The View from the Window by Ronald Stuart Thomas: Summary and Critical Analysis

The View from the Window by Ronald Stuart Thomas is an imagist poem of a kind in which the speaker, who is observing the natural scenery outside of his window compares it with paintings that human artists have or can make.

In a sense, it is also a romantic poem that favors nature as definitely superior to human art. The subject is not an unfamiliar one, being based on the age-old question of the artist whether his work is as good as or better than that of the nature. But the treatment is unique and memorable.

The View from the Window profoundly depicts a painting on nature like that on a canvas. Delving into romantic subject matter, Thomas describes the wonderful eternal natural scenery that forms a pattern well designed by a skilled artist, possibly God. He not only expresses his wonder towards the beauty of the outside world but also endeavors to define and examine the mysterious nature. An artist’s task of fabricating and painting a piece of art has been simulated with God’s Maneuver over the seasons. Literally, the poem unfolds with the poet’s sight and admiration of scene visualized through his window.

Compared with a painting to be prepared by an artist, this heavenly decorated painting is everlasting with significant alteration of colors and shades. Thomas supplies images of 'cloud bruises' 'snow caps' and much more to provide a lively picture of nature. He believes no human being detected this grand work under composure. This is timeless, and mysterious, but equally marvelous.

Thomas has not limited his poetic horizon within a passive admiration of the nature, he locates whole universe within an art. He intends to appraise art as a whole and eternalizes it whether it is natural or artificial. A poetic eye sees symmetry and pattern in a "slovenly"– Stevens’ term –nature. Poetic sensibility is so pervasive, that it compresses a large, boundless, nature into a small canvas: Here Thomas’ aesthetic profundity overflows; as a result he seizes a moment.

The last line punctuated with question marks brings in the same fashion of William Blake who ceaselessly propels his rhetorical questions to intensify the mysterious natural product, 'Tyger'. Thomas applies the same technique to mystify nature and to indicate human impenetrability into the phenomenal world outside.

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Sharma, Kedar N. "The View from the Window by Ronald Stuart Thomas: Summary and Critical Analysis." BachelorandMaster, 18 Nov. 2013, bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanpoetry/the-view-from-the-window.html.