They are at
the horrors enacted behind the closed doors of the
physiological laboratories, the atrocity of the steel trap,
the continual murdering by our big game hunters of all the
noblest animals left on the globe, and finally the annual
massacre of millions of beautiful birds in their breeding time
to provide ornaments for the hats of our women.
"Come forth he must," says Bloomfield, when he describes how
the flogged horse at length gains the end of the stage and,
"trembling under complicated pains," when "every nerve a
separate anguish knows," he is finally unharnessed and led to
the stable door, but has scarcely tasted food and rest before
he is called for again.
Though limping, maimed and sore;
He hears the whip; the chaise is at the door . . .
The collar tightens and again he feels
His half-healed wounds inflamed; again the wheels
With tiresome sameness in his ears resound
O'er blinding dust or miles of flinty ground.
This is over and done with simply because the post-horse is no
longer wanted, and we have to remember that no form of cruelty
inflicted, whether for sport or profit or from some other
motive, on the lower animals has ever died out of itself in
the land. Its end has invariably been brought about by
legislation through the devotion of men who were the "cranks,"
the "faddists," the "sentimentalists," of their day, who were
jeered and laughed at by their fellows, and who only succeeded
by sheer tenacity and force of character after long fighting
against public opinion and a reluctant Parliament, in finally
getting their law.
Bloomfield's was but a small voice crying in the wilderness,
and he was indeed a small singer in the day of our greatest
singers. As a poet he was not worthy to unloose the buckles
of their shoes; but he had one thing in common with the best
and greatest, the feeling of tender love and compassion for
the lower animals which was in Thomson and Cowper, but found
its highest expression in his own great contemporaries,
Coleridge, Shelley, and Wordsworth. In virtue of this feeling
he was of their illustrious brotherhood.
In conclusion, I will quote one more passage. From the
subject of horses he passes to that of dogs and their
occasional reversion to wildness, when the mastiff or cur, the
"faithful" house-dog by day, takes to sheep-killing by night.
As a rule he is exceedingly cunning, committing his
depredations at a distance frown home, and after getting his
fill of slaughter he sneaks home in the early hours to spend
the day in his kennel "licking his guilty paws." This is an
anxious time for shepherds and farmers, and poor Giles is
compelled to pay late evening visits to his small flock of
heavy-sided ewes penned in their distant fold. It is a
comfort to him to have a full moon on these lonely
expeditions, and despite his tremors he is able to appreciate
the beauty of the scene.
With saunt'ring steps he climbs the distant stile,
Whilst all around him wears a placid smile;
There views the white-robed clouds in clusters driven
And all the glorious pageantry of heaven.
Low on the utmost bound'ry of the sight
The rising vapours catch the silver light;
Thence fancy measures as they parting fly
Which first will throw its shadow on the eye,
Passing the source of light; and thence away
Succeeded quick by brighter still than they.
For yet above the wafted clouds are seen
(In a remoter sky still more serene)
Others detached in ranges through the air,
Spotless as snow and countless as they're fair;
Scattered immensely wide from east to west
The beauteous semblance of a flock at rest.
This is almost the only passage in the poem in which something
of the vastness of visible nature is conveyed. He saw the
vastness only in the sky on nights with a full moon or when he
made a telescope of his hat to watch the flight of the lark.
It was not a hilly country about his native place, and his
horizon was a very limited one, usually bounded by the
hedgerow timber at the end of the level field. The things he
depicts were seen at short range, and the poetry, we see, was
of a very modest kind. It was a "humble note" which pleased
me in the days of long ago when I was young and very ignorant,
and as it pleases me still it may be supposed that mentally I
have not progressed with the years. Nevertheless, I am not
incapable of appreciating the greater music; all that is said
in its praise, even to the extremest expressions of admiration
of those who are moved to a sense of wonder by it, find an
echo in me. But it is not only a delight to me to listen to
the lark singing at heaven's gate and to the vesper
nightingale in the oak copse - the singer of a golden throat
and wondrous artistry; I also love the smaller vocalists - the
modest shufewing and the lesser whitethroat and the
yellowhammer with his simple chant. These are very dear to
me: their strains do not strike me as trivial; they have a
lesser distinction of their own and I would not miss them from
the choir. The literary man will smile at this and say that
my paper is naught but an idle exercise, but I fancy I shall
sleep the better tonight for having discharged this ancient
debt which has been long on my conscience.
Chapter Twenty-Five: My Friend Jack
My friend rack is a retriever - very black, very curly, perfect
in shape, but just a retriever; and he is really not my
friend, only he thinks he is, which comes to the same thing.
So convinced is he that I am his guide, protector, and true
master, that if I were to give him a downright scolding or
even a thrashing he would think it was all right and go on
just the same.
