The Full Text of “The Farmer's Bride”
1 Three summers since I chose a maid,
2 Too young maybe—but more’s to do
3 At harvest-time than bide and woo.
4 When us was wed she turned afraid
5 Of love and me and all things human;
6 Like the shut of a winter’s day
7 Her smile went out, and ’twadn’t a woman—
8 More like a little frightened fay.
9 One night, in the Fall, she runned away.
10 “Out ’mong the sheep, her be,” they said,
11 ’Should properly have been abed;
12 But sure enough she wadn’t there
13 Lying awake with her wide brown stare.
14So over seven-acre field and up-along across the down
15 We chased her, flying like a hare
16 Before out lanterns. To Church-Town
17 All in a shiver and a scare
18 We caught her, fetched her home at last
19 And turned the key upon her, fast.
20 She does the work about the house
21 As well as most, but like a mouse:
22 Happy enough to chat and play
23 With birds and rabbits and such as they,
24 So long as men-folk keep away.
25 “Not near, not near!” her eyes beseech
26 When one of us comes within reach.
27 The women say that beasts in stall
28 Look round like children at her call.
29 I’ve hardly heard her speak at all.
30 Shy as a leveret, swift as he,
31 Straight and slight as a young larch tree,
32 Sweet as the first wild violets, she,
33 To her wild self. But what to me?
34 The short days shorten and the oaks are brown,
35 The blue smoke rises to the low grey sky,
36 One leaf in the still air falls slowly down,
37 A magpie’s spotted feathers lie
38 On the black earth spread white with rime,
39 The berries redden up to Christmas-time.
40 What’s Christmas-time without there be
41 Some other in the house than we!
42 She sleeps up in the attic there
43 Alone, poor maid. ’Tis but a stair
44 Betwixt us. Oh! my God! the down,
45 The soft young down of her, the brown,
46The brown of her—her eyes, her hair, her hair!
The Full Text of “The Farmer's Bride”
1 Three summers since I chose a maid,
2 Too young maybe—but more’s to do
3 At harvest-time than bide and woo.
4 When us was wed she turned afraid
5 Of love and me and all things human;
6 Like the shut of a winter’s day
7 Her smile went out, and ’twadn’t a woman—
8 More like a little frightened fay.
9 One night, in the Fall, she runned away.
10 “Out ’mong the sheep, her be,” they said,
11 ’Should properly have been abed;
12 But sure enough she wadn’t there
13 Lying awake with her wide brown stare.
14So over seven-acre field and up-along across the down
15 We chased her, flying like a hare
16 Before out lanterns. To Church-Town
17 All in a shiver and a scare
18 We caught her, fetched her home at last
19 And turned the key upon her, fast.
20 She does the work about the house
21 As well as most, but like a mouse:
22 Happy enough to chat and play
23 With birds and rabbits and such as they,
24 So long as men-folk keep away.
25 “Not near, not near!” her eyes beseech
26 When one of us comes within reach.
27 The women say that beasts in stall
28 Look round like children at her call.
29 I’ve hardly heard her speak at all.
30 Shy as a leveret, swift as he,
31 Straight and slight as a young larch tree,
32 Sweet as the first wild violets, she,
33 To her wild self. But what to me?
34 The short days shorten and the oaks are brown,
35 The blue smoke rises to the low grey sky,
36 One leaf in the still air falls slowly down,
37 A magpie’s spotted feathers lie
38 On the black earth spread white with rime,
39 The berries redden up to Christmas-time.
40 What’s Christmas-time without there be
41 Some other in the house than we!
42 She sleeps up in the attic there
43 Alone, poor maid. ’Tis but a stair
44 Betwixt us. Oh! my God! the down,
45 The soft young down of her, the brown,
46The brown of her—her eyes, her hair, her hair!
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“The Farmer's Bride” Introduction
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“The Farmer’s Bride” (1912) is a dramatic monologue by the English poet Charlotte Mew, and eventually became the title work of her acclaimed 1916 collection. The poem's speaker, a farmer, reflects on his marriage to a much younger girl, who is clearly afraid of him and uncomfortable with the traditional role she is expected to play as a wife. While he's sympathetic to her fear, he's also unable to really understand her—and the poem's ominous conclusion suggests that he's not going to be gentle with her for too much longer.
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“The Farmer's Bride” Summary
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Three summers have gone by since I picked a young girl to marry. She might have been too young, but it was time for my crops to be harvested, so I was too busy to wait around and try to win a woman over. Once we got married, she grew afraid of me, intimacy, and society itself. She stopped smiling, which reminded me of light going out early at the end of the day during wintertime. She wasn’t a woman, but more like a small, scared fairy. One fall, she ran away in the middle of the night.
“She’s outside with the sheep,” the townspeople told me when she definitely should’ve been in bed. But, as they expected, she wasn’t lying in bed with her brown eyes wide open like she normally is. So we chased her all across the seven-acre field, up and over the hill. She rushed onwards as quickly as a hare in front of our lamps. Once we made it to Church-Town, we captured her while she shook in fear, finally brought her back to the house, and quickly locked her up.
She does the housework as adequately as most wives, but timidly, reminding me of a mouse. She happily spends time with animals, as long as there aren’t any men around. Whenever one of us comes close enough to touch her, her eyes beg, “Don’t come near me, don’t come near me!” Local women say that the farm animals seek her out like children when they hear her voice. I’ve barely heard her speak a word.
She is as shy and quick as a young hare. Her body is slim and without curves like a sapling. She’s as sweet as the first wildflowers that bloom—at least, she is that way towards her own wild, unrestrained self. But what is her attitude towards me?
There is less and less daylight as the fall and winter months go on, and the leaves on the trees have turned brown. Blue frost drifts into the grey sky where clouds hang low, and a single leaf sinks through motionless air. Bird feathers with bold markings lie on the ground. The soil is black, but it's covered in a layer of white frost. The berries will continue to mature, growing redder until Christmas. It wouldn't be Christmas without new life around the house!
She sleeps in the attic all by herself, poor girl. There is only a staircase separating us. Oh god! I imagine the soft, fine hair that covers her and the brown color of her features—especially her eyes and hair. Oh, her hair!
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“The Farmer's Bride” Themes
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Gender, Misogyny, and Power
“The Farmer’s Bride” describes the marriage of a farmer and his much younger wife, who is clearly miserable in their relationship. Having had no say in the marriage, the young bride is terrified of her husband and tries to run away—only to be chased down like an animal and effectively imprisoned in the farmer’s home. The farmer, meanwhile, thinks only of how his wife might fulfill his own desires, and the poem ends with him ominously lusting after her body in a way that suggests he may soon force himself on her (or perhaps that he already has). In this way, the poem illustrates the misogyny of patriarchal gender roles, wherein men hold disproportionate authority while women are seen as sexual objects and homemakers. Such rigid gender expectations, the poem implies, prioritize men’s wants while robbing women of their autonomy and full humanity.
From the start, it’s clear that the farmer, and the world in which he lives, sees his wife’s needs as inferior to his own. And while the girl has no voice in the poem—in fact, the farmer “has hardly heard her speak at all”—her husband’s desires are centered throughout.
The speaker says “I chose a maid,” for example, as though he were shopping, and admits that she was probably “too young” to be married in the first place. And despite being terrified and unhappy after the wedding, the young bride’s concerns are disregarded. Three years into the relationship, the speaker defends his decision by saying that he was simply too busy to consider if she was ready. There’s “more’s to do / At harvest-time” than seek out the most suitable woman, he says—reflecting a traditional belief that men’s work is more important than women’s needs and implying that women all fill a similar role.
The speaker compares the girl to animals throughout the poem—a hare, a mouse, a leveret—reinforcing the idea that he doesn’t actually see her as an equal human being, but rather as a meek creature that he easily dominates. When she runs away in a desperate attempt to escape, for example, a group of people help the farmer hunt her down “like a hare.” The farmer says he “caught” and “fetched her” as though she were a piece of property, again revealing that the girl has no power in this relationship and that what she wants doesn’t matter.
The search party brings her back through the “Church-Town” (a reminder that society has approved of this unequal union) before locking her at home. The girl must then conform to the typical expectations of a wife, including “[doing] the work around the house” and, it’s implied, pleasing her husband sexually. The girl clearly dreads these so-called responsibilities, as she completes her chores “like a mouse” and shouts at men to stay away from her.
However, the speaker again deflects attention from his wife’s feelings by focusing on his own. He fantasizes about her lying in bed, imagining “the young soft down of her [...] the brown of her—her eyes, her hair, her hair!” He knows she’s scared and uncomfortable, “lying awake with her wide brown stare,” but the poem ends with the suggestion that the speaker won’t hold his lust in check for long (if he hasn’t given into it already). The poem thus ends on a disturbing, ominous note, reiterating the idea that conventional gender roles strip away women’s autonomy and humanity.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Farmer's Bride”
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Lines 1-3
Three summers since I chose a maid,
Too young maybe—but more’s to do
At harvest-time than bide and woo.The "Farmer" of the poem's title begins this dramatic monologue by telling the story of his wedding—not, as it will turn out, an especially happy occasion. In a strong rural English dialect, he explains that he got married about three years ago to a wife who was probably too young, either for him or for marriage in general. Whatever the case, the speaker is clearly aware that his wife was not an appropriate partner. He defends his decision nonetheless, claiming that he was too busy harvesting crops to wait around for the perfect wife and spend time winning her over.
But even as he defends his choice, he seems conflicted about his decision to marry such a young girl. The suggestion that she might have been "too young" is the very first idea that comes into his mind when he thinks about their engagement. But just as quickly as the idea that he is responsible for the struggles of the marriage pops up in the speaker's mind, he brushes it off and moves on. The consonance in these lines reflects his guilt and denial:
Too young maybe—but more's to do
At harvest-time than bide and woo.Those sharp /t/ sounds accentuate the speaker's brusque dismissiveness, making it sound as if he's irritatedly batting away his own doubts about his marriage.
The speaker's language here also establishes the power imbalance in this relationship. He says, "I chose a bride," making it clear that the decision to marry was his alone. Plus, the speaker's excuse that he was simply too busy to find the perfect bride implies that, in this speaker's world, a man can pick up a bride as casually as he might buy a new shirt—and not be too picky about it if he's in a rush.
The poem's first few lines also establish the poem's rural setting (and its symbolic power). The speaker measures time with the passage of the seasons ("Three summers," "At harvest-time"), which will come to represent the phases of life—and the substantial age gap between the speaker and his young bride. He also defends himself with the claim that he was focused on his harvest, calling attention to his career as a farmer and hinting at his fixation on fertility: getting a good "harvest" of children from his wife will become one of his central concerns.
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Lines 4-9
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 ’twadn’t a woman—
More like a little frightened fay.
One night, in the Fall, she runned away. -
Lines 10-13
“Out ’mong the sheep, her be,” they said,
’Should properly have been abed;
But sure enough she wadn’t there
Lying awake with her wide brown stare. -
Lines 14-19
So over seven-acre field and up-along across the down
We chased her, flying like a hare
Before out 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. -
Lines 20-24
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. -
Lines 25-29
“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. -
Lines 30-33
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? -
Lines 34-41
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! -
Lines 42-46
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!
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“The Farmer's Bride” Symbols
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The Seasons
The seasons in "The Farmer's Bride" symbolize different phases of life—and the distance between the farmer and his young bride.
The older farmer fantasizes about his bride's youth by comparing her to “the first wild violets” that bloom in spring. But after she's married, she's so traumatized that that "spring" seems to come to an abrupt end: her "smile" vanishes like “the shut of winter’s day."
Later, more images of winter symbolize the farmer's sexuality and his frustrated desire for his frightened, evasive wife—as when he describes berries “redden[ing] up to Christmas-time," getting plumper and riper like a pregnant belly. But he also notices time passing and plants dying: "one leaf" falls to the ground, the earth is "white with rime," and the days get shorter and shorter. These images of autumn and winter reflect his anxiety and frustration about growing older without having children: his wife might be lovely and enticing, but she's also too young and frightened to let him come near her, let alone sleep with her.
The seasonal images here thus symbolize both ripe youth and withered old age—and all the anxiety and frustration the poem's speaker feels about desire and aging.
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“The Farmer's Bride” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Emphatic alliteration draws readers' attention to some of the poem's most dramatic moments.
For instance, alliterative sounds appear throughout the first stanza, when the speaker describes his wife's fear and reluctance around him. In line 4, for instance, /w/ alliteration reinforces the idea that the bride began to change “When we was wed"—suggesting that a big part of the problem here is that the two were "wed" at all, while she was still far "too young." Later on, the quiet, delicate /l/ and /f/ sounds in "more like a little frightened fay" evoke the girl's fragile youth—and her terror.
And later, alliteration intensifies the tone when the speaker thinks about how his wife’s eyes seem to beg him to stay away:
“Not near, not near!” her eyes beseech
When one of us comes within reach.Here, repeating /n/ sounds accentuate the girl’s desperation not to be touched—and make it clear that the speaker understands very well that she doesn't consent to his advances, even if she never says so out loud.
Alliteration also allows the poem's sounds to mimic the ideas it describes. For instance, when the speaker claims that he has “hardly heard her speak at all," the faint /h/ sounds imitate his wife’s hushed tone, evoking her fear and voicelessness in the marriage.
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Assonance
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Asyndeton
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Consonance
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Enjambment
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Imagery
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Parallelism
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Repetition
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Rhetorical Question
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Simile
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"The Farmer's Bride" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Maid
- Bide
- Woo
- 'Twadn't
- Fay
- Abed
- Down
- Beseech
- Leveret
- Slight
- Larch
- Magpie
- Rime
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A girl or young woman.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Farmer's Bride”
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Form
“The Farmer’s Bride” is a dramatic monologue—a poem whose events are told from the perspective of a particular character. Readers are left to draw their own conclusions about this monologue's speaker, judging him by what he says and does. (Perhaps, for instance, readers might question the farmer's choice to marry a girl "too young" for him because he just doesn't have time to "bide and woo"!)
This farmer tells his story in an irregular shape, not using a standard form like a ballad: the six stanzas here are all different lengths. And the variation between these stanzas helps to create some dramatic effects:
- For instance, the first three stanzas are all nine or ten lines long: rambly passages of storytelling you might expect from a farmer sitting at the pub.
- But the abrupt fourth stanza uses only four lines—and ends on the uneasy question, "But what to me?"
This change in shape suggests that the farmer's attitude toward his bride might be starting to shift: he's moved from thinking about how she behaves to thinking about his own needs and desires. This sudden change to the form thus feels ominous: it hints that the farmer might be getting closer and closer to going to drastic, cruel lengths to get what he wants from his wife.
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Meter
This poem is mostly written in iambic tetrameter, which means that each line uses four iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm. This bouncy meter evokes the farmer's casual, jovial tone, and makes an uncomfortable contrast with what he's describing: his bride's misery.
But the poem often breaks from this pattern to create drama and surprise. For instance, there are three additional iambs in line 14, which describes the speaker chasing his wife after she runs away:
So ov-| er sev- | en-a- | cre field | and up- | along | across | the down
This long, tense line evokes the girl's desperate attempt to escape, and increases anticipation as the audience waits to learn if she got away.
Similarly, the poem’s final line contains an extra iamb, creating suspense as the speaker menacingly fantasizes about his wife’s body:
The brown | of her— | her eyes, | her hair, | her hair!
The mounting momentum suggests the speaker's frenzied frustration, and perhaps that he's on the verge of doing something violent.
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Rhyme Scheme
This poem has an irregular rhyme scheme: no two stanzas use the same pattern. Instead, the poem varies its rhymes for dramatic effect, helping to evoke the farmer's voice and feelings.
For instance, take a look at the way rhymes work in the first stanza, where the scheme runs like this:
ABBACDCDD
- In the first four lines here, the speaker seems to interrupt his own train of thought: the pair of B rhymes (in which he discusses his reasons for choosing a bride "too young" to marry) split up the A rhymes, and thus feel like an aside.
- Then the stanza moves into a more flowing, predictable CDCD pattern as the farmer gets into gear, settling into his storytelling.
- And when he hits a surprising moment, describing how his wife "runned away," his rhyme also does something surprising, adding another D rhyme where readers are expecting a C!
- Overall, then, the rhymes here fit right in with the speaker's tone as he puzzles over his strange bride and sexless marriage.
Rhyme keeps on reflecting the speaker's voice and energy all through the poem. In lines 30-33, for example, when the speaker starts getting caught up in thoughts of his wife's beauty, the rhymes look like this:
AAAA
These urgent, insistent rhymes suggest the speaker's growing intensity: his frustrated desire is only getting stronger.
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“The Farmer's Bride” Speaker
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The speaker of this poem is a farmer contemplating his strained marriage, wondering why on earth it didn't go well when he casually “chose” an adolescent bride who was probably “too young.”
Although his exact age and background are unclear, the speaker's pronounced dialect suggests that he's a working-class person—and one from the same late-19th-century rural England that Charlotte Mew herself grew up in.
Worried about his own advancing age and his desire to have a child, this speaker is increasingly troubled that his wife won't let him come near her, and he's getting sexually frustrated—a combination that doesn't bode well for his frightened bride. While the farmer at first seems merely puzzled by his strange, fairy-like wife (and her urgent desire to escape him), his habit of describing her as a wild hare suggests that he sees her as prey—and means to hunt her down sooner or later.
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“The Farmer's Bride” Setting
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“The Farmer’s Bride” takes place on a farm in the English countryside, a landscape full of hares, downs, magpies, and larch trees. The poem’s speaker, a farmer, is closely attuned to the natural world around him, and often uses the beauty of the spring flowers or the slow death of winter as images of his desire for his wife and his anxieties about old age.
The setting here also suggests a contrast between the farmer, who manages and controls the land, and his wife, who seems to be a part of it: as "shy as a leveret," she seems more at home with the "beasts" than the home where her husband locks her away.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Farmer's Bride”
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Literary Context
Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) first published “The Farmer’s Bride” in 1912—a breakthrough moment in her literary career. While Mew had already published several stories, essays, and poems, “The Farmer’s Bride" catapulted her to fame with its unvarnished look at sexual oppression and its sympathetic treatment of both the speaker and his unfortunate young bride. The literary world was also fascinated by Mew’s rejection of gender roles: she cut her hair short, wore men’s clothing, and refused to marry.
Mew’s work often explores themes like those in "The Farmer's Bride": for instance, alienation (“Saturday Market”) and sexuality (“The Fête”). Unusually experimental in its time, her poetry stood out for its conversational rhythms, everyday language, sprawling lines, and frank, shocking themes. Writers from Thomas Hardy to Virginia Woolf praised her innovative work.
But this poem also fits right in with Mew's contemporary poetic world. For instance, thanks to poets like Robert Browning, the dramatic monologue became a popular late-19th-century form. And woman poets such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti were also decrying the rigidity and injustice of conventional gender roles in their work. The figure of the New Woman—educated, ambitious, and self-sufficient—emerged around the turn of the 20th century, and Mew might be seen as a pioneer of this kind of female liberation.
Historical Context
Charlotte Mew was born in 1869 during England’s Victorian era, which can be taken as the poem’s setting and historical backdrop. During the Victorian era, women were seen as the property of either their fathers or their husbands, and had few legal rights of their own. (For instance, English women didn't legally own their own earnings until 1870, and weren't allowed to vote until 1918.) Traditionally, a young woman’s main duties including being an obedient wife and looking after the household, with motherhood being her greatest accomplishment. And substantial age gaps between older husbands and younger wives were common, even standard, as they were thought to reflect the “natural” dominance of men over women.
Mew herself was all too well acquainted with these expectations—and firmly resisted them. Shockingly for her time, she refused to marry, cut her hair short, wore men’s clothing, and pursued relationships with women.
While part of Mew's resistance to marriage might have been that she preferred women, she publicly claimed that she would never marry because she didn't want to have children, fearing that she'd pass along her family's mental illness. Mew and her six siblings all struggled with their mental health: most ended up living in institutions, and several took their own lives. Mew herself committed suicide in 1928.
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More “The Farmer's Bride” Resources
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External Resources
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A Short Biography — Learn more about Mew’s life and literary career from the Poetry Foundation.
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of "The Farmer's Bride.”
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The Poem's History — Learn more about this poem's powerful style and long influence.
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Mew's Legacy — Learn more about a recent biography of Mew, whose work (long overlooked) is starting to come back into style.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Charlotte Mew
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