Rural Life is an excerpt from “The Village,” a long poem by the English poet and clergyman George Crabbe. It was published in 1783 and was largely responsible for establishing Crabbe’s reputation as a writer. In the poem, the poet paints a grim and unsentimental picture of rural life. He describes poverty, toil, and hardship rather than the idyllic country bliss depicted in many other verses of the day.
Crabbe was in large part responding to a poem called “The Deserted Village” (1770) by Oliver Goldsmith, which depicted life in “the loveliest village” of Auburn. Goldsmith had worried about the decline of country life, and he idealized the “bold peasantry” to promote his portrait of village happiness. Crabbe, on the other hand, set out to counter this poetic dream. “I grant indeed that fields and flocks have charms,” he wrote. “But when amid such pleasing scenes I trace/The poor laborious natives of the place/…Then shall I dare these real ills to hide/In tinsel trappings of poetic pride?”
In the section of “The Village” known as “The Poor-house,” included here, Crabbe bluntly describes the misery and degradation of poverty. He also ridicules the local doctor, whom other writers would portray as a figure of kind authority.
Theirs is yon house that holds the parish poor, Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door; There, where the putrid vapours, flagging, play, And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day;— There children dwell who know no parents’ care; Parents, who know no children’s love, dwell there; Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed, Forsaken wives and mothers never wed; Dejected widows with unheeded tears, And crippled age with more than childhood fears, The lame, the blind, and, far the happiest they! The moping idiot and the madman gay. Here too the sick their final doom receive, Here brought, amid the scenes of grief, to grieve; Where the loud groans from some sad chamber flow, Mixed with the clamours of the crowd below; Here sorrowing, they each kindred sorrow scan, And the cold charities of man to man: Whose laws indeed for ruined age provide, And strong compulsion plucks the scrap from pride; But still that scrap is bought with many a sigh, And pride embitters what it can’t deny. Say ye, oppressed by some fantastic woes, Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose; Who press the downy couch, while slaves advance With timid eye, to read the distant glance; Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease, To name the nameless ever-new disease; Who with mock patience dire complaints endure, Which real pain, and that, alone, can cure; How would ye bear in real pain to lie? Despised, neglected, left alone to die? How would ye bear to draw your latest breath, Where all that’s wretched paves the way for death? Such is that room which one rude beam divides, And naked rafters form the sloping sides; Where the vile bands that bind the thatch are seen, And lath and mud are all that lie between; Save one dull pane, that, coarsely patched, gives way To the rude tempest, yet excludes the day: Here, on a matted flock, with dust o’erspread, The drooping wretch reclines his languid head; For him no hand the cordial cup applies, Or wipes the tear that stagnates in his eyes; No friends with soft discourse his pain beguile, Or promise hope till sickness wears a smile. But soon a loud and hasty summons calls, Shakes the thin roof, and echoes round the walls; Anon, a figure enters, quaintly neat, All pride and business, bustle and conceit; With looks unaltered by these scenes of woe, With speed that, entering, speaks his haste to go; He bids the gazing throng around him fly, And carries Fate and Physic in his eye; A potent quack, long versed in human ills, Who first insults the victim whom he kills; Whose murderous hand a drowsy Bench protect, And whose most tender mercy is neglect. Paid by the parish for attendance here, He wears contempt upon his sapient sneer; In haste he seeks the bed where misery lies, Impatience marked in his averted eyes; And, some habitual queries hurried o’er, Without reply, he rushes on the door; His drooping patient, long inured to pain, And long unheeded, knows remonstrance vain; He ceases now the feeble help to crave Of man; and silent sinks into the grave.
Crabbe’s poem is written in rhyming couplets, also known as heroic couplets—two rhymed lines of 10 syllables each. In form and style, his poetry reflects the ideals of the earlier Augustan Age, a period from about 1700 to about 1750 that stressed reason and order in writing. Many of the Augustan writers were harshly critical of society and used sarcasm to further their aims. Crabbe’s social criticism, however, is more bitterly direct and bleak. His descriptions are extremely powerful in their realism. Many educated readers of Crabbe’s day believed that the poor were generously taken care of by laws, doctors, and priests. But Crabbe made his readers see the harsh truths about “the cold charities of man to man.”
Although the individual descriptions in “The Village” are forceful, the poem as a whole does not build up to a final argument for social change or upheaval. For this reason, many critics have found it unsatisfying. Later in the poem, Crabbe tries to counter the misery of the poor by considering some misfortunes of the wealthy. But for many readers, especially today, this is a disappointment. “The Village” is nevertheless an original poem that awakened many social consciences in its day.
For more information on Crabbe, see Crabbe, George. See also English literature (The Johnson circle).
