The Village and The Newspaper

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Title: The Village and The Newspaper
Author: George Crabbe
Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5203]?[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]?[This file was first posted on June 4, 2002]?[Most recently updated: June 4, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
? START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE VILLAGE AND THE NEWSPAPER ***
Transcribed by Mark Sherwood, e-mail: [email protected]
The Village and The Newspaper by George Crabbe (1754-1832)
Contents
The Village
Book 1?Book 2?The Newspaper
THE VILLAGE
BOOK I.--THE ARGUMENT.
The Subject proposed--Remarks upon Pastoral Poetry--A Tract of Country near the Coast described--An Impoverished Borough--Smugglers and their Assistants--Rude Manners of the Inhabitants--Ruinous Effects of the High Tide--The Village Life more generally?considered: Evils of it--The Youthful Labourer--The Old Man: his Soliloquy--The Parish Workhouse: its Inhabitants--The sick Poor: their Apothecary--The dying Pauper--The Village Priest.
The Village Life, and every care that reigns?O'er youthful peasants and declining swains;?What labour yields, and what, that labour past,?Age, in its hour of languor, finds at last;?What form the real Picture of the Poor,?Demand a song--the Muse can give no more.
Fled are those times, when, in harmonious strains,?The rustic poet praised his native plains:?No Shepherds now, in smooth alternate verse,?Their country's beauty or their nymphs rehearse;?Yet still for these we frame the tender strain,?Still in our lays fond Corydons complain,?And shepherds' boys their amorous pains reveal,?The only pains, alas! they never feel.
On Mincio's banks, in Caesar's bounteous reign,?If Tityrus found the Golden Age again,?Must sleepy bards the nattering dream prolong,?Mechanic echoes of the Mantuan song??From Truth and Nature shall we widely stray,?Where Virgil, not where Fancy, leads the way?
Yes, thus the Muses sing of happy swains,?Because the Muses never knew their pains:?They boast their peasant's pipes; but peasants now?Resign their pipes and plod behind the plough;?And few, amid the rural tribe, have time?To number syllables and play with rhyme;?Save honest DUCK, what son of verse could share?The poet's rapture and the peasant's care??Or the great labours of the field degrade,?With the new peril of a poorer trade?
From this chief cause these idle praises spring,?That themes so easy few forbear to sing;?For no deep thought the trifling subjects ask;?To sing of shepherds is an easy task:?The happy youth assumes the common strain,?A nymph his mistress, and himself a swain;?With no sad scenes he clouds his tuneful prayer,?But all, to look like her, is painted fair.
I grant indeed that fields and flocks have charms?For him that grazes or for him that farms;?But when amid such pleasing scenes I trace?The poor laborious natives of the place,?And see the mid-day sun, with fervid ray,?On their bare heads and dewy temples play;?While some, with feebler heads and fainter hearts,?Deplore their fortune, yet sustain their parts?Then shall I dare these real ills to hide?In tinsel trappings of poetic pride?
No; cast by Fortune on a frowning coast,?Which neither groves nor happy valleys boast;?Where other cares than those the Muse relates,?And other shepherds dwell with other mates;?By such examples taught, I paint the Cot,?As Truth will paint it, and as Bards will not:?Nor you, ye Poor, of letter'd scorn complain,?To you the smoothest song is smooth in vain;?O'ercome by labour, and bow'd down by time,?Feel you the barren flattery of a rhyme??Can poets soothe you, when you pine for bread,?By winding myrtles round your ruin'd shed??Can their light tales your weighty griefs o'erpower,?Or glad with airy mirth the toilsome hour?
Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er,?Lends the light turf that warms the neighbouring poor;?From thence a length of burning sand appears,?Where the thin harvest waves its wither'd ears;?Rank weeds, that every art and care defy,?Reign o'er the land, and rob the blighted rye.?There thistles stretch their prickly arms afar,?And to the ragged infant threaten war;?There poppies nodding, mock the hope of toil,?There the blue bugloss paints the sterile soil;?Hardy and high, above the slender sheaf,?The slimy mallow waves her silky leaf;?O'er the young shoot the charlock throws a shade,?And clasping tares cling round the sickly blade.?With mingled