The Duddon Sonnets - Notes to Sonnet XXIII

XXIII. SHEEP-WASHING

          SAD thoughts, avaunt!--partake we their blithe cheer

          Who gathered in betimes the unshorn flock

          To wash the fleece, where haply bands of rock,

          Checking the stream, make a pool smooth and clear

          As this we look on. Distant Mountains hear,

          Hear and repeat, the turmoil that unites

          Clamour of boys with innocent despites

          Of barking dogs, and bleatings from strange fear.

          And what if Duddon's spotless flood receive

          Unwelcome mixtures as the uncouth noise                     10

          Thickens, the pastoral River will forgive

          Such wrong; nor need 'we' blame the licensed joys,

          Though false to Nature's quiet equipoise:

          Frank are the sports, the stains are fugitive.

This too, particularly in the tortuous inversions of the opening sentence, maintains an elaborate poetic diction. The effects of these rhetorical flourishes, when applied to describing the mundane scene of sheep-washing, produce a classic pastoral idyll, rather than a picture of the real work of the inhabitants of ‘The Republic of Shepherds’. The noisy intervention of the work which disturbs the ‘equipoise’ of nature conforms to a Picturesque aesthetic which seeks pleasing variation or momentary discord within ordered beauty.