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This is the first of an occasional series of comments on poetry.  It uses a widely anthologised poem to illustrate the parts that form, language and plot can play in poetry.

   Charlotte Mew lived all her life in London. She was born in 1869. The Farmer's Bride was published in 1916, during the First World War.  She is said to have written little more after that date and she died in 1928.  One of the puzzles about the poem is the identity of the person to whom it is dedicated, who might have been her brother Henry, one of several victims of mental instability in her family.  'He asked life of thee . . .' was adapted from Psalm 21 by her great-grandfather, who used it as the epitaph on his wife's grave.  Here is the full text of Charlotte Mew's poem..

The Farmer's Bride (1916)

            To __ __

         He asked life of thee, and thou gavest him a long life:
          even for ever and ever..


     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 'twasn'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 wasn'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!

For me, this is an absolutely stunning poem. Ever since I first read it, far more years ago than I care to say, I have been haunted by its music and its emotional power and there are lines in it that I have never forgotten. Technically, it seems to me to be faultless, with perfect rhythms and a story carried forward by unforced and excellent rhyming patterns.  The stress pattern varies from line to line, keeping it fresh, but the diction is obvious and exact.  No fumbling for a reading that could make it scan.   The use of dialect is minimal - just enough to establish the context.
 
   But the technique is only the means.  Look at the story, of a child bride, probably a bit simple, frightened of the sexuality of her husband, and the bewildered man, still loving her,  knowing she is unreachable and, in his love for her, keeping away.  And the sketches of the villagers - men chasing her like an animal, the women noticing her rapport with animals.  There is a country Christmas in the fourth stanza. Whatever it was that pulled this thing out of the poet's imagination - it was certainly not based on literal experience - the result has the power of a myth. 
 
   Here I have emboldened some of the internal rhymes and alliterations to show the richness of the verbal music, and which help to drive the poem forward to its cathartic conclusion:

     More like a little frightened fay,
              One night, in the Fall, she runned away . . . .

     We chased her, flying like a hare . . . .

     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?

     And the love and despair in the final lines:

              . . . . .Oh! My God! The down,
              The soft young down of her, the brown,
     The brown of her - her eyes, her hair, her hair!      

   Much has been written and speculated about her private life. Val Warner's introduction to her edition of Charlotte Mew's work, Collected Poems and Prose (Carcanet, 1981) provides a good starting point for those interested.  But, rather like the war that was half way through when the poem was published, her life has little relevance to the power of the poem itself.  This is a great poem that stands alone on the human story that it tells and on the craftsmanship and clarity used in telling it.  Nor does the historically remote rural setting of the story lack a modern resonance, as the deep anger in another poem in this edition of Weyfarers shows.