Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, FROM THE SOIL (TWO MONOLOGUES), by FORD MADOX FORD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

FROM THE SOIL (TWO MONOLOGUES), by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Aham a mighty simple man and only
Last Line: All over hill and dale. ...
Alternate Author Name(s): Hueffer, Ford Hermann; Hueffer, Ford Madox
Subject(s): Farm Life; God; Labor & Laborers; Agriculture; Farmers; Work; Workers


I
The Field Labourer speaks.

AH am a mighty simple man and only
Good wi' my baggin' hook and sichlike and 'tis lonely
Wheer Ah do hedge on Farmer Finn his farm.
Often Ah gits to thinking
When it grows dark and the ol' sun's done sinking,
And Ah hev had my sheere
Of fear
And wanted to feel sure that God were near
And goodly warm—
As near as th'eldritch shave I were at wark about...

Plenty o' time for thinking
We hes between the getting up and sinking
Of that ol' sun—about the God we tark about...

In the beginning God made Heaven and
The' Arth, 'n Sea we sometimes hear a-calling
When wind she bloweth from the rainy land
An' says ther'll soon be wet an' rain a-falling.

Ah'll give you, parson, God he made the sea,
An' made this 'Arth, ner yit Ah wo-an't scrimmage
But what He made the sky; what passes me
Is that what follows:"Then the Lord made we
In his own image."

For, let alone the difference in us creatures,
Some short o' words like me, and others preachers
With stores of them, like you; some fair, some middlin',
Some black-avis'd like you and good at fiddlin',
Some crabb'd, some mad, some mighty gay and pleasant,
No two that's more alike than jackdaw is to pheasant,
We're poorish stuff at best.

We doesn't last no time before we die,
Nor leave more truck behind than they poor thrushes.
You find, stiff feathers, laid aside the bushes
After a hard ol' frost in Janu-ry.
Ol' crow he lives much longer,
Ol' mare's a de-al stronger
'N the hare's faster...
If so be God's like we and we like He
The man's as good's his Master.

You are a civil, decent-spoken man, Muss Parson.
'N' I don't think ye'll say this kind o' tark is worse'n arson—
That's burning stacks, I think—surely it isn' meant so,
I tell you, Parson, no;
'N' us poor folk we doesn't want to blame
You parsons fer the things that's said and sung
Up there in church. My apple tree is crook'd because 'twere bent so
When it were young.
'N' them as had you preacher-folk to tame,
Taught you the tales that you are bound to tell
Us folk below
About three Gods that's one an' Heav'n an' Hell,
An' things us folk ain't meant to understand.
I tell you, sir, we men that's on the land
Needs summut we can chew when trouble's brewing,
When our ol' 'ooman's bad an' rent is due
'N' we no farden,
'N' when it's late to sow 'n' still too wet to dig the garden,
Something as we can chew like that ol' cow be chewing.
Something told plain and something we gits holt on,
—You need a simple sort o' feed to raise a colt on—
We needs it, parson, life's a bitter scrimmage,
Livin' and stuggin' in the mud and things we do
Enow confound us;
We hain't no need for fear
Of God, to make the living hardly worth. ...

You tell us, sir, that "God He made this Earth
In His own image,"
An' make the Lord seem near.
So's we could think that when we come to die
We'll lie
In this same goodly 'Arth, an' things goo on around us
Much as they used to goo.

II
The Small Farmer soliloquizes.

I wonder why we toiled upon the earth
From sunrise until sunset, dug and delved,
Crook-backed, cramp-fingered, making little marks
On the unmoving bosoms of the hills,
And nothing came of it. And other men
In the same places dug and delved and ended
As we have done; and other men just there
Shall do the self-same things until the end.
I wonder why we did it. ... Underneath
The grass that fed my sheep, I often thought
Something lay hidden, some sinister thing
Lay looking up at us as if it looked
Upwards thro' quiet waters; that it saw
Us futile toilers scratching little lines
And doing nothing. And maybe it smiled
Because it knew that we must come to this. ...
I lay and heard the rain upon the roof
All night when rain spelt ruin, lay and heard
The east wind shake the windows when that wind
Meant parched up land, dried herbage, blighted wheat,
And ruin, always ruin creeping near
In the long droughts and bitter frosts and floods.
And when at dawning I went out-a-doors
I used to see the top of the tall shaft
O' the workhouse here, peep just above the downs,
It was as if the thing were spying, waiting,
Watching my movements, saying, "You will come,
Will come at last to me." And I am here...
And down below that Thing lay there and smiled;
Or no, it did not smile; it was as if
One might have caught it smiling, but one saw
The earth immovable, the unmoved sheep
And senseless hedges run like little strings
All over hill and dale. ...





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