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Your remarks are perfectly just on the 'Allegorical lines, except that, in this district, corn is as often cut with a scythe, as with a hook. However, for 'Scythesman' read Rustic. For 'poor fond thing' read foolish thing, and for 'flung to fade, and rot, and die, read flung to wither and to die. Having once inquired of Mr.
The word scythesman, for a short poem, is insufferably rough; and furthermore requires the inhalation of a good breath, before it can be pronounced; besides which, as the second objection, by connecting sheaves with scythesman, it shows that the scythe is cutting wheat, whereas, wheat is cut with a hook or sickle.
If my agricultural knowledge be correct, barley and oats are cut with a scythe, but these grains are not put into sheaves. Had you not better substitute rustic, for scythesman? The first line in the third stanza is not happy. The spondee, in a compound word, sometimes gives a favourable emphasis; but to my taste, rarely, when it is formed of a double epithet.
'No hedger brished nor scythesman swung'. and 'The morning hedger with his brishing-hook'. These two lines explain the word #brish#. O.E.D. gives brish as dialectal of brush, and so E.D.D. has the verb to brush as dialect for trimming a tree or hedge. Brush is a difficult homophone, and it would be useful to have one of its derivative meanings separated off as brish.
They are excellent arm-in-arm companions, but quarrelsome neighbours, when a stile separates them. The first line in the second stanza I do not like. 'When the scythesman o'er his sheaf. Two objections apply to this line.
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