For the longer draft poems to which Turner’s verses belong, see Introduction to the sketchbook. Finberg did not transcribe the verses on this leaf and the reading given here was first made by Rosalind Mallord Turner for the 1990 Tate exhibition.
Two lines are written on the left of the leaf, running vertically, the rest across it:
O Spring with renovating fire
Snatch from Twickenham shore the tuneful reed
O Gentle Spring yet renovating fire
O take from Twickenham the w... reed
Alexis tuned now useless on the meed
To trip responsive cadence [silent inserted] to seasons lyre
Attuned to pastoral sweetness thy [harmonious Alexis reed inserted]
lead
responsive Sisters oft to Thompson lyre
Responsive Season break in Thompson lyre
Thy soft Seasons round the Seasons lyre
varing in Pastoral sweets memory lead thy sighs
To Thomson rich harmonous lyre [the Season inserted]
Variants of these lines are given on folios 14 and 55 (
D06747,
D06828). All these passages anticipate stanzas published by Turner with his picture
Thomson’s Aeolian Harp (Manchester Art Gallery)
1 when he exhibited it at his Gallery in 1809:
Inspiring Spring! With renovating fire
Well pleas’d rebind those reeds Alexis play’d
And breathing balmy kisses to the lyre,
Give one soft note to lost Alexis shade
Throughout, James Thomson, poet of the Seasons (1730), is juxtaposed with Alexander Pope – ‘Alexis’ – and, likewise, Thomson’s poetic lyre with Pope’s reed. The lyre becomes an Aeolian harp on folio 55:
The Past[oral] reed and Eol[ian] harp unstrung
Is the harmony that [?friends made]
David Blayney Brown
March 2007
