along its terraces. It makes me think of a man whose ancestors, at any rate, had often been cold, homeless, and tired, when I see how often he speaks of the hearth, the fire, the shelter of house walls, at evening, in hard weather, or in old age. Again and again he shows us the men forgetting their work for a little while, as they sit among children or friends, watching the flames in the window glass, or listening to the wind and rain. Give me, he says in one poem, even though I were the squire, “the settle and the great wood fire.” In another, he feels that he can endure all if only evening bring peace at home. A man with work, a family, and a store of wood for the winter, has everything: the evening meal and the wife smiling make bliss.
Barnes felt the pathos of the labourer’s rest, and one of his finest poems depicts a cottage under a swaying poplar, with the moonlight on its door,—
“An’ hands, a-tired by day, wer still,
Wi’ moonlight on the door.”
He uses the same effect a second time, adding the reflection that the children now sleeping in the moonlit house will rise again to fun, and their widowed mother to sorrow. These people are pathetic because in their “little worold” they want and have so little,—
“Drough longsome years a-wanderen,
Drough lwonesome rest a-ponderen.”
Anything may eclipse, though nought can extinguish, their little joy; yet they seem made rather for sorrow than joy. They have longings, but hardly passions. They want to rest after all, not to become discontented ghosts like “the weeping lady.” They are prepared for the worst in this life, but the worst is tempered. The dead, for example, are safe from all weathers, better off than the bereaved who grieve for them “with lonesome love.” The dead even seem beautiful in memory. There is a “glory round the old folk dead,” the old uncle and aunt who used to walk arm in arm on Sunday evenings about the farm, the grandmother who wore “a gown with great flowers like hollyhocks,” and told tales of ancient times, the old kindly squire who so enjoyed life,—
“But now I hope his kindly feäce