Edmund William Gosse

“ In other words, the landscape, or architecture, or still life, or whatever may be the object of the poet’s attention, is not used as an accessory, but is itself the centre of interest. It is, in this sense, not correct to call poetry in which description is only the occasional ornament of a poem, and not its central subject, descriptive poetry. The landscape or still life must fill the canvas, or, if human interest is introduced, that must be treated as an accessory. ”

“ In Thomson, for the first time, a poet of considerable eminence appeared, to whom external nature was all sufficient, and who succeeded in conducting a long poem to its close by a single appeal to landscape, and to the emotions which it directly evokes. Coleridge, somewhat severely, described The Seasons as the work of a good rather than of a great poet, and it is an indisputable fact that, at its very best, descriptive poetry fails to awaken the highest powers of the imagination. A great part of Thomson’s poem is nothing more nor less than a skilfully varied catalogue of natural phenomena. ”

“ It is almost impossible in descriptive verse to obtain those vivid and impassioned appeals to the imagination which are of the very essence of genuine poetry, and it is unlikely that descriptive poetry, as such, will again take a prominent place in living literature. ”