to the miserable state of those who are confined in dungeons, deprived
of daylight and the sight of the green earth, whose minds perpetually
travel back to happy scenes,
Trace and retrace the beaten worn-out way,
whose chief bitterness it is to be forgotten and see no familiar
friendly face.
"Winter" is, I think, the best of the four parts it gives the idea that
the poem was written as it stands, from "Spring" onwards, that by the
time he got to the last part the writer had acquired a greater ease and
assurance. At all events it is less patchy and more equal. It is also
more sober in tone, as befits the subject, and opens with an account of
the domestic animals on the farm, their increased dependence on man and
the compassionate feelings they evoke in us. He is, we feel, dealing
with realities, always from the point of view of a boy of sensitive
mina and tender heart--one taken in boyhood from this life before it had
wrought any change in him. For in due time the farm boy, however fine
his spirit may be, must harden and grow patient and stolid in heat and
cold and wet, like the horse that draws the plough or cart; and as he
hardens he grows callous. In his wretched London garret if any change
came to him it was only to an increased love and pity for the beasts he
had lived among, who looked and cried to him to be fed. He describes it
well, the frost and bitter cold, the hungry cattle following the cart
to the fields, the load of turnips thrown out on the hard frozen ground;
but the turnips too are frozen hard and they cannot eat them until
Giles, following with his beetle, splits them up with vigorous blows,
and the cows gather close round him, sending out a cloud of steam from
their nostrils.
The dim short winter day soon ends, but the sound of the flails
continues in the barns till long after dark before the weary labourers
end their task and trudge home. Giles, too, is busy at this time taking
hay to the housed cattle, many a sweet mouthful being snatched from the
load as he staggers beneath it on his way to the racks. Then follow
the well-earned hours of "warmth and rest" by the fire in the big old
kitchen which he describes:--
For the rude architect, unknown to fame,
(Nor symmetry nor elegance his aim),
Who spread his floors of solid oak on high,
On beams rough-hewn from age to age that lie,
Bade his wide fabric unimpaired sustain
The orchard's store, and cheese, and golden grain;
Bade from its central base, capacious laid,
The well-wrought chimney rear its lofty head
Where since hath many a savoury ham been stored,
And tempests howled and Christmas gambols roared.
The tired ploughman, steeped in luxurious heat, by and by falls asleep
and dreams sweetly until his chilblains or the snapping fire awakes him,
and he pulls himself up and goes forth yawning to give his team their
last feed, his lantern throwing a feeble gleam on the snow as he makes
his way to the stable. Having completed his task, he pats the sides
of those he loves best by way of good-night, and leaves them to their
fragrant meal. And this kindly action on his part suggests one of the
best passages of the poem. Even old well-fed Dobbin occasionally rebels
against his slavery, and released from his chains will lift his clumsy
hoofs and kick, "disdainful of the dirty wheel." Short-sighted Dobbin!
Thy chains were freedom, and thy toils repose,
Could the poor post-horse tell thee all his woes;
Show thee his bleeding shoulders, and unfold
The dreadful anguish he endures for gold;
Hired at each call of business, lust, or rage,
That prompts the traveller on from stage to stage.
Still on his strength depends their boasted speed;
For them his limbs grow weak, his bare ribs bleed;
And though he groaning quickens at command,
Their extra shilling in the rider's hand
Becomes his bitter scourge....
The description, too long to quote, which follows of the tortures
inflicted on the post-horse a century ago, is almost incredible to us,
and we flatter ourselves that such things would not be tolerated now.
But we must get over the ground somehow, and I take it that but for the
invention of other more rapid means of transit the present generation
would be as little concerned at the pains of the post-horse as they
are at the horrors enacted behind the closed doors of the physiological
laboratories, the atrocity of the steel trap, the continual murdering by
our big game hunters of all the noblest animals left on the globe, and
finally the annual massacre of millions of beautiful birds in their
breeding time to provide ornaments for the hats of our women.
"Come forth he must," says Bloomfield, when he describes how the
flogged horse at length gains the end of the stage and, "trembling under
complicated pains," when "every nerve a separate anguish knows," he is
finally unharnessed and led to the stable door, but has scarcely tasted
food and rest before he is called for again.
Though limping, maimed and sore;
He hears the whip; the chaise is at the door...
The collar tightens and again he feels
His half-healed wounds inflamed; again the wheels
With tiresome sameness in his ears resound
O'er blinding dust or miles of flinty ground.
This is over and done with simply because the post-horse is no longer
wanted, and we have to remember that no form of cruelty inflicted,
whether for sport or profit or from some other motive, on the lower
animals has ever died out of itself in the land. Its end has invariably
been brought about by legislation through the devotion of men who were
the "cranks," the "faddists," the "sentimentalists," of their day, who
were jeered and laughed at by their fellows, and who only succeeded by
sheer tenacity and force of character after long fighting against public
opinion and a reluctant Parliament, in finally getting their law.
Bloomfield's was but a small voice crying in the wilderness, and he was
indeed a small singer in the day of our greatest singers. As a poet he
was not worthy to unloose the buckles of their shoes; but he had one
thing in common with the best and greatest, the feeling of tender love
and compassion for the lower animals which was in Thomson and Cowper,
but found its highest expression in his own great contemporaries,
Coleridge, Shelley, and Wordsworth. In virtue of this feeling he was of
their illustrious brotherhood.
In conclusion, I will quote one more passage. From the subject of horses
he passes to that of dogs and their occasional reversion to wildness,
when the mastiff or cur, the "faithful" house-dog by day, takes to
sheep-killing by night. As a rule he is exceedingly cunning, committing
his depredations at a distance frown home, and after getting his fill
of slaughter he sneaks home in the early hours to spend the day in his
kennel "licking his guilty paws." This is an anxious time for shepherds
and farmers, and poor Giles is compelled to pay late evening visits to
his small flock of heavy-sided ewes penned in their distant fold. It is
a comfort to him to have a full moon on these lonely expeditions, and
despite his tremors he is able to appreciate the beauty of the scene.
With saunt'ring steps he climbs the distant stile,
Whilst all around him wears a placid smile;
There views the white-robed clouds in clusters driven
And all the glorious pageantry of heaven.
Low on the utmost bound'ry of the sight
The rising vapours catch the silver light;
Thence fancy measures as they parting fly
Which first will throw its shadow on the eye,
Passing the source of light; and thence away
Succeeded quick by brighter still than they.
For yet above the wafted clouds are seen
(In a remoter sky still more serene)
Others detached in ranges through the air,
Spotless as snow and countless as they're fair;
Scattered immensely wide from east to west
The beauteous semblance of a flock at rest.
This is almost the only passage in the poem in which something of the
vastness of visible nature is conveyed. He saw the vastness only in the
sky on nights with a full moon or when he made a telescope of his hat
to watch the flight of the lark. It was not a hilly country about his
native place, and his horizon was a very limited one, usually bounded by
the hedgerow timber at the end of the level field. The things he depicts
were seen at short range, and the poetry, we see, was of a very modest
kind. It was a "humble note" which pleased me in the days of long ago
when I was young and very ignorant, and as it pleases me still it may
be supposed that mentally I have not progressed with the years.
Nevertheless, I am not incapable of appreciating the greater music;
all that is said in its praise, even to the extremest expressions of
admiration of those who are moved to a sense of wonder by it, find an
echo in me. But it is not only a delight to me to listen to the lark
singing at heaven's gate and to the vesper nightingale in the oak
copse--the singer of a golden throat and wondrous artistry; I also love
the smaller vocalists--the modest shufewing and the lesser whitethroat
and the yellowhammer with his simple chant. These are very dear to
me: their strains do not strike me as trivial; they have a lesser
distinction of their own and I would not miss them from the choir. The
literary man will smile at this and say that my paper is naught but an
idle exercise, but I fancy I shall sleep the better tonight for having
discharged this ancient debt which has been long on my conscience.