have mentioned that Marvell had employed the same metre in the shorter "Upon the Hill and Grove at Billborrow", which takes its place in the line of prospect poems stretching from John Denham's "Cooper’s Hill" (1642) through Dyer to the end of the 18th century. Dyer's poem differs from most of these in that it is shorter, no more than 158 lines, and more generalised. Although the hill itself and the River Towy are named in the poem, the old castles on the neighbouring heights are not, nor is their history particularised. Instead they are made an emotional image and given Gothic properties: From this contrast with their former glory, the poet says that he learns to modify his desires and be content with the simple happiness that his presence on the hill brought in the past and continues to do. The drawing of a moral is more a private affair, in the same way that the poet's contentment is a sincere personal response to the natural scene, rather than made the occasion for public lesson-drawing – still less is it, as in the case of the several later parson poets that adopted other hills, used for professional admonitions from their pulpit. The different professionalism that Dyer brought to the poem was that of his recent training in painting. The "silent nymph, with curious eye" addressed at the start watches the evening "painting fair the form of things". She is called to aid her "sister Muse" in a dialogue where poetry and painting cross-fertilise each other: 'Landskip' was by then an art term and is soon partnered by others from the professional vocabulary: "vistoes" (line 30) and "prospect" (line 37). Authorial music is subdued by this place "where Quiet dwells" and "whose silent shade [is] for the modest Muses made". The effects are predominantly visual, as in the description of how perception of the surrounding natural features is modified on ascending the hill slope (lines 30–40), or in the likening of the contrasting aspects of the view to "pearls upon an Ethiop's arm" (line 113). While the view is not minutely detailed, what Dyer sees from the summit is authentic, as is apparent from a comparison with the prose description in the guidebook already quoted. But it is possible for the eye to be guided by the vision of the painters then in vogue. Among the influences on Dyer identified