Context: The completion of "Autumn" permitted publication of all four parts of The Seasons together, in an edition from which many passages were deleted in the second edition of 1744. One critic referred to its contents as "a volume on which reason bestows as many beauties as imagination." Part III of The Seasons, devoted to Autumn, is dedicated to Arthur Onslow, who was speaker of the British House of Commons from 1728 to 1761. After describing the fields and vineyards ready for harvest, Thomson comments on the barbarity of hunting. Then he further described the migrating birds, the fading leaves, and finally the joys of a philosophical life in the country. The Dorians of early Greece were supposed to have invented the choral lyric. Pan, one of their agricultural gods, invented the shepherd's pipe, made of reeds. "Front" is, of course, "forehead."