The Shepherd's Calendar has been such a boon and a joy this year, when so many of us have been cooped up fretfully at home. It's been a lesson in the wonder of local treasures.
Clare's editor may have felt the same need for tranquility, for he cut a lot of the beginning of September, perhaps because it's about a whole variety of dishonest acts. My guess is that it didn't fit in with the idea of the harmonious country village he thought was going to be popular with the reading public.
But there are thieves everywhere.
'Old Goody'...
...from young chickens drives away
The circling kite that round them flies
Waiting the chance to steal the prize
Hogs try through gates the street to gain
& steal into the fields of grain
From night's full prison comes the duck
Waddling eager through the muck
Squeezing through the orchard pales
Where morning's bounty rarely fails
Eager gobbling as they pass
Dewworms through the padded grass
Where blushing apples round and red
Load down the boughs and pat the head
Of longing maid that hither goes
To hang on lines the drying clothes
Who views them oft with tempted eye
& steals one as she passes bye.
What a fool Clare's editor was to cut those lines. Why, it describes almost literally a paradise.
Or a new Garden of Eden, anyway.
I mean, what could be more thought-provoking on the subject of religious morality than that?
Oh. I see.
Ah well.
Word To Use Today: dewworm. There aren't very many English words with a double w, so we must value carefully all we have. A dewworm is a common earthworm: so much lovelier a name, isn't it, than earthworm, and for such important and useful little animals, too.
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