ABSTRACT
Thomson recognized the fragmentariness of man’s experience, knowledge and happiness. He wrote of moments of harmony and of a limited ideal in nature and in man’s rural retreats from nature, harmonious moments that provided a union with the past or a hopeful prospect for infinity. But such moments and places were necessary relief from the anxiety and uneasiness of actual human experience. The model people and places are necessary in The Seasons because they affirm the possibility of temporary relief from anxieties and disappointments and the hope of a future life. In the inevitable turning of time and fortune all retreats have to be abandoned. As Thomson wrote to Elizabeth Young upon the death of her sister, ‘true Happiness is not the Growth of this mortal Soil, but of those blessed regions where she is now.’.
