The Irish Poet and the Natural World: An Anthology of Verse in English from the Tudors to the Romantics

Charles Boyd (1762–1809–?)

370 CHARLES BOYD (1762–1809–?) Charles Boyd was born in Dublin in 1762, educated at Trinity College Dublin and called to the Irish bar in 1776. He published a translation of Virgil’s Georgics and selected eclogues in Dublin in 1808 and this imitation and modernisation of the Georgics in the following year. In his introduction to the translation, he explains that his love of country pursuits has been strengthened by his reading of the Georgics. The poem is of great interest for its extensive and detailed account of, and recommendations about, life on a working farm in Ireland in the early years of the nineteenth century. The poem is in twelve long sections, one for each month, beginning – as does the farm year – at Michaelmas. It also contains an index listing such items as muck, hogs, turnips, winter, wool etc. The first extract below shows the kind of explicit agricultural and financial advice given throughout the poem while the second is a more reflective passage on the beauty of the settled farmland of County Wicklow. The poem is the only printed Irish verse imitation and modernisation of Virgil’s Georgics of its day, though it follows in the footsteps of celebrated English examples such as John Philip’s ‘Cyder’ (1708) and John Dyer’s ‘The Fleece’ (1757). Just as those poems sprang from an intimate knowledge of the English countryside, so this poem reflects a similar knowledge of the countryside of Wicklow. from: A Georgic of Modern Husbandry from ‘May’ … The twelfth of May is a good time to stock Your farm with wethers1 for your yearly flock; These lean, unshorn, and three years old you’ll buy, The pastures feed them first, you then rely On turnips for the fatt’ning finish, or Borecole2 or rye, as we have said before. Always in cribs,3 in yard or pasture, lay With Winter vegetables, nicest hay. Nothing more profitable is than this, You gain a third part, instantly, by fleece, 10 Of what they cost, and sell for twice as much At least, and often more; where profit such As this accrues, you make full cent per cent.4 Good farming trade! o’erbalancing the rent. Ewes in their profits full as high will go; castrated rams. 1 broccoli or kale. 2 the openwork metal basket from which farm animals take their food. 3 i.e. you double your money. 4 371 Charles Boyd The lamb, the fleece, and, fattened, sold the ewe; These last at Michaelmas are cheaply bought, And all in compass of the year is brought. This of dry land, most fit for sheep, and good, Must in th’account be always understood; 20 For spewy clays5 and Winter’s poachy6 ground, Unfit for sheep, cannot preserve them sound. For beasts and tillage use this spongy land, Drain and sow beans, if you would rent command,7 Or cabbage in this soil may well succeed And, some will tell you, equals turnips’ feed. ... from ‘September’ … Mild Autumn now prepares her changing hues For artist’s pencil and for poets muse; Soon shall the landscape charm the tasteful eye With the decaying leaf’s enrich’ning dye, The distant mountains, verging on the skies, Retiring woods and castles dim arise, The sea confus’d with sky, not blue, nor green, Almost invisible, yet sea is seen: Nearer the objects do their shape assume, Distinguished by more light, more shady gloom; 10 But the fair fore-ground, rich beyond all thought, Lawns, mansions, woods with tints of Autumn fraught, The scatter’d seats and their adjoining groves, Hills, lakes and vallies; here the riv’let roves Through the deep glin, hoarse sounding waters fall And slumb’ring echoes from recesses call. Mourn not departed crops, for scenes like these Dispel all grief and sorrow’s murmurs ease; These, Wicklow, are thy scenes; the nearer sea Shall fleets of trading vessels oft display, 20 Whose tight-bent canvas, if the day be bright, Glows with a splendour of unsullied white. Thus commerce flourishes, art’s kept alive, heavy ground tending to be excessively wet. 5 sodden. 6 i.e. have power over the rent. 7 372 The hands employ’d in manufactures thrive, Thus plenty, from the rich, productive south, Steers to the pop’lous city’s harbour-mouth, In passing gratify the feasting eye And friendly Agriculture’s wants supply. ... ...