Clare writes that his purpose is not to lament the sorrows but to show the joys; and we may take the dominant motive of the poet from the following lines:
But useless naming what distress reveals,
As every child of want feels all that Lubin feels.
In accordance with this purpose, in the “Village Minstrel”, his longest poem, he gives us a variegated picture of idyllic country life.
In the Spring the country hums with new life. On his way to plow the fields, the peasant feels the Spring-time in the air; the birds sing merrily as they build their nests; the blue-meadow-daisy peeps farther out from the grass; while the white lambs grazing on the green commons look like the last remnants of the winter’s snow. The milk-maid hums a love song as she weaves a garland to crown the first returning cow. The housewives gossip about the hens and the geese; while on Sunday after church the men talk about the good and the bad signs of the weather for the growing grain.
Then the Spring passes into summer, with its gentle, quiet breezes. A droning insect disturbed by a shrill sound of the hay-maker’s scythe ceases for a moment his course; a butterfly rests on a stalk and is swayed to and fro by the breeze. The laborer, returning home in the long summer twilight, remembers the ghost stories told the past winter; and as the night comes on he hears the swashing sound of the drowned Amy’s boots. Mid-summer is ushered in with its feast, and every heart is jumping with joy. In brand-new clothes the swain goes to the place of merriment, eager to meet his sun-tanned lass. The woodsman and the thresher, children and kin from the neighboring village, are all present. At the cotter’s house, Joe tunes his fiddle for the dance. When the fiddler is paid, the place is cleared for the merry games that follow the feast.
Great sport for them was jumping in a sack,
For beaver hat bedecked in ribbons blue;
Soon one jumps down though he’s broke his neck
And tries to rise and wondrous sport they make,
And monstrous fun it makes to hunt the pig;
As soapt and larded through the crowd he flies.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
And badger-baiting here, and fighting cocks—
And wrestlers join to tug each other down.
At night the men go to the ale-house to drink, smoke, and make merry until the money’s all gone.
Resolv’d to keep it merry while it’s here
As toil comes every day and feasts but once a year.
Autumn, with corn gleanings and merry tales, brings its joy and feasts. As the old women gather the last of the harvest, they get over-heated. Stopping to catch their breath, they amuse the children with stories or Jack the Giant-Killer, Cincerilla, and Thumbs. When the harvest work is done, another feast, known as the Harvest-Supper, follows. Beer, smoking, and harmless pranks usher out the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.
Autumn breezes turn into sharper and more stinging blasts; the moors and leas grow bare; the trees are stript of leaves; winter is come. Though sombre and desolate, the peasant delights in watching the storm, as great clouds float faster and faster as the wind drives them before it. The woodsman, returning home on a winter night with a load of fire-wood, looks like a moving snow-bank. The supper is ready stewing on the hook; the children, bright-eyed with happiness, prattle about his knees to welcome him home. After supper with the hearth swept clean, stories, songs, and prayer end the day.