Selected Poems

William Barnes (1801-1886), "the Dorset Poet", wrote best in Dorest dialect: "I cannot help it. It is my mother tongue, and it is to my mind the only true speech of the life that I draw". His setting is a rural Dorset threatened by enclosure. Hopkins called him "a perfect artist. It is as if Dorset life and Dorset landscape had taken flesh and blood in this man". He left a mark on Hardy, too, who spoke of the "closeness of phrase to vision" in his poems. Barnes was a self-taught linguist and scholar. His experiments with language and form are radical. As a parson, he loved the lives around him and caught perfectly the inflections, gestures and expressions of his people. Hardy knew him as an "aged clergyman, quaintly attired in caped cloak, knee-breeches, and buckled shoes, with a leather satchel slung over his shoulders, and a stout staff in his hand". A little grey dog accompanied him on his rounds. This old man was one of the most copious and original writers of his age, plain-speaking in manner, avoiding the literature of the day, devoted to a natural, rural eloquence. This selection includes his best poems in dialect and standard English.