Phrases like "vocal groves," "Pomona's rich
bounties," or "the sylvan choir's responsive notes" meet the reader at
every turn; direct observation and concrete imagery are sacrificed to
trite abstractions, until we feel that the poet becomes a mere echo of
other and greater poets who had gone before him. But at the end of the
volume appear the "Specimens of the Yorkshire Dialect," consisting of
three songs and two eclogues. Here convention is swept aside; the author
comes face to face with life as he saw it around him in Yorkshire town
and village. We have the song of the peasant girl impatiently awaiting
the country fair at which she is to shine in all the glory of "new cauf
leather shoon" and white stockings, or declaring her intention of
escaping from a mother who "scaulds and flytes" by marrying the
sweetheart who comes courting her on "Setterday neets." What is
interesting to notice in these songs'is the influence of Burns. Browne
has caught something of the Scottish poet's racy vigour, and in his use
of a broken line of refrain in the song, "Ye loit'ring minutes faster
flee," he is employing a metrical device which Burns had used with great
success in his "Holy Fair" and "Halloween." The eclogue, "Awd Daisy," the
theme of which is a Yorkshire farmer's lament for his dead mare, exhibits
that affection for faithful animals which we meet with in Cowper, Burns,
and other poets of the Romantic Revival.
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