The farmer’s bride
Charlotte Mew’s poem “The Farmer’s Bride” was first published in “The Nation” newspaper in 1912 and was later included in Mew’s collection of poetry under the same name in 1916.
Charlotte Mary Mew was born on 15 November 1869 in Bloomsbury, London, England, and she died on 24 March 1928 in Westminster, London, England, at the age of 58.Mew’s poems are varied. Some of them are passionate discussions of faith and the possibility of belief in God; others are proto-modernist in form and atmosphere. She made experimental use of long, prose-like lines, and varieties of enjambment and indentation. Many of her poems are in the form of dramatic monologues, and she often wrote from the point of view of a male persona. Two concern mental illness.
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Three summers since I chose a maid, Too young maybe — but more’s to do At harvest-time than bide and woo. When us was wed she turned afraid Of love and me and all things human; Like the shut of a winter’s day Her smile went out, and ’twadn’t a woman — More like a little frightened fay. One night, in the Fall, she runned away. “Out ’mong the sheep, her be,” they said, ’Should properly have been abed; But sure enough she wadn’t there Lying awake with her wide brown stare. So over seven-acre field and up-along across the down We chased her, flying like a hare Before our lanterns. To Church-Town All in a shiver and a scare We caught her, fetched her home at last And turned the key upon her, fast. She does the work about the house As well as most, but like a mouse: Happy enough to chat and play With birds and rabbits and such as they, So long as men-folk keep away. “Not near, not near!” her eyes beseech When one of us comes within reach. The women say that beasts in stall Look round like children at her call. I’ve hardly heard her speak at all. Shy as a leveret, swift as he, Straight and slight as a young larch tree, Sweet as the first wild violets, she, To her wild self. But what to me? The short days shorten and the oaks are brown, The blue smoke rises to the low grey sky, One leaf in the still air falls slowly down, A magpie’s spotted feathers lie On the black earth spread white with rime, The berries redden up to Christmas-time. What’s Christmas-time without there be Some other in the house than we! She sleeps up in the attic there Alone, poor maid. ’Tis but a stair Betwixt us. Oh! my God! the down, The soft young down of her, the brown, The brown of her — her eyes, her hair, her hair!