Ludicrous points about it, as for
example its liability to lose its head. Thousands of years of
comfortable domestic life have failed to rid it of this
inconvenient heritage from the time when wild in woods it ran.
Yet in this particular instance the terror of the swine does
not seem wholly inexcusable, if we know a wild duck as well as
a pig, especially the duck that takes to haunting a solitary
woodland pool, who, when intruded on, springs up with such a
sudden tremendous splash and flutter of wings and outrageous
screams, that man himself, if not prepared for it, may be
thrown off his balance.
Passing over other scenes, about one hundred and fifty lines,
we come to the second notable passage, when after the sowing
of the winter wheat, poor Giles once more takes up his old
occupation of rook-scaring. It is now as in spring and
summer -
Keen blows the blast and ceaseless rain descends;
The half-stripped hedge a sorry shelter lends,
and he thinks it would be nice to have a hovel, no matter how
small, to take refuge in, and at once sets about its
construction.
In some sequestered nook, embanked 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.
On whitehorn tow'ring, and the leafless rose,
A frost-nipped feast in bright vermilion glows;
Where clust'ring sloes in glossy order rise,
He crops the loaded branch, a cumbrous prize;
And on the flame the splutt'ring fruit he rests,
Placing green sods to seat the coming guests;
His guests by promise; playmates young and gay;
But ah! fresh pastures lure their steps away!
He sweeps his hearth, and homeward looks in vain,
Till feeling Disappointment's cruel pain
His fairy revels are exchanged for rage,
His banquet marred, grown dull his hermitage,
The field becomes his prison, till on high
Benighted birds to shades and coverts fly.
"The field becomes his prison," and the thought of this trival
restraint, which is yet felt so poignantly, brings to mind an
infinitely greater one. Look, he says -
From the poor bird-boy with his roasted sloes
to the miserable state of those who are confined in dungeons,
deprived of daylight and the sight of the green earth, whose
minds perpetually travel back to happy scenes,
Trace and retrace the beaten worn-out way,
whose chief bitterness it is to be forgotten and see no
familiar friendly face.
"Winter" is, I think, the best of the four parts it gives the
idea that the poem was written as it stands, from "Spring"
onwards, that by the time he got to the last part the writer
had acquired a greater ease and assurance.
