Furthermore, I will venture to say that
despite the feebleness of a large part of the work (as poetry)
it is yet worth preserving in its entirety on account of its
unique character. It may be that I am the only person in
England able to appreciate it so fully owing to the way in
which it first came to my notice, and the critical reader can,
if he thinks proper, discount what I am now saying as mere
personal feeling. But the case is this: when, in a distant
region of the world, I sought for and eagerly read anything I
could find relating to country scenes and life in England
--the land of my desire--I was never able to get an extended
and congruous view of it, with a sense of the continuity in
human and animal life in its relation to nature. It was all
broken up into pieces or "bits"; it was in detached scenes,
vividly reproduced to the inner eye in many cases, but
unrelated and unharmonized, like framed pictures of rural
subjects hanging on the walls of a room. Even the Seasons
failed to supply this want, since Thomson in his great work is
of no place and abides nowhere, but ranges on eagle's wings
over the entire land, and, for the matter of that, over the
whole globe. But I did get it in the Farmer's Boy. I
visualized the whole scene, the entire harmonious life; I was
with him from morn till eve always in that same green country
with the same sky, cloudy or serene, above me; in the rustic
village, at the small church with a thatched roof where the
daws nested in the belfry, and the children played and shouted
among the gravestones in the churchyard; in woods and green
and ploughed fields and the deep lanes--with him and his
fellow-toilers, and the animals, domestic and wild, regarding
their life and actions from day to day through all the
vicissitudes of the year.
Pages:
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281