Part First

raves: "Of the seas, storms, etc.: To rage; to dash, rush, roar, etc., in a furious manner" (OED).

thund’ring tube: An example of periphrasis common in eighteenth-century English poetry. Cf. William Wordsworth, Descriptive Sketches (1793) (Ed. Eric Birdsall. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1984) 60-61: "The thundering tube the aged angler hears, / And swells the groaning torrent with his tears." Eric Birdsall points out that in these lines of Wordsworth’s there is an echo of Alexander Pope’s Windsor Forest, 2. 129-30: "He lifts the tube, and levels with his Eye; / Strait a short Thunder breaks the frozen sky." Pope, Wordsworth, and Knight all lament the "violat[ion] of peaceful nature" (Birdsall 44).

. . . now, behold, the joyous Winter-Days,
Frosty, succeed; and thro’ the blue Serene,
For Sight too fine, the etherial Nitre flies;
Killing infectious Damps, and the spent Air
Storing afresh with elemental Life.

fleecy shower: Cf. "Winter" 227: "fleecy World"; "Winter" 229: "whitening Shower."

Caledonia: Scotland. See John Pinkerton’s Modern Geography (3 vols. London, 1807) 1: 145:

Scotland was first discovered to the Romans by Agricola; and the luminous pages of Tacitus disclosed the situation and manners of the country. . . .

Tacitus discriminates the northern part to Britain from the southern, by the special and repeated appellation of Caledonia, a name said to be derived from a Cumraig word signifying woodlands, forests, or, perhaps, rather a mountainous country. . . .

While there are no direct references to The Seasons in this section, it may be of interest to note that in "Autumn" (880-956), the Scottish Thomson writes of Caledonia, of its landscape and economic situation, and of certain historical figures.

bothy: "A hut or cottage" (OED).

bield: "Refuge, shelter" (OED). Both "bothy" and "bield" are of note for their currency in Scottish or northern dialects. The OED cites examples of their use from the works of Robert Burns and Hector Macneill.

Glengary: An alternate spelling of Glengarry common until Confederation—and employed in Lieutenant Governor Simcoe’s Proclamation of 16 July 1792 which established the county. For a detailed account of the county, see Royce MacGillivray and Ewan Ross’s A History of Glengarry (Belleville, ON: Mike, 1979). One of Ontario’s easternmost counties, named for a glen in Invernessshire, Scotland, Glengarry was originally bounded by the Ottawa River on the north, the St Lawrence River on the south, the border between Upper and Lower Canada on the East, and, according to the Proclamation, "‘the easternmost boundary of the late township of Cornwall, running north twenty-four degrees west until it intersects the Ottawa or Grand River’" (qtd. in Royce and Ross 3) on the west. In 1798, it was divided roughly in half, the southern portion retaining the name Glengarry, the northern becoming a new county, Prescott. The early settlers of the area were largely United Empire Loyalists, many being Scottish Highlanders who had emigrated to the Mohawk Valley in New York Province to be tenant farmers. During the winter of 1775-76, after orders had been sent out to arrest leading Loyalists, Sir John Johnson, a British landlord in the Mohawk Valley escaped to Montreal with some of his tenants. After being given the rank Lieutenant Colonel, he formed a battalion of refugee settlers, the King’s Royal Regiment of New York. When the regiment disbanded in 1783, provision had to be made for the soldiers and their families, and so Governor General Sir Frederick Haldimand ordered new townships to be laid out along the St. Lawrence River, and sent the refugees to Pointe Maligne, in the area of what is now Cornwall, Ontario. Approximately one thousand Loyalists settled the area in 1784. By the time of the Knight’s trip to Canada, there had been a further influx of Scottish immigrants into the region with a large number arriving from Knoydart in 1786, followed by groups of Highlanders landing in Canada in 1794 and 1802.

See Campbell 125. During his journey from Montreal to Kingston, Campbell passes through Glengarry:

From lieutenant Fraser’s I proceeded to the foot of the river Raisson, where an Italian Count, on his return from Lake Superior, was encamped. He had three tents, some baggage, provisions, and a crew of ten or twelve Canadians in one birch canoe, the largest I ever saw of the kind. This small river is closely settled for the space of twenty miles, mostly by Highlanders; and in many parts seven concessions deep, as they are called here, (i.e.) seven farms deep, the one behind the other. This is reckoned a very fine settlement; the soil extremely rich, and the average of the produce in grain twenty fold. I put up at the house of a Mr M’Donald formerly from Ardnabee in Glengary.

See also Boulton 25: "Charlottenburgh [township] is in the county of Glengary. . . . This country must be admitted to be a very fine one, though being so entirely confined to Scottish settlers, it seldom attracts other strangers."

mazy dance: cf. "mazy Dance" ("Autumn" 596) "Mazy" is probably meant in the sense of being "full of windings and turnings" (OED).

glad strathspey: "A lively dance or reel for two dancers" (OED) named for its native place, the valley (strath) of the river Spey.

Part Second

bright effulgence: Cf. "Summer" 103: "Lost in the near Effulgence of thy Blaze"; "Summer" 635: "the bright-effulgent Sun"

Lybian: A variant spelling of Libyan. Knight may be using the term to refer to Africans, generally.

no wretched Lybian toils: Knight is making the point that maple sugar is obtained without the use of slave labour. While the slave-trade had been abolished in Britain by this time, the use of slave labour in its colonies continued. The bulk of the country’s sugar came from the West Indies, the product of "Lybian toil." See Introduction xxxv.

sun’s refulgent glow: Cf. "Summer" 2: "Child of the Sun, refulgent SUMMER comes"

the dawn of June’s resplendent morn: The structure of Thomson’s "Summer" is that of a summer’s day, from the sun’s rising to its setting. Knight, too, moves from the time "ere the dawn" to that of "the moon’s nocturnal rays" (2.224).

chaplet: "A wreath for the head" (OED)—in this case a garland of flowers.

Then seek the Bank where flowering Elders croud,
Where scatter’d wild Lily of the Vale
Its balmy Essence breathes, where Cowslips hang
The dewy Head, where purple Violets lurk,
With all the lowly Children of the Shade:
Or lie reclin’d beneath yon spreading Ash. . . .

Cf. also "Spring" 528-29: "And in yon mingled Wilderness of Flowers, / Fair-handed Spring unbosoms every Grace. . ." After these lines Thomson offers a catalogue of British wildflowers.

Sweet was the blush: Cf. "Summer" 47-51:

The meek-ey’d Morn appears, Mother of Dews,
At first faint-gleaming in the dappled East:
Till far o’er Ether spreads the widening Glow;
And, from before the Lustre of her Face,
White break the Clouds away. . . .

We saw very few men, but plenty of squaws, who were dressed in their    dirty blankets, lugging their children about, or sitting down on the ground in groups, laughing and chatting with each other. Idleness reigned in every    part of the village, nor could I find either man, woman, or child, employed  at any sort of work, though I looked into many of their houses. Their         habitations are dirty, miserable, and destitute of furniture; and the whole    village . . . presents a most forlorn and wretched appearance. (2: 82-83)

MAY my Song soften, as thy DAUGHTERS I,
BRITANNIA, hail! for Beauty is their own,
The feeling Heart, Simplicity of Life,
And Elegance, and Taste: the faultless Form,
Shap’d by the hand of Harmony. . . .

(A blazon follows these lines.) See also "Autumn" 570-78:

BUT if the rougher Sex by this fierce Sport
Is hurry’d wild, let not such horrid Joy
E’er stain the Bosom of the BRITISH FAIR.
Far be the Spirit of the Chace from them!
Uncomely Courage, unbeseeming Skill,
To spring the Fence, to rein the prancing Steed,
The Cap, the Whip, the masculine Attire,
In which they roughen to the Sense, and all
The winning Softness of their Sex is lost. . . .

Though they must bear the load: Cf. Carver 235: ". . . the men, who are remarkably indolent, leave to them every kind of drudgery; even in their hunting parties the former will not deign to bring home the game, but send their wives for it, though it lies at a very considerable distance."
Cf. Ferguson 83: "It is a servitude, and a continual toil, where no honours are won."

zone: "A girdle or belt, as a part of dress. (Chiefly poetic.) Hence, any encircling band" (OED).

The one—her blanket: See Introduction li, note 12.

The women carry their children behind their back: they are wrapped up in swaddling cloths, and fastened to a flat board, with a piece of hickery-stick bent over at the top; upon this, a piece of cloth is fastened, which covers the child, and preserves it from being plagued by the musquitoes and flies,  or scratched by the bushes when going through the woods. . . . On Sunday, the Indians are all drest in their gayest apparel; the women then decorate their children upon these cradle boards, with a variety of coloured ribbons and painted cotton clothes. The face of the child is all that is seen, the arms and feet being confined under the bandages and cloths, which are wrapped tight round the body, so that is has a great resemblance to an Egyptian mummy.

With all a mother’s love: Cf. Lambert 2: 83: "no mothers can appear more tender of their offspring than they [Native women] do."

[The] indifference in the mind of the Indians about taking away the life of    a fellow creature, makes them appear . . . in a very unamiable point of view . . . [I]n the opinion of many people, all the good qualities which they possess, would but ill atone for their revengeful disposition, and for the     cruelties which . . . they sometimes inflict upon the prisoners who have    fallen into their power in battle. Great pains have been taken, both by the French and English missionaries, to represent to them the infamy of torturing their prisoners; nor have these pains been bestowed in vain; for though in some recent instances it has appeared that they still retain a fondness for    this horrid practice, yet . . . of late years not one prisoner has been put to the torture, where twenty would have been a hundred years ago . . . but to     eradicate wholly from their breasts the spirit of revenge has been found      impossible.

Has not its tenant’s hospitable care: Carver writes that the Native peoples are "sociable and humane to those whom they consider as their friends, and even to their adopted enemies; and ready to partake with them of the last morsel, or to risk their lives in their defence" (410). This observation is supported by other travel writers such as Weld who remarks that "[t]he Indians are by nature of a very hospitable generous disposition . . ." (2: 271).

of a diff’rent mould: This could refer to a differing pattern or shape, but given Knight’s use of "earth" in line 150, mould is perhaps meant in the sense of the "[e]arth regarded as the material of the human body" (OED). Cf. John Gabriel Stedman’s Narrative of a five year’s expedition, against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam (Ed. Richard Price and Sally Price. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1988.) 618: "We all only differ in the Colour but we are Certainly Created by the same hand & After the Same Mould. . . ." Cf. Abbé Raynal 18-19: "[L]ike the Laplanders, they [Native North Americans] are of a different species from ourselves." See Introduction xxii.

Or should the blood-hound: See Introduction xxxvii-xxxviii.

The first priests of the Britons were the Druids, so famous in the annals       of Gaul. To throw a mysterious veil upon the ceremonies of a savage worship, their rites were never performed but in dark recesses, and generally in gloomy groves, where fear creates spectres and apparitions. . . . The altars    of a formidable deity were stained with the blood of human victims, and     enriched with the most precious spoils of war. . . . The history of human     superstitions affords no instance of any one so tyrannical as that of the druids.

sons of Doubt: This formulation is common enough in The Seasons. Examples of Thomson’s use of it include the following: "sordid Sons of Earth" ("Spring" 875); "Sons of Art" ("Summer" 1457); "Sons of Glory" ("Summer" 1479); "Sons of Mercy" ("Winter" 378); "Sons of Riot" ("Winter" 632).

WITH Thee, serene PHILOSOPHY, with Thee,
And thy bright Garland, let me crown my Song!
                         •     •     •

TUTOR’D by thee, hence POETRY exalts
Her Voice to Ages; and informs the Page
With Music, Image, Sentiment, and Thought,
Never to die! the Treasure of Mankind,
Their highest Honour, and their truest Joy!

WITHOUT thee what were unenlighten’d Man?
A Savage roaming thro’ the Woods and Wilds,
In quest of Prey; and with th’ unfashion’d Fur
Rough-clad; devoid of every finer Art,
And Elegance of Life. . . .

. . . the softening Arts of Peace,
Whate’er the humanizing Muses teach;
The godlike Wisdom of the temper’d Breast;
Progressive Truth, the patient Force of Thought;
Investigation calm, whose silent Powers
Command the World. . . .

from Hoogly’s banks to Indiana’s shade: Hooghly is "the most westerly of the rivers of the Ganges delta, in West Bengal" (OERD). Aside from the obvious connection of Indiana to India, Knight may be making a reference to the Battle of Tippecanoe. See Introduction lii, note 16.

NOW, flaming up the Heavens, the potent Sun
Melts into limpid Air the high-rais’d Clouds,
And morning Fogs, that hover’d round the Hills
In party-colour’d Bands . . . .

Now starting to a sudden Stream, and now
Gently diffus’d into a limpid Plain;
A various Groupe the Herds and Flocks compose,
Rural Confusion! On the grassy Bank
Some ruminating lie; while others stand
Half in the Flood, and often bending sip
The circling Surface. . . .

Rome’s tyrannic day: Cf. "Summer" 758: "the purple Tyranny of Rome." Lambert in his chapter dedicated to both the history of Roman Catholicism and to a discussion of the effects of the faith in Lower Canada, relates how "the divine precepts of Christianity . . . were made the horrid and blasphemous instruments of tyranny . . ." (1: 348-49) by its priests.

Yet frown not here: The issue of religious tolerance is certainly not unique to Knight. In his 1799 Travels, Weld simply states, "Every religion is tolerated, in the fullest extent of the word, in both           provinces . . ." (1: 370). According to Hugh Gray, "nowhere do the Roman Catholics and Protestants live on better terms than here. They go to each other’s marriages, baptisms, and burials without scruple; nay, they have even been known to make use of the same church for religious worship. . . .There is something truly Christian in all this . . . (60). But by 1810, Lambert is feeling the need to remind his readers that "This is the age of toleration . . ." (1: 353). Indeed he devotes an entire chapter (vol. 1, ch. 17) of his work to the French Canadian/ Roman Catholic issue. He suggests, "A man . . . cannot be said to be accountable for the errors and defects of that religion which originated centuries before he was born, and in which he was initiated by his parents" (1: 355). After all, as he points out, Catholicism offers no threat to the Protestant, British order, for "[a]t the present day, the Roman Catholic religion, compared with its most flourishing periods, is humbled with the dust" (1: 349). Lambert goes on to assert, "It is not a haughty, supercilious behaviour that will win the esteem of the Canadians; on the contrary, they are a people of such polite and easy demeanour themselves, that they are rather repulsed, than invited by the manners of some of the English clergy" (1: 358).

With the bold cossack, or the fierce hussar: Knight is referring to the Turkish light horsemen who fought with the Russian army and to the light cavalry regiments in most European armies named for the fifteenth-century Hungarian body of light horsemen upon which they modelled themselves (OED).

Mistakenly equating Canadien aspirations with those of Napoleon, and perceiving them as a threat to English authority, he [Craig] imprisoned leaders of the Parti Canadien without trial, twice dissolved the Assembly, and attempted to stop publication of Le Canadien, founded four years earlier to defend French-Canadian interests.

On the topic of French-Canadian loyalties, see Gray 336-37 and 343:

I deny that the descendants of Frenchmen, retaining the French language, manners, and customs, and constantly talking of the French as their progenitors, can ever be good British subjects, or enter heartily into her interests. The Frenchman’s amor patriae is not easily rooted out. . . .

[re: military training] The English and Canadians are divided into separate corps. The Canadians are officered by their own people; taught their exercise in French; and form a perfectly distinct body from the English. If brigaded with English troops, they could not understand the word of command, nor act with effect. In short, if the governor of Canada had intended to make them fit materials for Bonaparte to use against us, he could not have resorted to a better plan than what has been adopted here. . . .

Part Third

STILL let my Song a nobler Note assume,
And sing th’ infusive Force of Spring on Man;
When Heaven and Earth, as if contending, vye
To raise his Being, and serene his soul.
Can he forbear to join the general Smile
Of Nature? . . . .

. . . Hence! from the bounteous Walks
Of flowing Spring, ye sordid Sons of Earth,
Hard, and unfeeling of Another’s Woe,
Or only lavish to yourselves; away!

                                      . . . . Long let us walk,
Where the Breeze blows from yon extended Field
Of blossom’d Beans. Arabia cannot boast
A fuller Gale of Joy. . . .

Plant of the East: According to The Cambridge World History of Food (ed. Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. 90), buckwheat—which probably originated in Mancuria and Siberia and was cultivated in China and Japan at least as early as 1000 B.C.—entered Europe in the late middle ages. There was, however, a "legend" that the plant had arrived much earlier thanks to Crusaders who brought it with them on their return home.

Ah! there a thousand: Cf. "Spring" 121: "Myriads on Myriads, Insect-Armies waft" and "Summer" 246-47: ". . . by Myriads, forth at once, / Swarming they pour. . . ."

fen: "Low land covered wholly or partially with shallow water, or subject to frequent inundations" (OED).

. . . tyrant Heat, dispreading thro’ the Sky,
With rapid Sway, his burning Influence darts
On Man, and Beast, and Herb, and tepid Stream.

WHO can unpitying see the flowery Race,
Shed by the Morn, their new-flush’d Bloom resign,
Before the parching Beam? So fade the Fair. . . .

But lo!: Cf. "Summer" 1103-68: "Behold, slow-settling o’er the lurid Grove / Unusual Darkness broods . . ."

meteor blaze: "Atmospheric phenomena were formerly often classed as aerial or airy meteors (winds), aqueous or watery meteors (rain, snow, hail, dew, etc.), luminous meteors (the aurora, rainbow, halo, etc.), and igneous or fiery meteors (lightning, shooting stars, etc.)" (OED).

LET no presuming impious Railer tax
CREATIVE WISDOM, as if Aught was form’d
In vain, or not for admirable Ends.
Shall little haughty Ignorance pronounce
His Works unwise, of which the smallest Part
Exceeds the narrow Vision of her Mind?
As if upon a full-proportion’d Dome,
On swelling Columns heav’d, the Pride of Art!
A Critic-Fly, whose feeble Ray scarce spreads
An Inch around, with blind Presumption bold,
Should dare to tax the Structure of the Whole.
And lives the Man, whose universal Eye
Has swept at once th’ unbounded Scheme of Things;
Mark’d their Dependance so, and firm Accord,
As with unfaultering Accent to conclude
That This availeth nought? Has any seen
The mighty Chain of Beings, lessening down
From INFINITE PERFECTION to the Brink
Of dreary Nothing, desolate Abyss!
From which astonish’d Thought, recoiling, turns?
Till then alone let zealous Praise ascend,
And Hymns of holy Wonder, to that POWER,
Whose Wisdom shines as lovely on our Minds,
As on our smiling Eyes his Servant-Sun.

Cf. also "Summer" 175-81:

HOW shall I then attempt to sing of HIM,
Who, LIGHT HIMSELF, in uncreated Light
Invested deep, dwells awfully retir’d
From mortal Eye, or Angel’s purer Ken;
Whose single Smile has, from the first of Time,
Fill’d, overflowing, all those Lamps of Heaven,
That beam for ever thro’ the boundless Sky. . . .

Lo! in the caves where Ocean’s waters ooze: Cf. "Spring" 823: ". . . the deep Ooze and gelid Cavern. . . ."

Part Fourth

’Tis hers to mock the storm: Cf. "Winter" 843-46: "the Sons of Lapland . . . // . . . love their Mountains and enjoy their Storms."

The Canadians are perhaps the worst farmers in the world. If one of them happens to have a spot in a field that produces nothing, and has industry enough to drop a few carts of dung on it, if the plough and harrow do not spread it, it may lie there for him; he has done his part when he took the trouble of putting it on the land; spreading it is a labour no one would submit to undertake.

In the island of Montreal . . . are many spacious and fine farms, some of which are possessed by Englishmen who cultivate and manure their land as is done in that country, and raise crops which astonish the natives, who now begin to follow their example, and will soon, it is to be hoped, spread over all the populous and extensive province of Lower Canada.

Cf. also Weld 2: 7-8:

The style of farming amongst the generality of the French Canadians has hitherto been very slovenly; manure has been but rarely used; the earth just lightly turned up with a plough, and without any other preparation the grain sown. . . . The people are beginning now, however, to be more industrious and better farmers, owing to the increased demand for grain for exportation, and to the advice and encouragement given to them by the English merchants at Quebec and Montreal, who send agents through the country to the farmers to buy up all the corn they can spare.

Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn,
Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn;
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen,
And desolation saddens all thy green:
One only master grasps the whole domain,
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain
                          •     •     •
. . . The man of wealth and pride,
Takes up a space that many poor supplied;
                          •     •     •
His seat, where solitary sports are seen,
Indignant spurns the cottage from the green;
Around the world each needful product flies,
For all the luxuries the world supplies.

Cf. The Traveller (1764) 397-406:

Have we not seen, round Britain’s peopled shore,
Her useful sons exchang’d for useless ore?
                          •     •     •
Seen opulence, her grandeur to maintain,
Lead stern depopulation in her train,
And over fields, where scatter’d hamlets rose,
In barren solitary pomp repose?
Have we not seen, at pleasure’s lordly call,
The smiling long-frequented village fall?

Knight’s poem, as a whole, also serves to counteract Goldsmith’s view of North America as depicted in The Traveller 413-16:

. . . some pilgrim strays
Through tangled forests, and through dangerous ways;
Where beasts with man divided empire claim,
And the brown Indian marks with murderous aim. . . .

and in The Deserted Village 341-56:

. . . To distant climes, a dreary scene,
Where half the convex world intrudes between,
Through horrid tracts with fainting steps they go,
Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe.
Far different there from all that charm’d before,
The various terrors of that horrid shore.
                          •     •     •
Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey,
And savage men more murderous still than they. . . .

And Error limping from his shadowy cave: Perhaps a reference to Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (The Oxford Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Frank Kermode and John Hollander. Vol. 1. New York: Oxford UP, 1973. 669-820) in which the dragon Errour resides in a "darksome hole" (1.1.16), though Spenser’s dragon is female.

Ontario’s wave: Lake Ontario

the bugle’s martial sound: Knight does not refer to a particular "passing troop," but in keeping with the communities she has depicted she may have had in mind the Glengarry Light Infantry Fencibles or the Canadian Voltigeurs. Knight previously wrote of the invasion of Canada in Home: a Poem. See Introduction xlvii.

lambent lightning: Shooting stars. Cf. "Summer" 1700: "lambent Lightnings"

Part Fifth

The orchard’s ripen’d burden: See Introduction xi-xiv.

fameuse: Snow apple.

pommegris: Grey apple, also known as the French russet.

See earlier note 3.21

Benlomond: Ben Lomond is part of the Grampian mountain chain in north-west Stirlingshire and is situated on the east side of Loch Lomond. (See Pinkerton 1: 184).

Lares: "The tutelary deities of a house" in Roman mythology (OED).

BE not the Muse asham’d, here to bemoan
Her Brothers of the Grove, by tyrant Man
Inhuman caught, and in the narrow Cage
From Liberty confin’d, and boundless Air.
                          •     •     •
Spare the soft Tribes, this barbarous Art forbear!

As thus the Snows arise; and foul, and fierce,
All Winter drives along the darken’d Air;
In his own loose-revolving Fields, the Swain
Disaster’d stands. . . .