‘A Few Words … To Ponder … In My Heart’ Beckett and James Thomson

Abstract

Lawrence Harvey (1970) first identified four lines of verse from the “Addenda” #8 of Watt as a borrowing from a lyric by James Thomson (1700–1748), the Scots poet famed for The Seasons (1726–1730), a long poem widely-read in the century thereafter. This paper considers the importance of Thomson’s lyric in Beckett’s life and its role in his writings (published and unpublished, public and private) over many years.