James Thomson's “Winter”: The Personification of Nature

This “study” of Nature is best exemplified in the section beginning “What art thou, frost?” (714).

In “Winter,” Thomson uses human attributes to describe Nature. Can Nature only be enjoyed once it is understood? Thomson thereafter describes how the guns of the hunters “Worse than the season desolate the fields” (791). With knowledge, a person can search “nature’s boundless frame” (575) and envision “where the mind,/In endless growth and infinite ascent,/Rises from state to state, and world to world” (606-8). The oppression of people by Winter is then paralleled with “Oppression’s iron rod” (380) in the political world. His list of historically great men suggests an ever-increasing amount of human knowledge. The poetic movement from the chaotic state of winter to a peaceful retreat for study, suggests that through increased knowledge people will eventually find a way to control Nature. Human invention and knowledge suddenly becomes more powerful than Nature. Nature must be investigated for all of its secrets. Thomson thereby suggests that Nature’s oppression, like political oppression, must be thoroughly investigated (“searched/Into the horrors” [360-61]) and brought to an end.