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. At all events it
is less patchy and more equal. It is also more sober in tone,
as befits the subject, and opens with an account of the
domestic animals on the farm, their increased dependence on
man and the compassionate feelings they evoke in us. He is,
we feel, dealing with realities, always from the point of view
of a boy of sensitive mina and tender heart--one taken in
boyhood from this life before it had wrought any change in
him. For in due time the farm boy, however fine his spirit
may be, must harden and grow patient and stolid in heat and
cold and wet, like the horse that draws the plough or cart;
and as he hardens he grows callous. In his wretched London
garret if any change came to him it was only to an increased
love and pity for the beasts he had lived among, who looked
and cried to him to be fed.
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