I Was Prepared To Like It, For Although I Did
Not Know Anything About The Author's Early Life, The Few
Passages I Had Come Across In Quotations In James Rennie's And
Other Old Natural History Compilations Had Given Me A Strong
Desire To Read The Whole Poem.
I certainly did like it - this
quiet description in verse of a green spot in England, my
spiritual country
Which so far as I knew I was never destined
to see; and that I continue to like it is, as I have said, the
reason of my being in this place.
While thus freely admitting that the peculiar circumstances
of the case caused me to value this poem, and, in fact, made
it very much more to me than it could be to persons born in
England with all its poetical literature to browse on, I am
at the same time convinced that this is not the sole reason
for my regard.
I take it that the Farmer's Boy is poetry, not merely
slightly poetized prose in the form of verse, although it is
undoubtedly poetry of a very humble order.
Mere descriptions of rural scenes do not demand the higher
qualities of the poet - imagination and passion. The lower
kind of inspiration is, in fact, often better suited to such
themes and shows nature by the common light of day, as it
were, instead of revealing it as by a succession of lightning
flashes. Even among those who confine themselves to this
lower plane, Bloomfield is not great: his small flame is
constantly sinking and flickering out. But at intervals it
burns up again and redeems the work from being wholly
commonplace and trivial. He is, in fact, no better than many
another small poet who has been devoured by Time since his
day, and whose work no person would now attempt to bring back.
It is probable, too, that many of these lesser singers whose
fame was brief would in their day have deeply resented being
placed on a level with the Suffolk peasant-poet. In spite of
all this, and of the impossibility of saving most of the verse
which is only passably good from oblivion, I still think the
Farmer's Boy worth preserving for more reasons than one, but
chiefly because it is the only work of its kind.
There is no lack of rural poetry - the Seasons to begin with
and much Thomsonian poetry besides, treating of nature in a
general way; then we have innumerable detached descriptions of
actual scenes, such as we find scattered throughout Cowper's
Task, and numberless other works. Besides all this there are
the countless shorter poems, each conveying an impression of
some particular scene or aspect of nature; the poet of the
open air, like the landscape painter, is ever on the look out
for picturesque "bits" and atmospheric effects as a subject.
In Bloomfield we get something altogether different - a simple,
consistent, and fairly complete account of the country
people's toilsome life in a remote agricultural district in
England - a small rustic village set amid green and arable
fields, woods and common lands.
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