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Pleased hell awhile suspends his breath , Then shouts in joy , and laughs in hate ; And plague , and famine , call on death Their jubilee to celebrate . A shadow bids improvement stand , While faster flow a nation ' s tears .
Oh , dead man ! with thy pallid hand Thou rollest back the tide of years !' Corn Law Rhymes , pp . 37 , 38 . If the last two lines be not poetry , why then * the pillared firmament is rottenness . The Village Patriarch is the description of a man , poor , blind , and old , a man of five-score years , of his person , his recollections , his sensations , walks , talks , dreams , and death ; death
which , as the bailiffs invade his cottage , and the workhouse opens which , as the bailiffs . invade his cottage , and the workhouse opens its doors , sets free c the last of England ' s high-souPd poor . ' The beauty of the descriptions with which this poem abounds are enhanced and made more affecting by frequent reference to the patriarch ' s blindness . The loss of sight is not that of sensation . * Yet sweet to him , ye stream-loved valleys lone ,
Leafless , or blossonning fragrant , sweet are J For he can hear the wintry forest groan , And feel the beauty which he cannot see , And drink the breath of Nature , blowing free 1 Sweet still it is through fields and woods to stray ;
And fearless wanders he the country wide , For well old Enoch knows each ancient way ; He finds in every moss-grown tree a guide , To every time-dark rock he seems allied , Calls the stream Sister , and is not disown ' d . ' Village Patriarch , p . 7
Both in this poem and in the * Love , ' there is a sustained excellence of versification , thought and imagery , which is very unusual . He never drops , as the songs of Burns sometimes do , from the verse which was inspired to the verse which is manufactured . His mind is healthful and vigorous ; always knows its work , and does its work ; and the prominent passages are such as the subject naturally throws out , not such as are elaborated and polished with infinite pains for the production of effect .
What is not quoted is as good as what is quoted ; and the most impressive and beautiful passages are , as they ought to be , and as every one knows the best scenes of Shakspeare are , so connected with , and dependent for their effect upon the entire piece of which they form a portion , as to appear to positive and great disadvantage in quotation . His stories and his sketches of character , both of which are frequently introduced , are so good , that we only regret not having space to give specimens of them , which we will not introduce because we cannot present them
Untitled Article
1991 The Poor and their Poetry :
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1832, page 198, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1808/page/54/
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