"Spring" does not contain much of the best of his work, but
the opening is graceful and is not without a touch of pathos
in his apologetic description of himself, as Giles, the
farmer's boy.
Nature's sublimer scenes ne'er charmed my eyes
Nor Science led me . . .
From meaner objects far my raptures flow . . .
Quick-springing sorrows, transient as the dew,
Delight from trifles, trifles ever new.
'Twas thus with Giles; meek, fatherless, and poor,
Labour his portion . . .
His life was cheerful, constant servitude . . .
Strange to the world, he wore a bashful look,
The fields his study, Nature was his book.
The farm is described, the farmer, his kind, hospitable
master; the animals, the sturdy team, the cows and the small
flock of fore-score ewes. Ploughing, sowing, and harrowing are
described, and the result left to the powers above:
Yet oft with anxious heart he looks around,
And marks the first green blade that breaks the ground;
In fancy sees his trembling oats uprun,
His tufted barley yellow with the sun.
While his master dreams of what will be, Giles has enough to
do protecting the buried grain from thieving rooks and crows;
one of the multifarious tasks being to collect the birds that
have been shot, for although -
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 among them as they rise.
