band,

They drive the troubled flocks, by many a dog

Compelled, 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

Commit their woolly sides. And oft the swain,

On some impatient seizing, hurls them in:

Emboldened then, nor hesitating more,

Fast, fast, they plunge amid the flashing wave,

And panting labour to the farthest shore.

Repeated this, till deep the well-washed fleece

Has drunk the flood, and from his lively haunt

The trout is banished by the sordid stream,

Heavy and dripping, to the breezy brow

Slow move the harmless race; where, as they spread

Their swelling treasures to the sunny ray,

Inly disturbed, and wondering what this wild

Outrageous tumult means, their loud complaints

The country fill—and, tossed from rock to rock,

Incessant bleatings run around the hills.

At last, of snowy white, the gathered flocks

Are in the wattled pen innumerous pressed,

Head above head; and ranged in lusty rows

The shepherds sit, and whet the sounding shears.

The housewife waits to roll her fleecy stores,

With all her gay-drest maids attending round.

One, chief, in gracious dignity enthroned,

Shines o’er the rest, the pastoral queen, and rays

Her smiles, sweet-beaming, on her shepherd-king;

While the glad circle round them yield their souls

To festive mirth, and wit that knows no gall.

Meantime, their joyous task goes on apace:

Some mingling stir the melted tar, and some,

Deep on the new-shorn vagrant’s heaving side,

To stamp his master’s cypher ready stand;

Others the unwilling wether drag along;

And, glorying in his might, the sturdy boy

Holds by the twisted horns the indignant ram.

Behold where bound, and of its robe bereft,

By needy man, that all-depending lord,

How meek, how patient, the mild creature lies!

What softness in its melancholy face,

What dumb complaining innocence appears!

Fear not, ye gentle tribes, ’tis not the knife

Of horrid slaughter that is o’er you waved;

No, ’tis the tender swain’s well-guided shears,

Who having now, to pay his annual care,

Borrowed your fleece, to you a cumbrous load,

Will send you bounding to your hills again.