A more personal, less histrionic description of the park appears in the correspondence of Lyttelton’s protégé the poet James Thomson which he clearly worked up later and incorporated into verses for Spring in The Seasons:

The park where we pass a great part of our Time, is thoroughly delightful, quite enchanting. It consists of several little Hills, finely tufted with Wood and rising softly one above the other; from which are seen a great Variety of at once beautiful and grand extensive Prospects: but I am most charmed with its sweet embowered Retirements, and particularly with a winding Dale that runs thro’ the Middle of it. This Dale is overhung with deep Woods, and enlivened by a Stream, that, now gushing from mossy Rocks, now falling in Cascades, and now spreading into a calm length of water, forms the most natural and pleasing Scene imaginable. At the Source of this Water, composed of some pretty Rills, that purl from beneath the Roots of oaks, there is as fine a retired Seat as a Lover’s Heart could wish’.

In Thomson’s verse this becomes:

[O Lyttelton]………….There along the Dale
With Woods o’er – hung and shagg’d with mossy Rocks, Whence on each Hand the gushing waters play,
And down the rough Cascade white – dashing fall,
Or gleam in lengthen’d Vista thro’ the Trees,
You silent steal; or sit beneath the Shade
Of solemn Oaks, that tuft the swelling mounts
Thrown graceful round by Nature’s careless Hand,
And pensive listen to the various Voice
Of rural Peace: the Herds, the Flocks, the Birds,
The hollow-whispering Breeze, the plaint of Rills,
That, purling down amid the twisted Roots
Which creep around, their dewy Murmurs shake
On the sooth’d ear. From these abstracted oft,
You wander thro’ the Philosophic World….’

Surely the ‘shagg’d and mossy rocks’, the ‘white dashing cascade cascade’, the ‘voices of rural peace’ are what we find translated into the Gallery furniture at Hagley.

The ‘petrification’ or ‘frozen’ quality of the furniture is further suggested by Thomson’s description of the cascade in Winter

What art thou, Frost ?.......
An icy Gale, oft shifting, o’er the Pool
Breathes a blue Film, and in its mid Career
Arrests the bickering Steam. The loosen’d Ice,
Let down the Flood, and half dissolv’d by Day,
Rustles no more; but to the sedgy Bank
Fast grows, or gathers round the pointed Stone,
A crystal pavement, by the Breath of Heaven
Cemented firm…..
…..It freezes on;
Till Morn, late – rising o’er the drooping World,
Lifts her pale Eye unjoyous. The appears
The various Labour of the silent Night:
Prone from the dripping Eave, and dumb Cascade,
Whose idle Torrents only seem to roar,
The pendant Icicle; the Frost-Work fair,
Where transient Hues, and fancy’d Figures rise;
Wide spouted o’er the Hill, the frozen Brook,
A livid Tract, cold-gleaming on the Morn….