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. He describes it well, the frost and bitter cold, the hungry cattle following the cart to the fields, the load of turnips thrown out on the hard frozen ground; but the turnips too are frozen hard and they cannot eat them until Giles, following with his beetle, splits them up with vigorous blows, and the cows gather close round him, sending out a cloud of steam from their nostrils.
The dim short winter day soon ends, but the sound of the flails continues in the barns till long after dark before the weary labourers end their task and trudge home. Giles, too, is busy at this time taking hay to the housed cattle, many a sweet mouthful being snatched from the load as he staggers beneath it on his way to the racks. Then follow the well-earned hours of "warmth and rest" by the fire in the big old kitchen which he describes:—
For the rude architect, unknown to fame,
(Nor symmetry nor elegance his aim),
Who spread his floors of solid oak on high,
On beams rough-hewn from age to age that lie,
Bade his wide fabric unimpaired sustain
The orchard's store, and cheese, and golden grain;
Bade from its central base, capacious laid,
The well-wrought chimney rear its lofty head
Where since hath many a savoury ham been stored,
And tempests howled and Christmas gambols roared.
The tired ploughman, steeped in luxurious heat, by and by falls asleep and dreams sweetly until his chilblains or the snapping fire awakes him, and he pulls himself up and goes forth yawning to give his team their last feed, his lantern throwing a feeble gleam on the snow as he makes his way to the stable. Having completed his task, he pats the sides of those he loves best by way of good-night, and leaves them to their fragrant meal. And this kindly action on his part suggests one of the best passages of the poem. Even old well-fed Dobbin occasionally rebels against his slavery, and released from his chains will lift his clumsy hoofs and kick, "disdainful of the dirty wheel." Short-sighted Dobbin!
Thy chains were freedom, and thy toils repose,
Could the poor post-horse tell thee all his woes;
Show thee his bleeding shoulders, and unfold
The dreadful anguish he endures for gold;
Hired at each call of business, lust, or rage,
That prompts the traveller on from stage to stage.
Still on his strength depends their boasted speed;
For them his limbs grow weak, his bare ribs bleed;
And though he groaning quickens at command,
Their extra shilling in the rider's hand
Becomes his bitter scourge....
The description, too long to quote, which follows of the tortures inflicted on the post-horse a century ago, is almost incredible to us, and we flatter ourselves that such things would not be tolerated now. But we must get over the ground somehow, and I take it that but for the invention of other more rapid means of transit the present generation would be as little concerned at the pains of the post-horse as they are at the horrors enacted behind the closed doors of the physiological laboratories, the atrocity of the steel trap, the continual murdering by our big game hunters of all the noblest animals left on the globe, and finally the annual massacre of millions of beautiful birds in their breeding time to provide ornaments for the hats of our women.
"Come forth he must," says Bloomfield, when he describes how the flogged horse at length gains the end of the stage and, "trembling under complicated pains," when "every nerve a separate anguish knows," he is finally unharnessed and led to the stable door, but has scarcely tasted food and rest before he is called for again.
Though limping, maimed and sore;
He hears the whip; the chaise is at the door...
The collar tightens and again he feels
His half-healed wounds inflamed; again the wheels
With tiresome sameness in his ears resound
O'er blinding dust or miles of flinty ground.