obert Bloomfield’s The Farmer’s Boy was the poem most frequently printed in the “romantic” period. William St Clair credits it with having sold over 100,000 copies between 1800 and 1826.(1) Crabbe, Bloomfield’s rival Suffolk poet, sold far fewer copies.(2)

Bloomfield was born at Honington, south-east of Thetford in Suffolk, on December 3rd 1766. A distant cousin, called Blomfield, was Bishop of London. His father died of smallpox when he was a year old, and he was taught to read and write by his mother. He had five siblings, and when he was seven his mother married again, and had another family. At the age of eleven he was sent to his mother’s brother-in-law at the nearby village of Sapiston; but was too small to be helpful at farmwork (even when fully-grown he was shorter than five feet, like his father),(3) and so he was sent to two of his brothers in London to train as a shoemaker. There he ran errands and read the newspapers aloud.

Capel Lofft

He was fond especially of reading the poetry section of the London Magazine. Thomson’s The Seasons was one of his favourite poems. More about his intellectual background will be found in Capel Lofft’s(4) Preface, printed as Appendix 3 below: though according to John Clare, Lofft is untrustworthy:

Began an Enquirey into the Life of Bloomfield with the intention of writing one and a critisism on his genius and writings a fellow of the name Preston pretended to know a great deal about him but I must enquire into its authenticity – Capel Loft did not improve on the account given by his brother George by altering it – Editors often commit this fault (5)

Bloomfield learned the violin, and became a maker of Aeolian harps. He returned for three months to Suffolk, and then came back to London, where in 1790 he married. In the garret where he worked with five or six others, he composed The Farmer’s Boy, initially for his mother’s pleasure, creating and correcting long sections in his head. The poem was shown by his brother George to Capel Lofft, who had it published (by Vernor, Hood, and Sharpe), on March 1st 1800 – having sat on it, editing it, for fifteen months. Bloomfield had no idea it was being published. It was an instant success, counting Wordsworth and Coleridge among its admirers. Bloomfield was introduced to the Duke of Grafton,(6) had his portrait taken, and almost met the Prince of Wales. Part of The Farmer’s Boy was translated into Latin: all of it, into French and Italian. It was published in American and Germany. A second edition was out in two months; by the seventh edition, it had sold 26,100 copies.(7) Bloomfield met and breakfasted with Samuel Rogers, and met Mrs Barbauld. He corresponded with Fox. Five more books of verse, and a play,(8) followed, all on rural themes; but fared less well. Bloomfield shared his income generously with his family, including his brother: a fact which led to his ultimate impoverishment.(9)

Grafton had him appointed Under-Sealer in the Court of King’s Bench, a job which exhausted him, so in 1803 he resigned it. He went into bookselling, where nothing went right for him, though Grafton compensated by awarding him fifteen pounds a year pension.(10) His publisher Hood died, and Sharpe sold up. In 1812, the firm failed, and its successor failed two years later.(11) There were arguments over copyright, especially of The Farmer’s Boy. Bloomfield described himself as “cheated and bamboozled”.(12) Sales declined. One of his daughters died, and his wife became a follower of Johanna Southcott. Grafton had died and been succeeded by his son, who was less generous. Wordsworth himself was moved to protest. On January 20th 1817 he wrote to Benjamin Robert Haydon:

Bloomfield the Poet has been and I believe is, in considerable distress, probably owing to the failure of his Bookseller, by whom he has lost several 100 pounds. A subscription was set on foot for his benefit. You know perhaps that he is a native of Euston the Duke of Grafton’s parish, his Grace’s principal Seat and Residence. This Spot, and its neighbourhood are the scene of the Farmer’s Boy; from this bond of connection something was expected from the noble Duke, nor was that expectation wholly fruitless – for he has given – five Pounds!!! This same illustrious person sold the Library which his Father had collected – God help the Literati of England if his Grace of Grafton be a fair specimen of the Patrons of the Day. But I know that he is not so.

	O may the man who has the muses scorned,
	Alive or dead be never of a muse adorned.(13) 

Bloomfield became seriously ill: he seems to have suffered throughout his life from rheumatism and migraines. He was attacked by both political sides: Tories said he was a republican, and Cobbett claimed he’d been bribed to present working-class people in a poor light. He died in poverty at Shefford, Bedfordshire, on August 19th 1823. Clare, whom he admired, and whose Shepherd’s Calendar derives in part from him, had returned the empathetic feeling. He wrote:

… Bloomfield had not a £100 a year to mentain 5 or 6 in the family why I have not £50 to mentain 8 with this is a hungry difference (14)

I have desires to know somthing of Bloomfields latter days but I can hearing of nothing further then his dying neglected so it is of no use enquiring further – for we know that to be the common lot of genius(15)

poor Bloomfield I wish that death had left me a little longer the pleasure of his friendship(16)

Bloomfield's grave at Shefford

Bloomfield left an epitaph for himself, which was not used, as can be seen in the photos above:

	First made a Farmer’s Boy, and then a snob,
	A poet he became, and here lies Bob.
			April 1823 (17) 

Byron’s friend John Cam Hobhouse (another propertied gentleman, masquerading as a radical) spent Tuesday April 8th 1823 with his other friend, and role-model, Sir Francis Burdett (a feudalistic plutocrat masquerading as a radical). He wrote in his diary:

Burdett and I rode nearly thirty miles to meet the Pytchley hounds on Rockingham Forest – we did not find them for two hours, and when we did find them, had no sport. We put up afterwards at the George Inn, Kettering, dined, and slept comfortably. I read a little book of Lindley Murray’s, containing accounts of men who had either lived or died piously. I do not think these sort of books are ever written well enough for their subject, which requires skill and address.

Burdett read the Farmer’s Boy for the first time – thought the versification smooth. (18)

Just as Hobhouse deflects the need to think about Murray’s book on pious lives by impugning its style, so Burdett deflects the need to think about Bloomfield’s poem by praising its style. Books, for both, are to be criticised and appreciated, not taken to heart. Gentlemen of property and leisure don’t need books to teach them about life. Their patrician role is to apportion praise and blame. It’s an attitude they share with Capel Lofft, Bloomfield’s editor.

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Anyone with experience of agricultural labour knows that it is filthy, exhausting, monotonous, depressing and mind-numbing. When Robert Southey writes to Horace Walpole Bedford, of the Pantisocrasy scheme, “… when Coleridge and I are sawing down a tree we shall discuss metaphysics; criticise poetry when hunting a buffalo, & write sonnets whilst following the plough. Our society will be of the most polished order …”(19) it’s clear he’s never tried it. All one can do after a day’s work on a farm is sit still, and then sleep. If one were as guilt- and stress-free as Giles, the protagonist of the poem below, one would admittedly sleep very well:

	Delicious Sleep! from sleep who could forbear
	With no more guilt than Giles, and no more care? (Summer, 107-8)

… but if, like the farmers themselves, as opposed to the farmers’ boys, one had a lot to worry about, one might not sleep at all. In modern times the suicide rate among farmers is higher than that of any other profession. Of all poetic traditions, pastoral is the most mendacious. Few pastoral poems are written in the country – Clare’s being the exception. That The Farmer’s Boy is in an eighteenth-century style throughout is characteristic of the “romantic” period, which had the disadvantage, to our twenty-first-century eyes, of not realising that it was the romantic period, and thinking instead that it was the age of Napoleon, Byron and Scott – all three as backward-looking and unromantic, in their different idioms, as Bloomfield.

John Clare wrote two poems about Bloomfield. Here is one:

		Sweet unassuming Minstrel not to thee
		The dazzling fashions of the day belong
		Natures wild pictures field and cloud and tree
		And quiet brooks far distant from the throng
		In murmurs tender as the toiling bee
		Make the sweet music of thy gentle song
		Well—nature owns thee let the crowd pass bye—
		The tide of fashion is a stream too strong
		For pastoral brooks that gently flow and sing
		But nature is their source and earth and sky
		Their annual offerings to her current bring
		Thy injured muse and memory need no sigh
		For thine shall murmur on to many a spring
		When their proud stream is summer burnt and dry(20) 

There’s an element, even in Clare’s attitude, of something which Bloomfield was never without – condescension. For Clare, Bloomfield is one of Gray’s “mute inglorious Miltons,” except that he was gifted with a voice, and was glorious – or, at least, found a patron.

Bloomfield was born near where Thomas Paine was born, but seems to share none of Paine’s radicalism. He does not want the suffrage extended to all adult males, nor does he ask for annual parliaments. Giles’ cockade is “unambitious” and “peaceable” (Spring, 205). Bloomfield acknowledges working-class suffering, but his political ambition is restricted to getting masters to pay their labourers more and to give them a better life: “Let Labour have its due” is his modest request (Summer, 397, 399). See his note to Summer, 341:

In reference to this passage, and as a thought, by way of illustration, I subjoind a passage from Cook’s Voyage, not knowing but it was written by Cook himself, which I now find was not the case. I was quite uncertain during the 15 months which the poem remained in the hands of Mr Lofft and the publishers, whither this note would be printed or not. I was pleading for kindness between the ranks of society, and it seemed to suit my purpose. And if I could believe that what I said of / Letting “Labour have its due” would only in one instance perswade a Farmer to give his men more wages, instead of giving, or suffering him to buy cheap corn in the time of trouble, I should feel a pleasure of the most lasting sort, having no doubt but that an extra half Crown earned is worth, morally, and substantially, a five Shilling Gift; to those who in the house of their fathers work for bread.

More often he writes of cruelty and injustice cryptically, and transfers what he knows of the sufferings of agricultural labourers on to their animals. Speaking to Dobbin, the worthy carthorse of whom Clare was to make such a symbol, he declares:

	Thy chains were freedom and thy toils repose,
	Could the poor Post-horse tell thee all his woes
	Shew thee his bleeding shoulders and unfold
	The dreadful anguish he endures for gold
	Hir’d at each call of business, lust, or rage
	That prompt the trav’ler 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 – ’tis he must feel
	The double efforts of the lash and steel … (Winter 161-72)

Bloomfield may be reflecting here on the difference between farm labour and urban labour (he had more experience of the latter than he had of the former). Even so, on the farm where he works, it’s a jungle: parasites abound, for instance the Gander at Summer, 225-42, who makes life hell for all the other beasts, or the “the Mastiff, or the meaner Cur” at Winter, 221-32, whose irresponsible activities pre-echo those of Gabriel Oak’s dog in Far From the Madding Crowd.

It was Byron (a rich radical, like Capel Lofft, whom he affected to mock), who said in the Lords:

You must call these men a mob, desperate, dangerous, and ignorant; and seem to think that the only way to quiet the “Bellua multorum capitum” is to lop off a few superfluous heads. But even a mob may be better reduced to reason by a mixture of conciliation and firmness, than by additional irritation and redoubled penalties. Are we aware of our obligations to a Mob? It is the Mob that labour in your fields and serve in your houses, – that man your navy, and recruit your army, – that have enabled you to defy all the world, and can also defy you when Neglect and Calamity have driven them to despair.

But Byron had earlier, in English Bards, mocked the very idea of working-class poets, including Bloomfield:

	Heavens! how the vulgar stare! how crowds applaud!
	How ladies read, and Literati laud!
	If chance some wicked wag should pass his jest,
	’Tis sheer ill-nature; don’t the world know best?
	Genius must guide when wits admire the rhyme,
	And CAPEL LOFFT declares ’tis quite sublime.
	Hear, then, ye happy sons of needless trade!
	Swains! quit the plough, resign the useless spade!
	Lo! BURNS and BLOOMFIELD, nay, a greater far,
	GIFFORD was born beneath an adverse star,
	Forsook the labours of a servile state,
	Stemmed the rude storm, and triumphed over Fate:
	Then why no more? if Phœbus smiled on you,
	BLOOMFIELD! why not on brother NATHAN too?
	Him too the Mania, not the Muse, has seized;
	Not inspiration, but a mind diseased:
	And now no Boor can seek his last abode,
	No common be enclosed without an ode.
	Oh! since increased refinement deigns to smile
	On Britain’s sons, and bless our genial Isle,
	Let Poesy go forth, pervade the whole,
	Alike the rustic and mechanic soul:
	Ye tuneful cobblers! still your notes prolong,
	Compose at once a slipper and a song;
	So shall the fair your handy work peruse,
	Your sonnets sure shall please – perhaps your shoes.(21) 

It was one thing to express compassion for the poor; quite another to admit them to one’s side as fellow artists. William Gifford, born into working-class Dorset and now editor of the Quarterly (and Byron’s “literary father”), is, we protest, much less interesting as a poet than Robert Bloomfield: but Byron isn’t concerned with fine distinctions. At the end of Spring Bloomfield contemplates the slaughter of sheep, and it’s in danger of getting to him as seriously as it will to Clarice Starling. He needs willpower to change his tone:

	Down, indignation! hence, ideas foul!
	Away the shocking immage from my soul!
	Let kindlier visitants attend my way
	Beneath approaching Summer’s fervid ray;
	Nor thankless glooms obtrude, nor cares annoy
	Whilst the sweet theme is universal joy. (Spring, 353-8)

He knows that readers want uplift, a “theme of universal joy”. “Indignation”, whether radical, vegetarian, or both, won’t get published in the 1790s, let alone read. Capel Lofft is more overtly radical than he; perhaps because, being rich, Lofft can afford to be. See Lofft’s note, in his preface, on the suppression of working-class debating societies. Bloomfield could not put such thoughts into the poem: it’s left to his patron and editor, the compassionate magistrate, to put one in a note. Bloomfield has to restrict himself to some thoughts – derived unimpeachably from Captain Cook – about the relatively class-free society of Otaheite (see his note to Summer, 341, referred to above).

Sometimes Bloomfield’s references are at two removes, not one. Man’s inhumanity to animals stands in for man’s inhumanity to man. It’s a development of Burns’ To A Mouse: Burns has no ill-will towards the mouse – he’s full of empathy for its houselessness. But Bloomfield laments, for example, the decorative docking of horses’ tails:

	Poor patient Ball; and with insulting wing
	Roar in thine ears and dart the piercing sting.
	In thy behalf the crest of Boughs avail
	More than thy short-clipt remnant of a tail
	A moving mockery, a useless name,
	A living proof of cruelty and shame.
	Shame to the man whatever fame he bore
	Who took from thee what man can ne’er restore
	Thy weapon of defence, thy chiefest good
	When swarming flies contending suck thy blood. (Summer, 207-61)

Yet the horse’s name might imply that it’s gelding, not docking, to which Bloomfield is objecting. How poor and weak men are unmanned by rich and powerful men becomes clear in Autumn, when the field becomes a prison, just as palaces have for Blake and will for Byron:

	His banquet marr’d, grown dull his hermitage.
	The field becomes his prison, till on high
	Benighted Birds to shades and coverts fly.
	Midst air, health, daylight, can he prisoner be?
	If fields are prisons where is Liberty?
	Here still she dwells and here her votaries stroll
	But disappointed hope untunes the soul
	Restraints unfelt whilst hours of rapture flow
	When troubles press to chains and barriers grow. (Autumn, 222-30)

Liberty, Bloomfield concedes, exists; but it is liberty without hope – freedom to hope and be disappointed. It seems to be the passing of the old order which imprisons and unmans men:

		Such were the days; of days long past I sing
	When pride gave place to mirth without a sting
	Ere tyrant customs strength sufficient bore
	To violate the feelings of the poor
	To leave them distanc’d in the mad’ning race
	Where’er refinement shews its hated face:
	Nor causeless hated; ’tis the peasant’s curse
	That hourly makes his wretched station worse;
	Destroys lifes intercourse; the social plan
	That rank to rank cements, as man to man,
	Wealth flows around him; fashion lordly reigns
	Yet poverty is his, and mental pains … (Summer, 333-44)

And how does wealth flow around him where hitherto it had flowed (in part) through him, but in the remorseless and greedy process of enclosure – to which, being a careful writer, knowing the dangers of his place, Bloomfield makes no reference?. “No common be enclosed without an ode,” sneered Byron – a rent-raiser, if not an encloser, himself (his great uncle had enclosed everything at Newstead that could be enclosed). The Duke of Grafton was a major encloser;(22) and, on June 19th 1800, an enclosure act was passed by Parliament, enclosing 831 acres of the village of Stanton in Suffolk – a process which had been in train since Capel Lofft had initiated it in 1784.(23)

Bloomfield has a mild protest at enclosure at The Broken Crutch, from Wild Flowers, 1806, lines 57-78. His brother Nathaniel composed a whole poem on the subject, Honington Green (1803), which, Bloomfield wrote, “… had melted me into salt water, and opened every latent weakness of my heart to a very uncommon degree”(24). Here are the fifth and sixth of its twenty-two stanzas:

	Sighs speak the poor Labourers’ pain,
		While the new mounds and fences they rear,
	Intersecting their dear native plain,
		To divide to each rich Man his share;
	It cannot but grieve them to see,
		Where so freely they rambled before,
	What a bare narrow track is left free
		To the foot of the unportion’d Poor.
	
	The proud City’s gay wealthy train.
		Who nought but refinements adore,
	May wonder to hear me complain
		That Honington Green is no more;
	But if to the Church you e’er went,
		If you knew what the village has been,
	You will sympathize, while I lament
		The Enclosure of Honington Green.(25) 

Capel Lofft, who did not think of himself part of “The proud City’s gay wealthy train,” had the editing of Honington Green, too. He writes of the theme:

Of HONINGTON GREEN I am to speak next. And here it may be right to obviate some prejudice against the Poem, which, in the minds of several, may arise from the subject. I am not an Enemy to Enclosures: if the RIGHTS and INTERESTS of the POOR, and of SMALL OWNERS, be very carefully guarded, an ENCLOSURE may be a common Benefit. However, it is very liable to become otherwise. But be an Enclosure good or bad, (and every Man has a right to his opinion, and to support it by argument, on this subject and every other) there are particular circumstances and considerations which stand clear of the scope of the general question. The Spot which is the subject of the Ballad is less, I believe, than Half an Acre. It did certainly ornament the Village; independent of a just and laudable partiality in the Author. Thus it would have seem’d to the casual glance of a stranger. To the BLOOMFIELDS every circumstance gave it peculiar endearment. There the Author of ‘THE FARMER’S BOY,’ and of these POEMS, first drew breath. There grew the first Daisies which their feet press’d in childhood. On this little Green their Parents look’d with delight: and the Children caught the affection; and learn’d to love it as soon as they lov’d any thing. By it’s smallness and it’s situation it was no object: and could have been left out of Enclosure without detriment to the General Plan, or to any individual Interest. I wish it had: and most who love Poetry, and respect Genius, and are anxious to preserve the little innocent Gratifications of the Poor, will have the same wish.(26)

Had Honington Green been larger, and its inhabitants less amenable to his patronage, Lofft would not, we assume, encouraged and assisted the publication of Nathaniel Bloomfield’s poem.

What the bourgeois readers of the romantic period thought they were reading when they bought The Farmer’s Boy was a harmless and reassuring thing, celebrating a rural life which few of them knew anything of, and about which they could afford to be complacent: what the working-class readers may have read, if they were alert to subtextual allegory, was a depiction of man’s cruelty to beasts, disguising not too covertly a depiction of man’s exploitation of man.(27) Giles’s patient dumbness, and the fact that “he seeks no better name” than that of a Farmer’s Boy (the reassuring motto was added by Lofft), may not have hidden Bloomfield’s message from them. Like Dickens’ Stephen Blackpool, the fact that Giles is so a-political makes his life even sadder. Lofft added the motto to assure potential purchasers that this was no Jacobinical poem; and added “rural” to the subtitle to increase their anticipation of something sentimental and English – like Goldsmith.

In fact The Farmer’s Boy gives a very partial account of country life. Giles, the Boy, exists in a social vacuum. He speaks only to himself (Winter, 283-302: his interlocutor, seeming to be a spectre, is in fact an ash-tree). Only the Dairy-maid and his master speak to him (Spring, 167, and Winter, 80-126). There is another, “lovely MAID” depicted (Summer 169-80), with a “full, ripe bosom, exquisitely white;” but Giles is not interested in her, and all she takes part in is

			… many a local tale of harmless mirth
			And many a jest of momentary birth …

It was Harriet Martineau who mocked the blindness of Wordsworth about the sex-lives of country folk:

I, deaf, can hardly conceive how he, with eyes & ears, & a heart which leads him to converse with the poor in his incessant walks, can be so unaware of their personal state. I dare say you [Elizabeth Barrett] need not be told how sensual vice abounds in rural districts. Here [in the Lakes] it is flagrant beyond anything I ever could have looked for; & here, while every Justice of the peace is filled with disgust, and every clergyman with (almost) despair at the drunkenness, quarrelling & extreme licentiousness with women, – here is dear good Wordsworth for ever talking of rural innocence, & deprecating any intercourse with towns, lest the purity of his neighbours should be corrupted!(28)

It’s hard to believe things were any tamer in Suffolk a mere thirty years before; but either Bloomfield didn’t see it, or thought it unworthy of inclusion. I’m sure its omission increased the respectability and saleability of his poem. Giles seems, from Bloomfield’s hints, to be a beginner in sexual matters:

	The fullcharg’d Udder yields its willing streams
	While Mary sings some lover’s amorous dreams
	And crouching Giles beneath a neighbouring tree
	Tugs o’er his pail and chants with equal glee … (Spring, 197-200)

Death, without which any rural scene is incomplete, is – with the striking exception of the slaughtered lambs – absent from Bloomfield’s work. No human actors meet their ends in The Farmer’s Boy; even the Mad Girl – we’re informed in a note – got over it and led a normal life. This is so throughout Bloomfield’s poetry. Even when his protagonists are extremely old, and might without strain or excessive grief have been depicted as dying content and surrounded by family and well-wishers, Bloomfield appears unwilling to face any scenes of terminal closure. Richard and Kate, the Baucis and Philemon, the Darby and Joan, of Rural Tales (1802), live on beyond the poem’s end: and old Sir Ambrose Higham, the focal character of May Day with the Muses (1822) even though the fact that he “goes to town no more” is the talk of the territory, survives the poem still hale and hearty.

THE MANUSCRIPTS

Two manuscripts of The Farmer’s Boy exist. I quote them by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University, where their call numbers are fMS Eng 776 and MS Eng 776.1. Both are fair copies, bound. fMS Eng 776 is an early one, for the press, with Lofft’s corrections, and numerous illustrations glued in with care. MS Eng 776.1 is from 1801, and is prefaced by two notices. The first is glued in:

To My Dear Charlotte; Sincerely wishing that She may be as mild as Phoebe, as frank as June – and as worthy as Peggy Meldrum.
Rob Bloomfield
May 19. 1817.

Charlotte is Bloomfield’s daughter, born April 20th 1801. Peggy Meldrum (a good Suffolk name) is the heroine of Bloomfield’s poem The Broken Crutch from his 1806 volume Wild Flowers.

The second notice is part of the manuscript:

City Road, London.
Octr 8th 1801.

The Original Manuscript of my “Farmer’s Boy” is not likely ever to be in my possession again; it being left, by Mr Lofft’s desire, in the hands of J Hill Esq. of Henrietta Street Covent Garden; where it now remains; except about two hundred and Sixty lines of the commencement of the Poem which are lost.

Wishing to possess a Manuscript like the Original, I meen that the right hand page of this Book shall contain a genuine Copy of the Poem As I wrote it at first; (30) and that the left hand page shall shew the amendments and alterations introduced by Mr Lofft. This I can do now while my memory retains the deviations; but, some years hence, I may not be able, and may then wish that I had done it when it was in my power.
Robert Bloomfield

MS Eng 776.1 is therefore another fair copy, made by Bloomfield for himself after the first two editions. It has Capel Lofft’s corrections recorded on the left-hand side, together with several notes, and what Bloomfield wishes to record of the original on the right. This presents the text as it left his pen, and before Lofft got at it. Bloomfield mentions making the copy in a letter to his brother George, dated November 30th 1801. The letter also shows what a success the poem was financially:

I mentioned nothing about money; but you see his answer (inclosed) mentions it, and is in all points highly satisfactory. The fifth and sixth edition of ‘Giles’ comprise together 10,000 copies, the new work 7,000, so that I have at any rate to share the profits of 17,000 books, for which (at full price) the public, if they are goodnatured enough to buy them, will pay no less than 36,025l.! I have felt sad, and uncommon trouble of mind; and I doubt it is not over yet. I am writing a fair copy of ‘The Farmer’s Boy,’ exactly as you saw it in MS., and marking the alterations made by Mr. Lofft, and adding notes of information, &c. This I do, that as I have not the original, something in my own hand may be found hereafter; and I do it too to improve my handwriting: I shall have it bound carefully. I have by me the real original MSS. of the new volume, and shall bind them too. The printers say now that it will not be out before Christmas; but I think that it will.

Why Bloomfield wished “to possess a Manuscript like the Original” isn’t clear. Sometimes he seems, in his notes, to agree with Lofft’s changes, sometimes he demurs. Much as he owed to Lofft, he seems nostalgic for the time before Lofft came between him and his work. For my text, I’ve reproduced the fair copy he mentions, which he made for his own reading.

THE TEXT

I refer below to “social collaboration”; but the whole business of setting the poem up in type, and adding preface and notes, was done without Bloomfield being consulted once.

My transcription may be inaccurate in details. This is work in progress. I hope to return to Harvard in 2006 and complete the edition at greater leisure.

————————

The Farmer’s Boy was at first written partly in a Suffolk dialect which is today (2005) by no means extinct, though it’s less common than it once was. Some rhymes – “plough / blow” for example, “repose / Ouse,” or even, despite Bloomfield’s note, “gate / feet,” (at Spring, 65-6, 249-50, and 297-8) – work better with Suffolk vowel-sounds. The up-and-down of Suffolk cannot be reproduced in print (we need a CD), and so its main feature noticeable on the page is the suppression of the terminal “s” in third-person singular verbs, with which everyone who’s been to the Ipswich area (at least) will be familiar. Thus Spring, 66 was originally, “While health impregnates every breeze that blow,” and Winter, 18, “No nourishment in frozen pastures grow”. At Autumn, 204 “lo! the structure rise” has to give way to the correct “see the structure rise.” At Autumn, 320, the original and authentic “many a human leader daily shine” has to go. Capel Lofft uses the text’s preparation as a process of “social collaboration” by removing every sign of the fact that it’s been written in the dialect of the county in which he lives. He’s proud of his work:

My part has been this, and it has been a very pleasing one: to revise the MS. making occasionally corrections with respect to Orthography, and sometimes in the grammatical construction. The corrections, in point of Grammar, reduce themselves almost wholly to a circumstance of provincial usage, which even well educated persons in Suffolk and Norfolk do not wholly avoid; and which may be said, as to general custom, to have become in these Counties almost an established Dialect:... that of adopting the plural for the singular termination of verbs, so as to exclude the s. But not a line is added or substantially alter’d through the whole poem. I have requested the MS. to be preserv’d for the satisfaction of those who may wish to be satisfied on this head.

The “MS.” to which he refers is Fms Eng 776. As Clare, however, wrote:

Received another letter from the Editor of Bloomfields Correspondence requesting me to alter a line in my Sonnets on Bloomfield … Editors are troubled with nice amendings and if Doctors were as fond of amputations as they are of altering and correcting the world would have nothing but cripples

For “amputation”, see below, Bloomfield’s note to Spring, 179-80.
Lofft had in 1781 published Eudosia, or a Poem on the Universe. He had also, in 1792, brought out an edition of Paradise Lost, “printed from the First and Second Editions collated, the original orthography restored; the punctuation corrected and extended. With various readings”. He was thus an expert.

In claiming correct orthography and grammar as his sole aims in editing Bloomfield, Lofft is being disingenuous. What he does is to take the roughly-styled work and appropriate it into the safe, middle-class tradition of versification that he knows. It’s not the case that “not a line is added or substantially alter’d”. Indecency is another of his targets. There’s little or no sex in the poem, but Summer, 141-2 changes under his hand from

		Each sturdy Mower emulous and strong
		Whose writhing loins meridian heat defies

to

		Each sturdy Mower emulous and strong
		Whose writhing form meridian heat defies

Autumn, 343 alters from

		And many a clamorous Hen and capon gay

to

		And many a clamorous Hen and cockrel gay

Bloomfield himself expresses unease elsewhere about “Cockrel” (see his note to Winter, 98); but the change still underlines what I write of above about docking and gelding, for capons (neutered products of man’s gluttony) cannot enjoy the company of hens in the way that cockerels can. Lofft, perhaps fondly remembering Chaucer’s Chauntecleer, cuts another implied criticism of farmyard cruelty.

Lofft decided that squalor needed veiling. Autumn, 136-8, about the mad girl, are, in all editions,

	O’er the cold earth she crawls to her retreat;
	Quitting the cot’s warm walls unhous’d to lie,
	Or share the swine’s impure and narrow sty …

What Bloomfield actually wrote was

	Oer the cold earth she crawls to her retreat
	Quitting the cott’s warm walls in filth to lie,
	Where the swine grunting yields up half his sty …

Perhaps Lofft changed “in filth” to “unhoused” in order to remind us of King Lear; but I doubt it. Lastly, Winter, 389-91 are substantively altered, too. Here is the original:

	Seedtime and Harvest let me see again
	Pierce the dark wood, and brave the sultry plain;
	Let Field, and dimpled Brook, and flow’r, and Tree …

This becomes

	
	‘Seed-time and Harvest let me see again;
	‘Wander the leaf-strewn wood, the frozen plain:
	‘Let the first Flower, corn-waving field, Plain, Tree …

… thereby losing the clear implication that Suffolk is either a “dark wood” to be pierced or a “sultry” desert to be braved (“the paths of wild obscurity” – Spring, 6). Those who venture into Suffolk, Bloomfield implies in his original, are either Dantes or Mungo Parks (Giles is also “the Crusoe of the lonely fields” – Autumn, 210). In Bloomfield’s Suffolk, traditional roles are cruelly reversed:

	Though frantic ewes may mourn the savage deed
	Their Shepherd comes a messenger of blood (Spring, 342-3)

and what generals do on battlefields, the innocent Giles replicates because it’s his job:

				… ’twas Giles’s evening care,
	His feather’d victims to suspend in air,
	High on a bough that nodded oer his head,
	And thus each morn to strew the field with dead. (Spring, 159-62)

Capel Lofft won’t have any of this violence: his Suffolk is the property of gentlemen – though this is not his express reason for making the change. Bloomfield agrees with Lofft’s argument, which is a structural one (see note to Winter, 391): but he still puts back the original when he makes his own fair copy.

Thomas Park, a Hampstead friend of the poet, makes, in later editions, what he claims is check-list of Lofft’s alterations. The following appeared first in The Monthly Mirror for January 1802:

MR. PARK’S STATEMENT OF VERBAL VARIATIONS Between the MS. Copy and Printed Poem of “THE FARMER’S BOY.”

As it is not improbable that some of those invidious spirits who reluctantly allow to any popular writer the credit of having produced his own work, may hereafter report, to the disadvantage of Mr. Bloomfield, that his learned friend and Editor was materially concerned in composing “THE FARMER’S BOY,” I have taken the most effectual means in my power, to counteract the injurious tendency of such report, by collating the printed poem with the author’s original manuscript [n: Now in the possession of Mr. Hill], which had passed through the hands of Mr. Capel Lofft; and I transmit all the verbal variations which have been observed in the course of such collation, that they may be perpetuated on the pages of a miscellany which has been uniformly zealous in extending the well-earned reputation of our rural bard. I must also premise, what affects not the merits of the composition in any degree, that Capital Letters and Italic Characters were supplied by Mr. Lofft, as were various defects in orthography and punctuation, which arose from the Author’s want of Education, and of leisure fitly to supply that loss.(33)

He then prints approximately two pages of collations, done, though he doesn’t acknowledge it, with Bloomfield’s help (see Bloomfield’s note to Spring, 277). These will be found in the text below, with Bloomfield’s original in the poem and his reporting of Lofft’s changes in the right-hand margin. Park, too, is pleased with the alterations made:

It will be seen, from this minute statement, that the Editor’s emendations were very inconsiderable, though most of them appear highly judicious, and many of them absolutely necessary, for the purpose of removing certain grammatical inaccuracies, which may be considered as mere freckles on the natural complexion of our Farmer’s Boy.

Park makes no reference to the emendations to Autumn 136-8, about the mad girl in the sty, referred to above. I have used MS Eng 776.1, Bloomfield’s reconstructed original, as copytext, despite the occasional effect it has on the rhyme. Freckles are part of one’s natural complexion, and are often beautiful. Examination of Bloomfield’s re-alterations from Lofft reveals that Bloomfield almost invariably uppercases the first letters of animals’ names (“Foxes,” “Ox,” and so on – an exception is “pigs” at Spring, 168) and the names of crops (“Oats,” and “Barly”). Lofft had refused them all. Bloomfield removes much of Lofft’s punctuation, leaving a skeleton of commas (“coma’s”) and full-stops when absolutely necessary, and not always then. A different, less rational, less Augustan rhythm may be indicated; or the writer’s confidence may be that the poem carries its own rhythm without assistance from “pointing”. Conceivably he has punctuated for a more chanted delivery. Often, when Lofft has corrected his spelling, he “de-corrects” it, as with “terify” at Spring, 120. He’s very attached to “persue” and “wellcome.” Some words he knows by sight only, such as “aperture” at Autumn 67, in which he doesn’t know which syllable to stress. It looks as if Lofft didn’t explain why he changed the word, and as if Bloomfield, bewildered, changed it back.

He rejects most of Lofft’s italicisations and small-cap effects (though see Autumn, 260), most of which are for decoration only; but now and then he employs colons, semi-colons, and even the printer’s “;…” or “, –” as if to prove that he is acquainted with them. He rejects all Lofft’s parenthetical bracketing.

Lofft contrariwise favours “poetical” spellings such as “plowman” for “ploughman,” “tho’” and “thro’” for “though” and “through,” and “try’d” for “tried.” He had dressed the poem in an upper-middle-class garb; Bloomfield’s reappropriation may have a corresponding class motive, whether conscious or not. He expresses no annoyance at what Lofft had done – how could he? – but his act of rewriting seems motivated by a sense that his work had been presented to the world in a style to which he was antipathetic.

John Goodridge and John Lucas, in their 1998 edition (the only modern one so far)(34), take as copytext the 1808 two-volume Poems prepared, for stereotyping, by Bloomfield himself. They concede that “Bloomfield regarded Capel Lofft’s prefatory material and editing as intrusive, and in the stereotype edition of his first four volumes … he took the opportunity to correct the text, and in some cases to restore manuscript readings”(35) But both Bloomfield and they avoid the embarrassment of having to correct Lofft, by having firstly no title page for the poem, thus side-stepping the problem of the subtitle (“A Rural Poem”) and secondly by ignoring the question of the patronising motto. And in following the 1808 text, they restore only some manuscript readings: writhing loins at Summer, 143 is still writhing form; at Autumn, 137 the mad girl lies not in filth but unhous’d; and Winter, 390 is still Wander the leaf-strewn wood, the frozen plain. At the same time, they drop all the small-caps and italics which Bloomfield, in 1808, retained from Capel Lofft’s editing: so that their text is neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. While implying a negative evaluation of Lofft’s interference, they can’t get away from the text which results from it.

Bloomfield was, in public, inhibited by the polite typographical and orthographical restraints of his time: in private, he had no such problems. The text below grasps the nettle, and presents The Farmer’s Boy as Bloomfield preferred to read it.

APPARATUS

The left-hand text is that of the first edition; that of the right-hand text is Bloomfield’s preferred version, taken from the Houghton manuscript.
<a word in angle brackets> is a deletion
{a word in curled brackets} is an overlineation, normally over a deletion
[a word italicised in square brackets] has been omitted by Bloomfield by accident
(R.B.) – note by Bloomfield; I have put some of these in the margin, the longer ones in notes
(C.L.) – note by Lofft
(P.C.) – note by the present editor

N.B. As I am not master of the punctuation I shall not attend to it in the following Sheets, but merely record the Original text.
And further {be it remembered} that
On the first Publication of the Poem the whole of the Preface(36) was as new to me as the Poem was to the World. I had Nothing to do with it, nor had ever seen it.

THE
FARMER’S BOY.
A POEM.

SPRING.

[Invocation, &c. Seed time. Harrowing. Morning walks. Milking. The Dairy. Suffolk Cheese. Spring coming forth. Sheep fond of changing. Lambs at play. The Butcher, &c.]
The Variations introduced by Mr. Lofft are markd with Coma’s as under.

O come blest Spirit! whatsoe’er thou art
Thou rushing warmth that hover round my heart	[“Hovers,” and since
Sweet inmate hail! thou source of sterling joy		Hover’st
That poverty itself cannot destroy
Be thou my Muse, and faithful still to me
Retrace the paths of wild obscurity
No deeds of arms my lowly tale rehearse		[“humble lines”
No Alpine wonders thunder through my verse
The roaring Cataract, the snow-topt hill,
Inspiring awe till breath itself stands still		10
Nature’s sublimer scenes ne’er  charm’d mine eyes
Nor Science led me through the boundless skies
From meaner objects far my raptures flow
O point those raptures, bid my bosom glow		[“these”
And lead my Soul to ecstasies of praise
For all the blessings of my infant days
Bear me through regions where gay Fancy dwells
But mould to truth’s fair form what mem’ry tells.
	Live trifling incidents and grace my song
That to the humblest menial belong		20
To him whose drudgery unheeded goes
His joys unrecon’d as his cares or woes
Though joys and cares in every path are sown
And youthful minds have feelings of their own
Quick springing sorrows trancient as the dew
Delights from trifles, trifles ever new.
	Twas thus with Giles, meek, fatherless, and poor
Labour his portion, but he felt no more
No stripes, no tyranny his steps persue’d;
His life was constant chearful servitude		30
Strange to the world he wore a bashful look
The fields his study, Nature was his book.
And, as revolving seasons [changed] the scene
From heat to cold, tempestuous to serene
Though every change still varied his employ
Yet each new duty brought its share of joy.
	Where Noble Grafton spreads his rich domains
Round Euston’s  water’d Vale and sloping plains
Where Woods and Groves in solemn grandeur rise,
Where the Kite brooding  {unmolested} flies		40
The Woodcock and the painted pheasant race
And skulking Foxes destin’d for the chace
There Giles untaught and unrepining stray’d
Through every Copse, and Grove, and winding glade
There his first thoughts to Nature’s charms inclin’d
That stamps devotion on th’inquiring mind.
A little Farm his generous Master till’d
Who with peculiar grace his station fill’d
By deeds of hospitality endear’d			50
Serve’d from affection, for his worth rever’d,
A happy ofspring blest his plenteous board
His fields were fruitful and his Barns wellstor’d
And fourscore Ewes he fed, a sturdy team,
And lowing Kine that grazed beside the stream
Unceasing industry he kept in view
And never lack’d a job for Giles to do.
	Fled now the sullen murmurs of the north
The splendid raiment of the Spring peeps forth
Her universal green, and the clear sky
Delight still more and more the gazing eye		60
Wide o’er each field, in rising moisture strong
Shoots up the simple flow’r, or creeps along
The mellow’d soil imbibing as it goes
Fresh sweets from frequent show’rs and evening dews
That summons from its shed the slumb’ring plough	 [“Summon” …“ploughs”
While health impregnates every breeze that blow.	[“blows”
No wheels support the diving pointed  Share
No groaning Ox is doom’d to labour there
No helpmate teach the docile steed his road;		[“Helpmates”
Alike unknown the plow-boy and the goad,		70
But unassisted through each toilsome day
With smiling brow the ploughman cleaves his way
Draws his fresh parallels and wid’ning still
Treads slow the heavy dale or climbs the hill
Strong on the wing his busy followers play
Where writhing earthworms meet th’unwellcome day
Till all is chang’d and hill and level down
Assumes a livery of sober brown
Again desturb’d when Giles with wearying strides
From ridge to ridge the pond’rous Harrow guides	80
His heels deep sinking every step he goes
Till dirt usurp the empire of his Shoes, 
Wellcome green headland! firm beneath his feet
Wellcome the friendly Bank’s refreshing seat
There warm with toil his panting Horses browse
Their shelt’ring canopy of pendent boughs
Till rest delicious chase each transient pain
And newborn vigor swells in every vein.
Hour after hour, and day to day succeeds
Till every clod and deep-drawn furrow spreads		90
To crumbling mould, a level surface clear
And strew’d with corn to crown the rising year
And o’er the whole Giles traverse once again,		[“once transverse”
In earth’s moist bosom buries up the grain
The work is done, no more to man is given
The grateful farmer trusts the rest to Heav’n
Yet oft with anxious heart he looks around
And marks the first green blade that pierce the ground;	[“breaks”
In fancy sees his trembling Oats uprun,
His tufted Barly yellow with the Sun;		100
Sees clouds propitious shed their timely store
And all his Harvest gather’d round his door
But still unsafe the big swoln grain below
A favorite morsel with the Rook and Crow
From field to field the flock increasing goes
To level crops most formidable foes
Their danger well the wary plunderers know
And place a watch on some conspicuous bough
Yet oft the skulking gunner by surprise
Will scatter death amongst them as they rise.		110
These, hung in triumph round the spacious field
At best will but a short-liv’d terror yield
Nor gaurds of property, not penal law
But harmless riflemen of rags and straw
Familiarised to these they boldly rove
Nor heed a Centinal that never move.		[“such Centinels”
Let then your birds lie prostrate on the earth
In dying posture, and with wings stretch’d forth
Shift them at eve and morn from place to place
And death shall terify the pilfering race		120
In the mid-air while circling round and round
They call their lifeless comrades from the ground
With quickning wing and notes of loud alarm
Warn the whole flock to shun th’impending harm
	This task had Giles, in fields remote from home
Oft has he wish’d the rosy morn to come
Yet never fam’d was he nor foremost found
To break the seal of Sleep, his sleep was sound,
But when at day-break summon’d from his bed 
Light as the Lark that carol’d o’er his head		130
His sandy way deep-worn by hasty show’rs
O’erarch’d with Oaks that formd fantastic bow’rs
Waving aloft their tow’ring branches proud
In borrowd tinges from the eastern cloud
Gave inspiration pure as ever flow’d,		[“Whence” and added the
And genuine transport in his bosom glowd		parenthesis in this and
His own shrill mattin joind the various notes		several other places
Of nature’s music from a thousand throats.
The Blackbird strove with emulation sweet
And echo answer’d from her close retreat		140
The sporting Whitethroat on some twigs-end borne
Pourd hymns to freedom and the rising morn
Stopt in her song perchance the starting Thrush
Shook a bright shower from the Blackthorn-bush	[“White” I meant that
Where dewdrops thick as early blossoms hung	the bird in starting to
And trembled as the Minstrel sweetly sung.		fly, shook the
Across his path in either grove to hide		dewdrops, and not the
The timid Rabit scouted by his side		Blossoms from the
Or bold Cock-pheasant stalk’d along the road		Thorn. But perhaps
Whose gold and purple tints alternate glow’d.		150 the Blossoms is
	But Groves no farther fenc’d the devious way	best.
A wide-extended Heath before him lay
Where, on the grass the stagnant shower had run,
And shone a mirror to the rising Sun
Thus doubly seen to clear a distant wood, 		[“lighting”
And give new life to each expanding bud,		[“giving” “And give
Effacing quick the dewy footmarks found,		&c” perhaps this was
Where prowling Reynard trod his nightly round		obscure
To shun whose thefts ’twas Giles’s evening care,
His feather’d victims to suspend in air,		160
High on a bough that nodded oer his head,		[“the”
And thus each morn to strew the field with dead.
	His simple errand done Giles homward hies;	[done, he 
Another instantly its place supplies
The clatt’ring Dairy-Maid immerst in steam
Singing and scrubing midst her milk and cream
Bawls out, “Go fetch the Cows –” he hears no more
For pigs and Ducks and Turkies, throng the door
And sitting Hens for constant war prepar’d
A concert strange to that which late he heard.		170
Straight to the Meadow then he whistling goes
With wellknown halloo calls his lazy Cows
Down the rich pasture heedlessly they graze
Or hear the summons with an idle gaze
For well they know the Cowyard yields no more
Its tempting fragrance, nor its wint’ry store.
Reluctance marks their steps sedate and slow
The right of conquest all the law they know,
Subbordination stage by stage succeed,     		[“Subbordinate they one by one
And one amongst them always takes the lead		180 “among” As
Is ever foremost wheresoe’er they stray		these two lines were troubled
Allow’d precedence, undisputed sway		with an incurable lameness,
With jealous pride her station is maintain’d		perhaps amputation would
For many a broil that post of honour gain’d.		have been better in this case
At home the Yard affords a grateful scene
For Spring makes e’en a miry cow-yard cleen.
Thence from its chalky bed behold convey’d
The rich manure that drenching Winter made
And pil’d near home grows green with many a weed	[“Which”
A promis’d nutriment for Autumn’s seed.		190
Forth comes the Maid, and like the morning smiles
The Mistress too, and followd close by Giles;
A friendly Tripod forms their humble seat		[Never saw the word here used,
With pails bright scour’d, and delicately sweet     	but in Gay’s “Trivia” when
Where shadowing Elms obstruct the morning ray    	he speaks of the Shoeblack
Begins their work, begins the simple lay.		having a stool. 
The fullcharg’d Udder yields its willing streams
While Mary sings some lover’s amorous dreams
And crouching Giles beneath a neighbouring tree
Tugs o’er his pail and chants with equal glee		200
Whose hat with tatter’d brim, of napp so bare
From the Cow’s side purloins a coat of hair
A mottled ensign of his harmless trade
An unambitious, peaceable cockade.
As unambitious too that chearful aid
The Mistress yields beside her rosy Maid;
With joy she views her plenteous reeking store
And bears a brimmer to the Dairy door
Her Cows dismisst, the luscious Mead to roam	210
Till eve again recall them loaded home.
And now the Dairy claims her choicest care
And all her household find employment there,
Slow rolls the Churn, its load of cloging cream
At once foregoes its quality and name
From knotty particles first floating wide
Congealing Butter dash from side to side		[“Butter’s dash’d”
New milk around through flowing coolers stray      	[“Streams of new Milk”
And snow-white Curd abounds, and wholesome whey
Due North the unglazed windows, cold and clear
For warming Sunbeams are unwellcome here.		220
Brisk goes the work beneath each busy hand
And Giles must trudge whoever gives command
A Gibeonite  that serves them all by turns
He drains the pump, from him the faggot burns
From him the noisy Hogs demand their food
While at his heels run many a chirping brood
Or down his path in expectation stand
With equal claims upon his strewing hand
Thus wastes the morn, till each with pleasure sees
The bustle o’er, and prest the new-made Cheese.	230
	Unrival’d stands thy country Cheese O Giles
Whose very name alone engenders smiles
Whose fame abroad by every tongue is spoke
The well-known butt of many a flinty joke
That pass like current coin the Nation through
And oh! experience proves the satyre true.
Provision’s grave! thou ever-craving mart,
Dependant, huge Metropolis, where Art
Her pouring thousands stows in breathless rooms
Midst pois’nous smokes and steems, and rattling looms, 	240
Where grandure revels in unbounded stores
Restraint a slighted stranger at their doors
Thou, like a whirlpool, drain the Country round,	[“drain’st”
Till London Market, London price, resound
Through every Town, round every passing load,
And Dairy produce throng the Eastern road		[“throngs”
Delicious Veal, and Butter every hour
From Essex lowlands, and the banks of Stour
And further far where numerous Herds repose
From Orwell’s brink, from Weveny, and Ouse.	 	250 [“or”
Hence Suffolk dairy-wives run mad for cream
And leave their milk with nothing but its name
Its name derision and reproach persue,
And strangers tell of, “Three-times-skim’d Sky-Blue,”
To Cheese converted, what can be its boast?
What, but the common virtues of a post?
If drought o’ertake it faster than the knife
Most fair it bids for stubborn length of life
And like the Oken shelf whereon tis laid
Mocks the weak efforts of the bending blade		260
Or in the Hog-trough rests in perfect spite
Too big to swallow, and too hard to bite:
Inglorious Victory! Ye Cheshire meads
Or Severn’s flow’ry dales, where plenty treads
Was your rich milk to suffer wrongs like these
Farewell your pride, farewell renowned Cheese
The Skimmer dread, whose ravages alone
Thus turn the mead’s sweet Nectre into Stone.
	Neglected now the early Daisy lies
Nor thou, pale primrose bloom the only prize		270 [“bloom’st”
Advancing Spring profusely spreads abroad
Flow’rs of all hues with sweetest fragrance stor’d
Where’er she treads Love gladdens every plain
Delight on tiptoe bears her lucid train
Sweet Hope with conscious brow before her flies
Anticipating wealth from Summer skies 		[Here begins the Remains of
All nature feels her renovating sway		the Original MS now in the
The Sheep-fed pasture, and the meadow gay		hands of Mr Hill So that two
And trees and Shrubs no longer budding seen		Hundred and Sixty
Display the newgrown branch of lighter green 		lines are lost. 
On airy downs the shepherd idling lies
And sees tomorrow in the marbled skies
Here then my Soul thy darling theme persue
For every day was Giles a Shepherd too.
	Small was his charge, no wilds had they to roam
But bright enclosures circling round  their home
Nor yellow blossom’d Furse, nor stubborn thorn,
The heath’s rough produce, had their fleeces torn
Yet ever roving, ever seeking thee,
Enchanting Spirit! dear variety!			290
O happy tennants, prisoners of a day
Releas’d to ease, to pleasure, and to play,
Indulg’d through every field by turns to range
And taste them all in one continual change.
For though luxuriant their grassy food
Sheep long confin’d but loathe the present good;
Instinctively they haunt the homeward gate 
And starve and pine with plenty at their feet. 
Loos’d from the winding lane a joyful throng
See! o’er yon pasture how they pour along		300
Giles round their boundarys takes his usual stroll
Sees every pass secure and fences whole
High fences proud to charm the gazing eye
Where many a nestling first assays to fly
Where blows the Woodbine faintly streak’d with red
And rests on every bough its tender head
Round the young  Ash its twining branches meet
Or crown the Hawthorn with its odours sweet.
	Say ye that know ye who have felt and seen
Spring’s morning smiles, and soul-enliv’ning green,	310
Say, did you give the thrilling transport way?
Did your eye brighten when young Lambs at play
Leap’d o’er your path with animated pride,
Or gaz’d in merry clusters by your side?
Ye who can smile, to wisdom no disgrace
At the arch meaning of a Kitten’s face
If spotless innocence and infant mirth
Excites to praise, or gives reflection birth
In shades like these persue your favorite joy
Midst Nature’s revels, sports that never cloy.		320
A few begin a short but vigorous race
And indolence abash’d soon flies the place
Thus chaleng’d forth, see! thither one by one
From every side assembling playmates run;
A thousand wily antics mark their stay
A starting croud impatient of delay
Like the fond Dove from fearful prison freed
Each seems to say “Come let us try our speed,”
Away they scour, impetuous, ardent, strong,
The green turf trembling as they bound along		330
Adown the slope, then up the hillock climb
Where every molehill is a bed of Thyme
There panting stop; yet scarcely can refrain,
A Bird, a leafe, will set them of again.
Or, if a gale with strength unusual blow
Scat’ring the Wild-brier Roses into snow
Their little limbs increasing efforts try
Like the torn flower the fair assemblage fly.
Ah! fallen Rose, sad emblem of their doom
Frail as thyself they perish while they bloom!		340
Though unoffending innocence may plead
Though frantic ewes may mourn the savage deed
Their Shepherd comes a messenger of blood
And drive them bleating from their sports and food	[“drives”
Care loads his brow and pity wrings his heart
For lo! the murdering Butcher with his Cart
Demands the firstlings of his flock to die
And makes a sport of Life and Liberty!
His gay companions Giles beholds no more,
Clos’d are their eyes, their fleeces drench’d in gore,	350
Nor can compassion with her softest notes
Withhold the knife that plunges through their throats.
Down, indignation! hence, ideas foul!
Away the shocking immage from my soul!
Let kindlier visitants attend my way
Beneath approaching Summer’s fervid ray;
Nor thankless glooms obtrude, nor cares annoy
Whilst the sweet theme is universal joy.

		Composed between May and December 1796. ?

SUMMER.

[Turnip sowing. Wheat ripening. Sparrows. Insects. The sky-lark. Reaping, &c. Harvest-field, Dairy-maid, &c. Labours of the barn. The gander. Night; a thunder storm. Harvest-home. Reflections, &c. ]

The Farmer’s life desplays in every part
A moral lesson to the sensual heart
Though in the lap of plenty thoughtful still
He looks beyond the present good or ill
Nor estimate alone one blessing’s worth		[“estimates”
From changefull seasons or capricious earth
But views the future with the present hours
And looks for failours, as he looks for show’ers
For casual as for certain want prepares
And round his yard the reeking Hay-stack rears		10
Or Clover, blossom’d lovely to the sight
His team’s rich store through many a wintry night.
What though abundance round his dwelling spreads
Though ever moist his self-improving meads
Supply his dairy with a copious flood,
And seem to promise unexhausted food
That promise fails, when buried deep in snow
And Vegetative juices cease to flow.
For this his plough turns up the destin’d lands
Whence stormy Winter draws its full demands,		20
For this, the  {seed} minutely small he sows
Whence sound and sweet the hardy Turnip grows.
But how unlike to April’s milder days		[“closing”
High climbs the Sun and darts his pow’rful rays
Whitens the freshdrawn mould and parches through	[“pierces”
The cumb’rous clods that tumble round the plough.
O’er Heaven’s bright azure hence with joyful eyes
The Farmer sees dark clouds assembling rise
Borne o’er his fields a heavy torrent falls
And strikes the earth in hasty driving squalls		30
“Right wellcome down ye precious drops” he cries
But soon, too soon the partial blessing flies
“Boy, bring thy Harrows, try how deep the rain
Have forced its way,” he comes, but comes in vain	[“Has”
Dry dust beneath the bubbling surface lurks
And mocks his pains the more [the more] he works
Still midst huge clods he plunges on forlorn
That laugh his Harrows and the show’r to scorn.
E’en thus the living clod, the stubborn fool
Resists the stormy lectures of the school		40
Till tried with gentler means the dunce to please
His head imbibes right reason by degrees
As when from eve till morning’s wakeful hour
Light, constant rain, evince its secret power		[“evinces”
And e’er the day resume its wonted smiles		[“ere” This fault of
Presents a chearful easy task for Giles,		writing the abbreviated 
Down with a touch the mellowd soil is laid		“ever”instead of “e’er”
And yon tall crop next claims his timely aid	 	I committed more than once.
Thither well pleas’d he hies, assur’d to find
Wild trackless haunts and objects to his mind.		50
	Shot up from broad rank blades that droop below
The nodding Wheat-ear forms a graceful bow,
With milky kernells starting full weigh’d down
Ere yet the Sun hath ting’d its head with brown
Whilst thousands in a flock for ever gay
Loud chirping Sparrows wellcome on the day
And from the mazes of the leafy thorn
Drop one by one upon the bending corn
Giles, with a pole assails their close retreats,
And round the grass-grown dewy border beats		60
On either side compleatly overspread
Here, branches bend, there, corn o’ertops his head
Green covert hail! for through the varying year
No hours so sweet, no scene to him so dear.
Here Wisdom’s placid eye delighted sees
The frequent intervals of lonely ease
And with one ray his infant soul inspires
Just kindling there her never-dying fires
Whence solitude derives peculiar charms
And heav’n-directed thought his bosom warms.	70
Just where the parting bough’s light shadows play
Scarce in the shade, nor in the scorching day
Stretch’d on the turf he lies, a peopled bed
Where swarming insects creep around his head
The small dust-colour’d Beetle climbs with pain
O’er the smooth plantain-leaf – a spacious plain!
Thence higher still by countless steps convey’d
He gains the summit of a shiv’ring blade
And flirts his filmy wings, and looks around
Exulting in his distance from the ground.		80
The tender speckled Moth here dancing seen
The vaulting Grasshopper of glossy green,
And all prolific Summer’s sporting train
Their little lives by various pow’rs sustain
But what can unassisted vision do?
What, but recoil where most it would persue;
The patient gaze but finish with a sigh
When musing waking speaks the Sky-Lark nigh.
Just starting from the corn she  cheerly sings
And trusts with conscious pride her downy wings	90
Still louder breaths, and in the face of day
Mounts up, and calls on Giles to mark her way.
Close to his eyes his Hat he instant bends
And forms a friendly Telescope, that lends
Just aid enough to dull the glaring light
And place the wand’ring bird before his sight
Yet oft beneath a cloud she sweeps along
Lost for awhile, yet pours her varied song
He views the Spot, and as the cloud moves by
Again she stretches up the clear blue sky		100
Her form, her motion, undistinguish’d quite
Save when she wheels direct from shade to light:
The flut’ring Songstress a mere speck became
Like fancy’s floating bubbles in a dream
He sees her yet, but yielding to repose
Unwittingly his jaded eyelids close.
Delicious Sleep! from sleep who could forbear
With no more guilt than Giles, and no more care?
Peace o’er his slumbers waves her guardian wing
Nor conscience once desturb him with a sting.		110 [“desturbs”
He wakes refresh’d from every trivial pain
And takes his pole and brushes round again.
	Its dark-green hue, its sicklier tints all fail
And ripening Harvest rustles in the gale
A glorious sight, if glory dwells below
Where Heav’n’s munificence makes all the show
Oer every field and golden prospect found
That glads the  ploughman’s sunday morning’s round
When on some eminence he takes his stand
To judge the smiling produce of the land.		120
Here Vanity slinks back, her head to hide,
What is there here to flatter human pride?
The tow’ring fabric, or the dome’s loud roar
And steadfast Collumns may astonish more
Where the charm’d gazer long delighted stays
Yet trace but to the Architect the praise,
Whilst here the veriest clown that treads the sod
Without one scruple gives the praise to God
And twofold joys possess his raptur’d mind
From gratitude and admiration join’d.		130
	Here, midst the boldest triumphs of his worth,
Nature herself invites the Reapers forth
Dares the keen Scikle from its twelvemonth’s rest
And gives that ardour which in every breast
From infancy to age alike appears
When the first sheaf its plumy top uprears.
No rake takes here what heav’n to all bestows
Children of Want, for you the bounty flows,
And every Cottage from the plenteous store
Receives a burden nightly at its door.		140
	Hark! where the sweeping Scythe now rips along
Each sturdy mower emulous and strong
Whose writhing loins meridian heat defies		[“form”
Bends o’er his work, and every sinew tries;
Prostrates the waving treasure at his feet
But spares the rising Clover, short and sweet.
Come Health! come Jillity! light-footed come,
Here hold your revels and make this your home.
Each heart awaits and hails you as its own
Each moisten’d brow that scorns to wear a frown	150
Th’unpeopled dwelling mourns its tenants stray’d
E’en the domestic laughing Dairy-Maid
Hies to the field the general toil to share
Meanwhile the Farmer quits  his elbow chair
His cool brick floor, his Pitcher, and his ease,
And braves the sultry beams, and gladly sees
His gates thrown open and his team abroad
The ready group attendant on his word
To turn the swarth, the quiv’ring load to rear,
Or ply the busy Rake the land to clear.		160
Summer’s light garb itself now cumbrous grown
Each his thin doublet in the shade throws down
Where oft the Mastiff skulks with half-shut eye
And rouses at the stranger passing by.
While unrestrain’d the social converse flows
And every breast love’s pow’rful impuse knows
And rival wits with more than rustic grace
Confess the presence of a pretty face
For lo! encircled there the lovely Maid
In youth’s own bloom and native smiles array’d	170
Her Hat awry, divested of her Gown
Her creaking Stays of leather stout and brown
Invidious barrier! why art thou so high?
When the slight cov’ring of her neck slips by
There half revealing to the eager sight
Her full ripe bosom exquisitely white.
In many a local tale of harmless mirth
And many a jest of momentary birth
She bears a part, and as she stops to speak
Strokes back the ringlets from her glowing cheek.	180
	Now noon gone by, and four declining hours
The weary limbs relax their boasted pow’rs
Thirst rages strong, the fainting Spirits fail,
And asks the sov’reign cordial, home-brew’d Ale.	[“ask”
Beneath some sheltering heap of yellow corn
Rests the hoop’d Keg, and friendly cooling horn
That mocks alike the Goblet’s brittle frame
Its costlier potions, and its nobler name.
To Mary first the brimming draught is given
By toils made wellcome as the dews of Heav’n.	190
And never lip that press’d its homely edge
Had kinder blessings or a hartier pledge.
	Of wholsome viands here a banquet smiles,
A common cheer for all, – e’en humble Giles
Who joys his trivial services to yield
Amidst the fragrance of the open field
Oft doom’d in suffocating heat to bear
The cobweb’d Barn’s impure and dusty air
To ride in murky state the panting steed
Destin’d aloft th’unloaded grain to tread		200
Where in his path as heaps on heaps are thrown
He rears and plunges the loose mountain down
Laborious task! with what delight when done
Both Horse and rider greet th’unclouded Sun!
	Yet by th’unclouded Sun are hourly bred
The bold assailants that surround thine head,
Poor patient Ball; and with insulting wing
Roar in thine ears and dart the piercing sting.
In thy behalf the crest of Boughs avail		[“crest-wav’d”
More than thy short-clipt remnant of a tail		210
A moving mockery, a useless name,
A living proof of cruelty and shame.
Shame to the man whatever fame he bore
Who took from thee what man can ne’er restore
Thy weapon of defence, thy chiefest good
When swarming flies contending suck thy blood.
Nor thine alone the sufferings, thine the care,
The fretfull Ewe bemoans an equal share
Tormented into sores her head she hides
Or angry brush them from her new-shorn sides.	220 [“brushes”
Pen’d in the yard, e’en now at closing day,
Unruly Cows with mark’d impatience stay
And vainly striving to escape their foes
The pail kick down; a piteous current flows.
	Is’t not enough that plagues like these molest?
Must still another foe annoy their rest?
He comes, the pest and terror of the yard,
His fullfledg’d progeny’s imperious guard;
The Gander ... spiteful, insolent, and bold,
At the Colt’s footlock takes his daring hold		230
There, serpent-like escapes a dreadful blow
And straight attacks a poor defenceless Cow
Each booby Goose th’unworthy strife enjoys
And hails his prowess with redoubled noise
Then back he stalks of self-importance full,
Seizes the shaggy foretop of the Bull
Till whirl’d aloft he falls, a timely check
Enough to dislocate his worthless neck
For lo! of old, he boasts an honour’d wound,
Behold that broken wing that trails the ground!		240
Thus fools and bravo’s kindred pranks persue
As savage quite and oft as fatal too.
Happy the man that foils an envious elf
And use the darts of spleen to serve himself:		[“using”
As when by turns the strolling Swine engage
The utmost efforts of the Bully’s rage
Whose nibling warfare on the grunter’s side
Is wellcome pleasure to his bristly hide;
Gently he stoops, or lays himself along,
Enjoys the insults of the gabling throng, 		250
That march exulting round his fallen head
As human victors trample on their dead.
	Still Twilight wellcome! rest, how sweet art thou!
Now eve o’erhangs the western Cloud’s thick brow;
The farstretch’d curtain of retiring light
With fiery treasures fraught, that on the sight
Flash from its bulging sides, where darkness low’rs,
In fancy’s eye a chain of mould’ring tow’rs
Or craggy coasts just rising into view
Midst Jav’lins dire, and darts of streaming blue.	260
	Anon tir’d labourers bless their shelt’ring home,[“homes”
When midnight, and the frightful tempest come.	[“comes” 
The Farmer wakes and sees with silent dread
The angry shafts of Heav’n gleam round his bed
The bursting cloud reiterated roars
Shakes his straw roof, and jars his bolted doors.
The slowwing’d storm along the troubled skies
Spreads its dark course, the wind begins to rise,
And full-leaf’d Elms, his dwelling’s shade by day
With mimic thunder give its fury way		270
Sounds in his chimney top a doleful peal
Midst pouring rain, or gusts of rattling hail;
With tenfold danger low the tempest bends
And quick and strong the sulphurous flame descends
The frighten’d Mastiff  {from} his kennel flies
And cringes at the door with piteous cries.
Where now’s the trifler? where the child of pride?
These are the moments when the heart is tried
Nor lives the man with conscience e’er so clear
But feels a solemn, reverential fear,		280
Feels too a joy relieve his aching breast
When the spent Storm hath howl’d itself to rest.
Still, wellcome beats the long continued show’r
And sleep protracted comes with double pow’r
Calm dreams of bliss brings on the morning sun	[“bring”
For every Barn is  {fill’d} and Harvest done.
	Now, ere sweet Summer bids its long adieu
And winds blow keen where late the blossom grew
The bustling day and jovial night must come
The long accustom’d feast of Harvest-home.		290
No bloodstain’d Victory in story bright
Can give the philosophic mind delight
No triumph please, while rage and death destroy
Reflection sickens at the monstrous joy.
And where the joy, if rightly understood
Like chearful praise for universal good?
The soul nor check nor doubtful anguish knows
But free and pure the grateful current flows.
	Behold the sound Oak table’s massy frame
Bestride the Kitchen floor, the careful Dame		300
And gen’rous Host invite their  {friends} around
While all that clear’d the crop, or till’d the ground
Are guests by right of custom, old and young
And many a neighbouring Yeoman joins the throng
With artizans that lent their dext’rous aid
When o’er each field the flaming sun-beams play’d
	Yet plenty reigns, and from her boundless hoard
Though not one jelly trembles on the board
Supplies the feast with all that sence can crave
With all that made our great forefathers brave,		310
Ere the cloy’d palate countless flavours tried
And Cooks had Nature’s judgment set aside.
With thanks to Heav’n, and tales of rustic lore
The mansion echoes when the banquet’s o’er
A wider circle spreads and smiles abound
As quick the frothing Horn performs its round;
Care’s mortal foe, that sprightly joys impart		[“imparts”
To chear the frame and elevate the heart		[“their hearts”
Here fresh and brown the Hazel’s produce lies
In tempting heaps, and peals of laughter rise		320
And crackling music with the frequent song
Unheeded bears the midnight hour along.
	Here once a year destinction low’rs its crest
The Master, servant, and the merry guest
Are equal all, and round the happy ring
The reaper’s eye exulting glances fling		[“eyes”
And warm’d with gratitude, he quits his place
With sun-burnt hands and ale-enliven’d face
Refills the jugg his honour’d Host to tend
To serve at once the master and the friend		330
Proud thus to meet his smiles, to share his tale
His Nuts, his conversation, and his Ale.
	Such were the days; of days long past I sing
When pride gave place to mirth without a sting
Ere tyrant customs strength sufficient bore
To violate the feelings of the poor
To leave them distanc’d in the mad’ning race
Where’er refinement shews its hated face:
Nor causeless hated; ’tis the peasant’s curse
That hourly makes his wretched station worse;		340
Destroys lifes intercourse;  the social plan
That rank to rank cements, as man to man,
Wealth flows around him; fashion lordly reigns
Yet poverty is his, and mental pains; 
Methinks I hear the mourner thus impart
The stifled murmurs of his wounded heart
‘Whence comes this change – ungracious, irksome, cold,
‘Whence the new grandure that mine eyes behold?
The widening distance which I daily see
Has wealth done this? – then wealth’s a foe to me!	350
Foe to our rights – that leaves a powrful few
The paths of emulation to persue
For emulation stoops to us no more
The hope of humble industry is o’er
The blameless hope – the cheering sweet presage
Of future comforts for declining age.
Can my sons share from this paternal hand
The profits with the labours of the land?
No – though indulgent Heav’n its blessing deigns
Where’s the small Farm, to suit my scanty means?	360
Content, the poet sings, with us resides,
In lonely Cots like mine the Damsel hides
And will he then in raptur’d visions tell
That sweet Content with Want can ever dwell?
A barley-loaf ’tis true my table crowns
That fast demminishing in lusty rounds
Stops Nature’s cravings – yet her sighs will flow
From knowing this – that once it was not so.
Our annual feast when earth her plenty yields
When crown’d with boughs the last load quits the fields 370
The aspect still of ancient joy puts on
The aspect only; with the substance gone.
The selfsame Horn is still at our command
But serves none other than the Plebeian hand		[“now but”
For home-brew’d Ale, neglected and debas’d		I had accented
Is quite discarded from the realms of Tastes. 		“Plebeian” on the
Where unaffected freedom charm’d the soul		first syllable
The separate table, and the costly bowl
Cool as the blast that checks the buding Spring
A <Their> mockery of gladness round them fling	380
For oft the Farmer ere his hearts approves
Yields up the custom which he dearly loves
Refinement forces on him like a tide
Bold innovations down its current ride
That bear no peace beneath their shewy dress,
Nor add one tittle to his hapiness.
His guests selected; ranks punctilios known,
What trouble waits upon a casual frown!
Restraint’s foul manacles his pleasures maim
Selected guests selected phrases claim,		390
Nor reigns that joy when hand in hand they join
That good old Master felt in shaking mine!
Heav’n bless his memory! bless his honour’d name!
The Poor will speak his lasting worthy fame,		[“( )”
To souls fair-purpos’d strength and guidance give
In pity to us still let goodness live.
Let Labour have its due, my Cot shall be
From chilling want and guilty murmurs free;
Let Labour have its due, then peace is mine,
And never, never shall my heart repine.		400

		Composed between Decr 1796 and May 1797

AUTUMN.

ARGUMENT.

[Acorns. Hogs in the wood. Wheat-sowing. The Church. Village girls. The mad girl. The bird-boy’s hut. Disappointments; reflections, &c. Euston-hall. Fox-hunting. Old Trouncer. Long nights. A welcome to Winter.]

Again, the year’s decline, midst storms and floods
The thund’ring Chase, the yellow fading woods
Invite my song that fain would boldly tell
Of upland coverts and the echoing dell
By turns resounding loud at eve and morn
The swineherd’s halloo, or the huntsman’s horn.

	No more the fields with scatter’d grain supply
The restless wand’ring tenants of the Sty;
From oak to oak they run with eager haste
And wrangling share the first delicious taste		10
Of fallen Acorns; yet but thinly found
Till the strong gale havth shook them to the ground.
It comes; and roaring woods obedient wave
Their home well pleased the joint adventurers leave
The trudging Sow leads forth her numerous young
Playful, and white, and clean, the briars among;
Till briars and thorns increasing fence them round 
Where last year’s mouldring leaves bestrew the ground
And o’er their heads loud lash’d by furious squalls
Bright from their cups the ratling treasure falls;	20
Hot thirsty food; whence doubly sweet and cool
The wellcome margin of some rushgrown pool
The Wild-duck’s lonely haunt, whose jealous eye
Guards every point; who sits prepar’d to fly,
On the calm bosom of her little Lake
Too closely screen’d for ruffian winds to shake
And as the bold intruders press around
At once she starts and rises with a bound.
With bristles rais’d the sudden noise they hear
And ludicrously wild and wing’d with fear
The herd decamps with more than swinish speed	30 [“decamp”
And snorting dash thro’ sedge, and rush, and reed;
Through tangling thickets headlong on they go
Then stop, and listen for their fancied foe
The hindmost still the growing panic spreads
Repeated frights the first alarm succeeds		[“fright”
Till folly’s wages, wounds and thorns they reap
Yet glorying in their fortunate escape
Their groundless terrors by degrees soon cease
And night’s dark reign restores their wonted peace.	40
For now the gale subsides, and from each bough
The roosting pheasant’s short but frequent crow
Invites to rest and hudling side by side
The herd in closest ambush seeks to hide;		[“seek”
Seeks some warm slope with shagged moss o’erspread	[“d[itt]o”
Dried leaves their copious covering and their bed
In vain may Giles, through gath’ring glooms that fall
And solemn silence urge his piercing call
Whole days and nights they tarry midst their store
Nor quit the woods till oaks can yield no more.		50
	Beyond bleak Winter’s rage, beyond the Spring
That rolling earth’s unvarying course will bring
Who tills the ground looks on with mental eye
And sees next summer’s sheaves and cloudless sky;
And even now, whilst natures beauty dies
Deposits seed and bids new harvests rise
Seed well prepar’d, and warm’d with glowing lime
’Gainst earth-bred grubs, and cold, and lapse of time
For searching frosts and various ills invade
Whilst wintry months depress the springing blade.	60
The plough moves heavily, and strong the soil
And clogging harrows with augmented toil
Dive deep; and clinging mixes with the mould
A fatning treasure from the nightly fold
And all the Cowyard’s highly-valu’d store
That late bestrew’d the blacken’d surface o’er.
No idling hours are here, when Fancy trims
Her dancing taper over outstretch’d limbs
And in her thousand thousand colours drest
Plays round the grassey couch of noontide rest:	70
Here Giles for hours of indolence attones
With strong exertion, and with weary bones
And knows no leisure:… till the distant chime
Of sabbath bells he hears at sermon time
That down the brook sound sweetly in the gale,
Or strike the rising hill or skim the dale.
	Nor Giles alone the sweets of leisure taste	[“his” … “of ease to”
Kind rest extends to all;... save one poor beast
That true to time and pace is doom’d to plod
To bring the Pastor to the house of God		80
Mean structure where no dust of Hero’s lie		[“bones”
The rude inelegance of poverty
Reigns here alone: else why that roof of straw?
Those narrow windows with the frequent flaw?
O’er whose low cells the dock and mallow spreads,	[“spread”
And rampant nettles lift their spiry heads,		[“the” … “head”
Whilst from the hollows of the tower on high
The grey-cap’d Daws in saucy legions fly.
	Round these lone walls assembling neighbours meet
And tread departed friends beneath their feet		90
And new-brier’d graves that prompt the secret sigh
Shew each the spot where he himself must lie.
	Midst timely greetings village news goes round
Of crops late shorn, or, crops that deck the ground
Experienc’d ploughmen in the circle join
While sturdy Boys in feats of strength to shine
With pride elate their young associates brave
To jump from hollow-sounding grave to grave
Then close consulting, each his tallent lends
To plan fresh sports when tedious service ends.	100
Hither at times with chearfulness of soul
Sweet village Maids from neighbouring hamlets  {stroll}
That like the light heel’d Doe o’er lawns that rove	[“Does”
Look shyly curious; ripening into love;
For love’s their errand: and the rose that blow		[“hence the tints that glow”
On either cheek, with heighten’d lustre glow:		[“On either cheek an
When, conscious of their charms e’en age looks sly	heightened lustre
And rapture beams from youth’s observant eye.		know”	
	The pride of such a party, natures pride 
Was lovely Poll,  who innocently tried,		110
With Hat of airy shape and ribbands gay
Love to inspire, and stand in Hymens way
But, ere her twentieth Summer could expand
Or youth was render’d happy with her hand
Her mind’s serenity was lost and gone
Her eye grew languid and she wept alone
Yet causeless seemd her grief; for quick restraind
Mirth follow’d loud, or indignation reign’d
Whims wild and simple led her from her home
The heath, the Common, or the fields to roam.		120
Terror and joy alternate rul’d her hours
Now blithe she sung, and gatherd useless flow’rs
Now pluck’d a tender twig from every bough
To whip the hovering Demons from her brow.
Ill-fated Maid! thy guiding spark is fled,
And lasting wretchedness awaits thy bed;
Thy bed of straw! for mark where even now
O’er their lost child afflicted parents bow
Their woe she knows not but perversely coy
Inverted customs yield a sullen joy			130 [“her”
Her midnight meals in secresy she takes
Low mutt’ring to the moon, that rising breaks
Through night’s dark glooms; oh how much more forlorn	[“gloom”
Her night, that knows of no returning dawn!
Slow from the threshold, once her infant seat
Oer the cold earth she crawls to her retreat
Quitting the cott’s warm walls in filth  to lie,
Where the swine grunting yields up half his sty 
The damp night air her shiv’ring limbs assails
In dreams she moans, and fancied wrongs bewails	140
When morning wakes none earlier rous’d than she
When pendant drops fall glitt’ring from the tree
But nought her rayless melancholy chears,
Or sooths her breast or stops her  {streaming tears}.
Her matted locks unornamented flow
Clasping her knees and waving to and fro,
Her head bow’d down her faded cheek to hide;
A piteous mourner by the pathway side.
Some tufted molehill through the livelong day
She calls her throne, there weeps her life away:	150
And oft the gaily passing stranger stays
His welltim’d step, and takes a silent gaze
Till sympathetic drops unbidden start
And pangs quick spring[ing] muster round his heart
And soft he treads with other gazers round
And fain would catch her sorrow’s plaintive sound	[Note / I forget what
One word alone is all that strikes the ear		critic it was who told
One short, pathetic, simple word – “Oh dear!”		me that Poll’s “one
A thousand times repeated to the wind		short word” is two!
That wafts the sigh, but leaves the pang behind!	160
For ever of the proffer’d parley shy
She hears the’ unwellcome foot advancing nigh
Nor quite unconscious of her wretched plight
Gives one sad look, and hurries out of sight.
	Fair promis’d sunbeams of terrestrial bliss,
Health’s gallant hopes, – and are ye sunk to this?
For in life’s road though thorns abundant grow
There still are joys poor Poll can never know
Joys which the gay companions of her prime
Sip, as they drift along the stream of time		170
At eve to hear beside their tranquil home
The lifted latch that speaks the lover come
That love matured, and playful on the knee		[“next”
To press the velvet lip of infancy; 
To stay the tottering step, the features trace
Inestimable sweets of social peace!
	O Thou, who bidst the vernal juices rise!
Thou, on whose blasts autumnal foliage flies
Let peace near leave me nor my heart grow cold
Whilst life and sanity are mine to hold.		180
	Shorn of their flow’rs that shed th’untreasur’d seed
The withering pasture and the fading mead
Less tempting grown, demminish more and more
The dairy’s pride sweet Summer’s flowing store.
New cares succeed and gentle duties press
Where the fire side a school of tenderness
Revives the languid chirp, and warms the blood
Of cold-nip’d weaklings of the latter brood
That from the shell just bursting into day
Through yard or pond persue their ventreous way.	190
	Far weightier cares and wider scenes expand,
What devastation marks the new sown land!
“From hungry woodland foes go, Giles, and guard
The rising wheat; ensure its great reward
A future sustenance, a summers pride
Demand thy vigilance, then be it try’d
Exert thy voice, and wield thy shotless gun
Go, tarry there from morn till setting sun.”
	Keen blows the blast, or ceaseless rain descends
The half-stript hedge a sorry shelter lends.		200
O for a Hovel, e’er so small or low
Whose roof, repelling winds and early snow,
Might bring home’s comforts fresh before his eyes
No sooner thought, than, lo! the structure rise,	[“see”
In some sequester’d nook, embank’d around
Sods for its walls, and straw in burdens bound
Dried  fuel hoarded is his richest store
And circling smoke obscures his little door
Whence creeping forth to duty’s call he yields
And strolls the Crusoe of the lonely fields.		210
On whitethorns tow’ring and the leafless rose,
A frost nipt feast in bright vermilion glows:
Where clustring sloes in glossy order rise
He crops the loaded branch, a cumb’rous prize;
And o’er the flame the sputt’ring fruit he rests,
And place green sods to seat his coming guests;	[“placing”
His guests by promise; playmates young and gay
But ah! fresh pastimes lure their steps away!
He sweeps his hearth and homeward looks in vain
Till feeling disappointment’s cruel pain,		220
His fairy revels are exchanged for rage
His banquet marr’d, grown dull his hermitage.
 {The} field becomes his prison, till on high
Benighted Birds to shades and coverts fly.
Midst air, health, daylight, can he prisoner be?
If fields are prisons where is Liberty?
Here still she dwells and here her votaries stroll
But disappointed hope untunes the soul
Restraints unfelt whilst hours of rapture flow
When troubles press to chains and barriers grow.	230
Look then from trivial up to greater woes
From the poor bird-boy with his roasted sloes
To where the dungeon’d mourner heaves the sigh
Where not one chearing sun-beam meets his eye.
Though ineffectual pity thine may be
No wealth, no pow’r, to set the captive free
Though only to thy ravish’d sight is given
The golden path that Howard  trod to Heav’n.
Thy slights can make the wretched more forlorn
And deeper drive affliction’s barbed thorn.		240
Say not, “I’ll come and cheer thy gloomy cell
With news of dearest friends, how good, how well:
I’ll be a joyfull herald to thine heart:”
Then fail, and play the worthless trifler’s part
To sip flat pleasures from thy glass’s brim
And waste the precious hour that’s due to him.
In mercy spare the base unmanly blow,
Where can he turn; to whom complain of you?
Back to past joys in vain his thoughts may stray
Trace and retrace the beaten worn-out way		250
The rankling injury will pierce his breast
And curses on thee break his midnight rest.
	Bereft of song and ever cheering green
The soft endearments of the Summer scene
New harmony pervades the solemn wood
Dear to the soul, and healthful to the blood
For bold exertion follows on the sound
Of distant sportsmen, and the chiding Hound
First heard from kennel bursting mad with joy
Where smiling Euston boasts her good Fitzroy, 	260
Lord of pure alms and gifts that wide extend
The farmer’s patron, and the poor man’s friend:
Whose Mansion glitt’ring with the eastern ray
Whose elevated temple points the way
O’er slopes and lawns the park’s extensive pride
To where the victims of the chace reside,
Ingulf’d in earth in conscious safety warm
Till lo! a plot portends their coming harm.
	In earliest hours of dark unhooded morn, 	[Note / The poem had gone
Ere yet one rosy cloud bespeaks the dawn		270 through one or
Whilst far abroad the Fox pursues his prey,		two Editions before it was
He’s doom’d to risk the perils of the day,		observd, that, an unhooded
From his strong hold block’d out perhaps to bleed	morning was not dark,
Or owe his life to fortune, or to speed.		But light! * the observation
For now the pack impatient rushing on		was made by the Revd Mr
Range through the darkest coverts one by one		Fellows, now of Fakenham,
Trace every spot; whilst down each noble glade		July 1805.
That guides the eye beneath a changeful shade
The loitering sportsman feels th’instinctive flame
And checks his steed to mark the springing game.	280
Midst intersecting cuts and winding ways
The huntsman cheers his dogs, and anxious stays	[“strays”
Where every narrow riding even shorn
Gives back the echo of his mellow horn:
Till fresh and lightsome, every power untried,
The starting fugitive leaps by his side
His lifted finger to his ear he plies
And the view halloo bids a chorus rise
Of dogs quick-mouth’d, and shouts that mingle loud
As bursting thunder rolls from cloud to cloud. 		290
With ears crop’d short, and chest of vigorous mould  
O’er ditch o’er fence unconquerably bold
The shining Courcer lengthens every bound
And his strong foot-locks suck the moisten’d ground
As from the confines of the wood they pour
And joyous villages partake the roar.
O’er heath far stretch’d, or down, or valley low.
The stiff-limb’d peasant glorying in the show,
Persues in vain; where youth itself soon tire,		   [“tires”
Spite of the transports that the chace inspire;		300 [“inspires”
For who unmounted long can charm the eye
Or hear the music of the leading cry?
	Poor faithful Trouncer! thou canst lead no more
All thy fatigues and all thy triumphs o’er!
Triumphs of worth, whose honorary fame
Was still to follow true the hunted game;
Beneath enormous Oaks, Britannia’s boast,
In thick impenetrable coverts lost
When the warm pack in fault’ring silence stood
Thine was the note that rous’d the list’ning wood	310
Rekindling every joy with tenfold force
Through all the mazes of the tainted course.
Still foremost thou the dashing stream to cross,
And tempt along the animated horse
Foremost o’er fen or level mead to pass
And sweep the show’ring dewdrops from the grass;
Then bright emerging from the mist below
To climb the woodland hill’s exulting brow.
	Pride of thy race! with worth far less than thine
Full many a human leader daily shine!		320 [“many human
Less faith, less constancy, less gen’rous zeal;		leaders”
Then no disgrace my humble verse shall feel		[“mine”
Where not one lying line to riches bow		[“bows”
Or poison’d sentiment from rancour flow		[“flows”
No flowers bestrew’d round ambition’s carr	 	[“nor flowers are strewn”
An honest Dog’s a nobler theme by far.
Each sportsman heard the tidings with a sigh
When death’s cold touch had stopt his tuneful cry;
And though high deeds, and fair exalted praise
In memory liv’d, and flow’d in rustic lays;		330
Short was the strain of monumental woe
“Foxes, rejoice! here buried lies your foe.” 
	In safety hous’d, throughout night’s length’ning reign
The Cock sends forth a loud and piercing strain;
More frequent, as the glooms of midnight flee,
And hours roll round, that brought him liberty
When Summer’s early dawn mild, clear, and bright,
Chas’d quick away the transitory night...
Hours now in darkness veil’d; yet loud the scream
Of Geese impatient for the playfull stream;		340
And all the feather’d tribes imprison’d raise
Their morning notes of inharmonious praise
And many a clamorous Hen and Capon gay,		[“Cockrel”
When daylight slowly through the fog breaks way
Fly wantonly abroad: but ah, how soon
The shades of twilight follow hazy noon,
Short’ning the busy day!... day that slides by
Amidst th’unfinish’d toils of Husbandry;
Toils still each morn resum’d with double care
To meet the icy terrors of the year;			350
To meet the threats of Boreas undismay’d
And Winter’s gathering frowns and hoary head.
	Then wellcome, Cold; welcome, ye snowy nights! 
Heav’n midst your rage shall mingle pure delights
And confidence of hope the soul sustain
While devastation sweeps along the plain:
Nor shall the child of poverty despair,
But bless the power that rules the changing year;
Assur’d, – though horrors round his cottage reign
That Spring will come, and Nature smile again.	360

			Composed between May and Nov, 1797

WINTER.

[Tenderness to cattle. Frozen turnips. The cow-yard. Night. The farm-house. Fireside. Farmer’s advice and instruction. Nightly cares of the stable. Dobbin. The post-horse. Sheep-stealing dogs. Walks occasioned thereby. The ghost. Lamb time. Returning Spring. Conclusion.]

With kindred pleasures moved, and cares opprest,
Sharing alike our weariness and rest
Who lives the daily partner of our hours
Through every change of heat, and frost, and show’rs;
Partakes our chearful meals, or burns with thirst 	[render’d thus 
In mutual labour, and in mutual trust,		“–––––––––partaking first 
The kindly intercourse will ever prove	            	/ In mutuallabour and  
A bond of amity and social love.			fatigue and thirst;”
To more than man this generous warmth extends
And oft the team and shiv’ring herd befriends		10
Tender solicitude the bosom fills
And pity executes what reason wills:
Youth learns compassion’s tale from every tongue
And flies to aid the helpless and the young;
When now unsparing as the scourge of war
Blasts follow blasts, and groves dismantled roar
Around their home dependant Cattle low,		[“the stormpinch’d” … “lows”
No nourishment in frozen pastures grow;		[“grows”
Yet frozen pastures every morn resound
With fair abundance thund’ring to the ground.		20
For though on hoary twigs no buds peep out
And e’en the hardy Bramble cease to sprout
Beneath dread Winter’s level sheets of snow
The sweet nutritious Turnip deigns to grow.
Till now imperious want and wide-spread dearth
Bid labour claim her treasures from the earth.
On Giles, and such as Giles the labour falls
To strew the frequent load where hunger calls.
On driving gales sharp hail indignant flies
Or sleet more irksome still assails his eyes		30 [“And”
Snow clogs his feet, or if no snow is seen
The field with all its juicy store to screen
Deep goes the frost, till every root is found
A rolling mass of ice upon the ground.
No tender ewe can break her nightly fast
Nor heifer strong begin the cold repast
Till Giles with pond’rous beetle foremost go
And scat’ring splinters fly at every blow;
When pressing round him eager for the prize
From their  mix’d breath warm exhalations rise.	40
	If now in beaded rows drops deck the spray
While Phoebus grants a momentary ray
Let but a cloud’s broad shadow intervene
And stiffen’d into gems the drops are seen;
And down the furrow’d oak’s broad southern side
Streams of dissolving rime no longer glide.
	Though Night approaching bids the world prepare [“for rest”
Still the flail echoes through the frosty air
Nor stops till deepest shades of darkness come
Sending at length the weary laborer home.		50
From him with bed and nightly food supplied
Throughout the yard hous’d round on every side
Deep-plunging Cows their rustling feast enjoy
And snatch sweet mouthfuls from the passing boy
Who moves unseen beneath his trailing load
Fills the tall racks, and leaves a scatter’d road;
Where oft the swine from ambush warm and dry
Bolt out and scamper headlong to his sty		[“their”
When Giles with wellknown voice allready there
Deigns them a portion of his evening care.		60
	Him, though the cold may pierce, and storms molest,
Succeeding hours shall chear with warmth and rest:
Gladness to spread, and raise the grateful smile
He hurls the faggot bursting from the pile,
And many a log and rifted trunk conveys
To heap the fire and [to] extend the blaze 
That quivring strong through each apperture flies	[“every opening”
Whilst smoak in collums unobstructed rise.		[“smoaky”
For the rude architect, unknown to fame
Nor symetry nor elegance his aim			70
Who spread his floors of solid oak on high
On beams roughhewn from age to age that lie
Bade his wide Fabric unimpair’d sustain
Pomona’s store, and Cheese, and golden grain
Bade from its central base capacious laid
The wellwrought chimney rear its lofty head
Where since hath many a savoury ham been stor’d
And tempests howl’d, and Christmas gambols roar’d.
	Flat on the hearth the glowing embers lie
And flames reflected dance in every eye		80
There the long Billet, forc’d at last to bend
While froathing sap gush out at either end		[“gushes” 
Throws round its wellcome heat, – the ploughman smiles
And oft the joke runs hard on sheepish Giles
Who sits joint-tenant of the corner stool
The converse sharing though in duty’s school
For now attentively tis his to hear
Interrogations from the Master’s chair.
	‘Left ye your bleating charge when daylight fled
‘Near where the hay-stack lifts its snowy head		90
Whose fence of bushy furze so close and warm
May stop the slanting bullets of the storm.
For hark! it blows; a dark and dismal night
Heav’n guide the traveller’s fearfull steps aright!
Now from the woods, mistrustful and sharp-eyed,
The Fox in silent darkness seems to glide
Stealing around us, list’ning as he goes
If chance the Cock or stamring Capon crows		[“Cockrel” 
Or Goose or nodding Duck should darkling cry
As if appriz’d of lurking danger nigh:		100
Destruction waits them, Giles, if e’er you fail
To bolt their doors against the driving gale.
Strew’d you, still mindful of the unshelter’d head,	[“strew’d ye”
Burdens of straw, the Cattle’s wellcome bed?
Thine heart should feel what thou may’st hourly see
That duty’s basis is humanity.
Of pain’s unsavoury cup tho’ thou may’st taste
The wrath of Winter from the bleak north-east
Thine utmost suff’rings in the coldest day
A period terminates, and joys repay.		110
Perhaps e’en now while here those joys we boast
Full many a bark rides down the neighbouring Coast
Where the high northern waves tremendous roar,
Drove down by blasts from Norway’s icy shore
The sea-boy there less fortunate than thou
Feels all thy pains in every gust that blow;		[“all the gusts”
His freezing hands now drench’d, now dry, by turns;
Now lost now seen the distant light that burns
On some tall cliff uprais’d, a flaming guide
That throws its friendly radiance o’er the tide		120
His labours cease not with declining day
But toils and perils mark his watry way
And whilst in peaceful dreams secure we  lie
The ruthless whirlwinds rage along the sky
Round his head whistling... and shall thou repine
While this protecting roof still shelters thine?’ 
	Mild as the vernal show’r his words prevail
And aid the moral precept of his tale
His wond’ring hearers learn and ever keep
These first ideas of the restless deep		130
And as the opening mind a circuit tries
Present felicity in value rise			[“felicities”
Increasing pleasures every hour they find
The warmth more precious and the shelter kind
Warmth that long reigning bids the eyelids close
As through the blood its balmy influence goes
When the cheer’d heart forgets fatigues and cares
And drowsiness alone dominion bears.
	Sweet then the ploughman’s slumbers, hale and young
When the last topic dies upon his tongue		140
Sweet then the bliss his transient dreams inspire
Till chilblaines wake him, or the snapping fire:
He starts, and ever thoughtful of his team
Along the glitt’ring snow a feeble gleam
Shoots from his lantern, as he yawning goes,
To add fresh comforts to their night’s repose,
Defusing fragrance as their food he moves
And pats the jolly sides of those he loves.
Thus full replenish’d, perfect ease possest
From night till morn alternate food and rest		 150
No rightfull cheer withheld, no sleep debar’d
But each days labour brings its sure reward.		 [“Their”
Yet when from plough or lumb’ring cart set free
They taste awhile the sweets of liberty
E’en sober Dobbin lifts his clumsy heels
And kicks disdainful of the dirty wheels
But soon his frolic ended yields again
To trudge the road and wear the clinking chain.
	Short sighted Dobbin! – thou canst only see
The trivial hardships that encompass thee		 160
Thy chains were freedom and thy  {toils} repose,
Could the poor Post-horse  tell thee all his woes
Shew thee his bleeding shoulders and unfold
The dreadful anguish he endures for gold
Hir’d at each call of business, lust, or rage
That prompt the trav’ler 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		 170
Becomes his bitter scourge – ’tis he must feel
The double efforts of the lash and steel
Till when, up hill, the destin’d Inn he gains
And trembling under complicated pains
Prone from his nostrils darting on the ground
His breath emitted floats in clouds around:
Drops chase each other down his chest and sides
And spatter’d mud his native colour hides
Through his swoln veins the boiling torrent flows	
And every nerve a separate torture knows.		 180
His harness loos’d, he wellcomes eager ey’d
The pail’s full draught that quivers by his side
And joys to see the well-known Stable door,
As the starv’d mariner the friendly shore.
	Ah, well for him if here his sufferings ceas’d
And ample hours of rest his pains appeas’d.
But rous’d again and sternly bade to rise
And shake refreshing slumber from his eyes,
Ere his exhausted spirits can return
Or through his frame reviving ardour burn		 190
Come forth he must tho’ limping, maim’d, and sore
He hears the whip – the Chaise is at the door
The collar tightens, and again he feels
His half-heal’d wounds inflam’d again the wheels
 With tiresome sameness in his ears resound
O’er blinding dust or miles of flinty ground.
Thus nightly rob’d and injur’d day by day
His piece-meal murd’rers wear his life away.
	What say’st thou Dobbin? what though hounds await
With open jaws the moment of thy fate		200
No better fate attends his public race
His life is misery, and his end disgrace.
Then freely bear thy burden to the mill
Obey but one short  {law}... thy driver’s will;
Affection, to thy memory ever true
Shall boast of mighty loads that Dobbin  {drew}
And back to childhood shall the mind with pride
Recount thy gentleness in many a ride
To pond, or field, or village fair, when thou
Held high thy braided mane and comely brow		210 [“Held’st”
And oft the Tale shall rise to homely fame
Upon thy generous spirit and thy name.
	Though faithful to a proverb, we regard
The midnight chieftain of the farmer’s yard
Beneath whose guardianship all hearts rejoice
Woke by the echo of his hollow voice:
Yet as the Hound may fault’ring quit the pack
Snuff the foul scent, and hasten yelping back
And e’en the docile Pointer know disgrace
Thwarting the gen’ral instinct of his race		220
E’en so the Mastiff, or the meaner Cur
At times will from the path of duty er,
A pattern of fidelity by day
By night a murderer, lurking for his prey
And round the pastures or the fold will creep
And, coward-like, attack the peaceful sheep:
Alone the wanton mischief he persues
Alone in reeking blood his jaws embrews
Chasing amain his fright’ned victims round
Till death in wild confusion strews the ground		230
Then wearied out, to kennel sneaks away
And licks his guilty paws till break of day.
	The deed discover’d and the news once spread
Vengeance hangs o’er the unknown culprit’s head
And careful Shepherds extra hours bestow
In patient watchings for the common foe
A foe most dreaded now when rest and peace
Should wait the season of the Flock’s increase.
	In part these nightly terrors to dispel,
Giles e’er he sleeps his little flock must tell		240
From the fire-side with many a shrug he <goes> hies
Glad if the full-orb’d Moon salutes his eyes		[“Salute”
And through the unbroken stillness of the night
Shed on his path her beams of cheering light.
With saunt’ring step he climbs the distant stile
Whilst all around him wears a placid smile
There views the white-rob’d clouds in clusters driv’n
And all the glorious pageantry of heav’n
Low, on the utmost bound’ry of the sight
The rising vapours catch the silver light		250
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.
Far yet above these wafted clouds are seen		[“For”
In a remoter sky, still more serene
Others detach’d in ranges through the air
Spotless as snow and countless as they’re fair
Scatter’d immensely wide from east to west
The beauteous semblance of a Flock at rest.		260
These to the raptur’d mind aloud proclaim
The mighty Shepherd’s everlasting name.
Whilst thus the loit’rer’s utmost stretch of soul
Climbs the still clouds or traverse those that roll	[“passes”
And loos’d imagination soaring goes
High o’er his home and all his little woes
Time glides away; neglected duty calls
At once from plains of light to earth he falls
And down a narrow lane, well-known by day
With all his speed persues his sounding way		270
In thought still half absorb’d, and chill’d with cold
When lo! an object frightful to behold
A grisly Spectre cloath’d in silver-grey
Around whose feet the waving shadows play
Stands in his path! – He stops and not a breath
Heaves from his heart, that sinks almost to death.
Loud the Owl hallows o’er his head unseen
All else is silent, dismally serene:
Some prompt ejaculation, whisper’d low
Yet bears him up against the threat’ning foe		280
And thus poor Giles, though half inclin’d to fly
Mutters his doubts, and strains his stedfast eye.
	’Tis not my crimes thou com’st here to reprove
No murders stain my soul, no perjur’d love
If thou’rt indeed what here thou seemst to be
Thy dreadful mission cannot reach to me.
By parents taught still to mistrust mine eyes
Still to approach each object of surprise
Lest fancy’s formfull visions should deceive
In moonlight paths,  {or} glooms of falling eve	290
This then’s the moment when my heart should try
To scan thy motionless deformity
But oh, the fearful task! yet well I know
An aged Ash, with many a spreading bough,
Beneath whose leaves I’ve found a Summer’s bow’r
Beneath whose trunk I’ve weather’d many a show’r
Stands singly down this solitary way
But far beyond where now my footsteps stay.
’Tis true, thus far I’ve come with heedless haste,
No reck’ning kept, no passing objects trac’d. –		300
And can I then have reach’d that very tree?
Or is its reverend form assum’d by thee?
The happy thought alleviates his pain
He creeps another step, then stops again
Till slowly as his noiseless feet draw near
Its perfect leaniments at once appear
Its crown of shiv’ring Ivy whispering peace
And its white bark that fronts the Moon’s pale face.(74) 
Now, whilst his blood mount upward, now he knows
The solid gain that from conviction flows		310
And strengthen’d confidence shall hence fullfill
With conscious innocence, more valued still,
The dreariest task that winter nights can bring
In church-yard dark, or Grove, or fairy ring
Still buoying up the timid mind of youth
Till loit’ring Reason hoists the scale of truth.
With these blest guardians Giles his course pursues
Till numbering his heavy-sided ewes
Surrounding stillness tranquilise his breast
And shape the dreams that wait his hours of rest.	320
	As when retreating tempests we behold
Whose skirts at length the azure sky unfold
And full of murmurings and mingled wrath
Slowly unshroud the smiling face of earth
Bringing the bosom joy: so Winter flies ––
And as the source of life and light uprise		[“See
A height’ning arch o’er southern hills he bends
Warm on the cheek the slanting beam descends
And gives the reeking mead a brighter hue
And draws the modest primrose bud to view		330
Yet frosts succeed and winds impetuous rush
And hail-storms rattle through the budding bush;
And night-fall’n Lambs require the shepherd’s care
And teeming Ewes that still their burdens bare
Beneath whose sides tomorrow’s dawn may see
The milk-white stranger bow the trembling knee	[“Strangers”
First at whose birth the pow’rfull instinct’s seen   	[“At whose first birth”
That fills with champions the daisied green
For ewes that stood aloof with fearful eye
With stamping foot now men and dogs defy		340
And obstinately faithfull to their young
Guard their first steps to join the bleating throng.
	But casualties and death from damps and cold
Will still attend the well-conducted fold:
Her tender offspring dead, the dam aloud
Calls and runs wild amidst th’unconscious croud
And orphan’d sucklings raise the piteous cry
No wool to warm them, no defenders nigh.
And must her streaming milk then flow in vain?
Must unregarded innocents complain?		350 [“innocence”
No – ere this strong solicitude subside
Paternal fondness may be fresh apply’d		[“Maternal”(75) 
And the adopted stripling still may find
A parent most assiduously kind.
For this he’s doom’d awhile disguis’d to range
For fraud or force must work the wish’d-for change
For this his predecessor’s skin he wears
Till cheated into tenderness and cares
The unsuspecting dam, contented grown
Cherish and guard the fondling as her own.		360
	Thus all by turns to fair perfection rise
Thus twins are parted to increase their size
Thus instinct yields as interest points the way
Till the bright flock augmenting every day
On sunny hills and vales of springing flow’rs
With ceaseless clamour greet the vernal hours.
	The humbler Shepherd here with joy beholds
The approv’d economy of crouded folds,
And in his small contracted round of cares
Adjusts the practice of each hint he hears		370
For boys with emulation learn to glow
And boast their pastures, and their healthful show
Of well-grown Lambs, the glory of the Spring
And field to field in competition bring.
	E’en Giles for all his cares and watchings past
And all his contests with the wintry blast
Claims his full share of that sweet praise bestow’d	[“a”
By gazing neighbours when along the road
Or village green his curly-coated throng
Suspends the chorus of the spinner’s song(76) 		380
When admiration’s  unaffected grace
Lisps from the tongue, and beams in every face:
Delightful moments!... Sunshine, health, and joy,
Play round and cheer the elevated boy
Another Spring! his heart exulting cries
Another Year with promis’d blessings rise! ...
Eternal Power! from whom those blessings flow
Teach me still more to wonder, more to know:
Seedtime and Harvest let me see again
Pierce the dark wood, and brave the sultry plain;	390 [“Wander the leaf-strewn wood, 
					the frozen plain”
Let Field, and dimpled Brook, and flow’r, and Tree,
					[“Let the first Flower, corn-waving
					Field, Plain, Tree;” (77)
Here round my home, still lift my soul to thee:
And let me ever midst thy bounties, raise
An humble note of thankfullness and praise.

Finished, April 22. 1798

Rob. Bloomfield

© Peter Cochran