The Lover’s Journey, in contrast to the three Tales which preceded it, is most definitely not part of any group in terms of its subject or theme. It is a poem which could very easily be taken out of the context of The Tales. It is also in many ways a sunny, happy poem and thus provides a rebuttal to those who would claim that Crabbe is always gloomy. Right at the beginning Crabbe sets out the thesis or moral which the poem will attempt to prove….

It is the Soul that sees:  the outward eyes
Present the object, but the Mind descries;
And thence delight, disgust, or cool indiff’rence rise:
When minds are joyful, then we look around,
And what is seen is all on fairy ground;
Again they sicken, and on every view
Cast their own dull and melancholy hue;
Or, if absorb’d by their peculiar cares,
The vacant eye on viewless matter glares,
Our feelings still upon our views attend,
And their own natures to the objects lend:
Sorrow and joy are in their influence sure,
Long as the passion reigns th’ effects endure;
But Love in minds his various changes makes,
And clothes each object with the change he takes;
His light and shade on every view he throws,
And on each object what he feels bestows.

At a simple level this is merely a statement of the fairly obvious reflection that our view of the world is clouded by our mood. But there are of course far more important philosophical, and indeed theological, implications overtly presented in those first two lines…

It is the Soul that sees:  the outward eyes
Present the object, but the Mind descries;

Crabbe is tapping in not merely to 18thC philosophical debates, but to some central philosophical questions about our relationship to the outside world, the nature and possibility of objectivity and so on. Crabbe was, we should remember, a clergyman, and asserting the primacy of ‘Soul’ in these matters is a religious response.

However if this philosophical speculation seems heavy the way in which Crabbe proves his point is anything but. The narrative is a simple one; a young man called John takes a morning ride to see his beloved Susan….
Fair was the morning, and the month was June,
When rose a Lover;–love awakens soon:
Brief his repose, yet much he dreamt the while
Of that day’s meeting, and his Laura’s smile:
Fancy and love that name assign’d to her,
Call’d Susan in the parish-register;
And he no more was John–his Laura gave
The name Orlando to her faithful slave.
   Bright shone the glory of the rising day,
When the fond traveller took his favourite way;
He mounted gaily, felt his bosom light,
And all he saw was pleasing in his sight.

As he rides everything that he sees, whether objectively pleasing or not, is transformed by his mood into a source of delight…..

Onward he went, and fiercer grew the heat,
Dust rose in clouds before the horse’s feet;
For now he pass’d through lanes of burning sand,
Bounds to thin crops or yet uncultured land;
Where the dark poppy flourish’d on the dry
And sterile soil, and mock’d the thin-set rye.
   “How lovely this!” the rapt Orlando said;
“With what delight is labouring man repaid!
The very lane has sweets that all admire,
The rambling suckling, and the vigorous brier;
See! wholesome wormwood grows beside the way,
Where dew-press’d yet the dog-rose bends the spray;
Fresh herbs the fields, fair shrubs the banks adorn,
And snow-white bloom falls flaky from the thorn;
No fostering hand they need, no sheltering wall,
They spring uncultured, and they bloom for all.”

Now Crabbe is managing to make his point, write some delightful nature poetry and have a considerable amount of fun. John next comes across a village…
He saw some scatter’d hovels; turf was piled
In square brown stacks; a prospect bleak and wild!
A mill, indeed, was in the centre found,
With short sear herbage withering all around;
A smith’s black shed opposed a wright’s long shop,
And join’d an inn where humble travellers stop.
   “Ay, this is Nature,” said the gentle ‘Squire;
“This ease, peace, pleasure–who would not admire?
With what delight these sturdy children play,
And joyful rustics at the close of day;
Sport follows labour; on this even space
Will soon commence the wrestling and the race;
Then will the village-maidens leave their home,
And to the dance with buoyant spirits come;
No affectation in their looks is seen,
Nor know they what disguise aud flattery mean;

I cannot help thinking that Crabbe is once again to some extent parodying Goldsmith’s vision of the village nirvana to be found in The Deserted Village ( a subject of Crabbe’s own much earlier The Village) although I am not going to recur to a point I have previously made about the fact that this either represents a misreading of Goldsmith or the adoption of a political position for which I have no sympathy. Having said which, here Crabbe is, unlike in The Village, able to make his point with dexterity and humour, so that even I have to admit it is funny.

John continues his ride and Crabbe continues to make his point; John’s next landscape is a salt-marsh…

When next appear’d a dam–so call the place –
Where lies a road confined in narrow space;
A work of labour, for on either side
Is level fen, a prospect wild and wide,
With dikes on either hand by ocean’s self supplied:
Far on the right the distant sea is seen,
And salt the springs that feed the marsh between:
Beneath an ancient bridge, the straiten’d flood
Rolls through its sloping banks of slimy mud;
Near it a sunken boat resists the tide,
That frets and hurries to th’ opposing side;
The rushes sharp, that on the borders grow,
Bend their brown flow’rets to the stream below,
Impure in all its course, in all its progress slow:
Here a grave Flora scarcely deigns to bloom,
Nor wears a rosy blush, nor sheds perfume:
The few dull flowers that o’er the place are spread
Partake the nature of their fenny bed;
Here on its wiry stem, in rigid bloom,
Grows the salt lavender that lacks perfume;
Here the dwarf sallows creep, the septfoil harsh,
And the soft slimy mallow of the marsh;
Low on the ear the distant billows sound,
And just in view appears their stony bound;
No hedge nor tree conceals the glowing sun,
Birds, save a wat’ry tribe, the district shun,
Nor chirp among the reeds where bitter waters run

This of course is Crabbe’s landscape home; the salt-marshes of the East Anglian coast. Here is where Peter Grimes resides. Crabbe is the great – if not only – poet of these extraordinary, bleak and yet moving landscapes. But John’s transformational vision actually allows Crabbe to now poke fun at and parody himself…

“Various as beauteous, Nature, is thy face,”
Exclaim’d Orlando:  “all that grows has grace:
All are appropriate–bog, and marsh, and fen,
Are only poor to undiscerning men;
Here may the nice and curious eye explore
How Nature’s hand adorns the rushy moor;
Here the rare moss in secret shade is found,
Here the sweet myrtle of the shaking ground;
Beauties are these that from the view retire,
But well repay th’ attention they require;
For these my Laura will her home forsake,
And all the pleasures they afford partake.”

It is all in the eye (or more accurately soul and mind) of the beholder, so Crabbe might well have written in very different terms of the lowering bleakness of the salt-marshes which form an appropriate background to some of his grimmest work.

Finally, after an encounter with some gypsies whom he regards with a most benevolent eye, John reaches Susan’s house to find she has gone out to visit some friends for the day. Bitterly disappointed John commences to ride to these friends, and now while every scene he encounters is objectively pleasing, to John they are all repulsive………

Forth rode Orlando by a river’s side,
Inland and winding, smooth, and full, and wide,
That roll’d majestic on, in one soft-flowing tide;
The bottom gravel, flow’ry were the banks,
Tall willows waving in their broken ranks;
The road, now near, now distant, winding led
By lovely meadows which the waters fed;
He pass’d the way-side inn, the village spire,
Nor stopp’d to gaze, to question or admire;
On either side the rural mansions stood,
With hedge-row trees, and hills, high-crown’d with wood,
And many a devious stream that reach’d the nobler flood.
   “I hate these scenes,” Orlando angry cried,
“And these proud farmers! yes I hate their pride,
See! that sleek fellow, how he strides along,
Strong as an ox, and ignorant as strong;
Can yon close crops a single eye detain
But he who counts the profits of the grain?
And these vile beans with deleterious smell,
Where is there beauty? can a mortal tell?
These deep fat meadows I detest; it shocks
One’s feelings there to see the grazing ox; –
For slaughter fatted, as a lady’s smile
Rejoices man, and means his death the while.
Lo! now the sons of labour! every day
Employ’d in toil and vex’d in every way;
Theirs is but mirth assumed, and they conceal,
In their affected joys, the ills they feel:
I hate these long green lanes; there’s nothing sees
In this vile country but eternal green;
Woods! waters! meadows!  Will they never end?
‘Tis a vile prospect: –Gone to see a friend?”

My pleasure in these lines is not merely the way in which Crabbe handles his material so adroitly and acutely in psychological terms (I can certainly recognise myself being quite as irrational as John) but the humour with which he does this. How delightful is the

And these vile beans with deleterious smell,
Where is there beauty? can a mortal tell?

Crabbe is capable of coming out with these extraordinary couplets using words(deleterious) and concepts (the bad odour of beans) and rhymes (smell/tell really shouldn’t work here) which somehow not only cohere but are memorable and often, as here, very funny.

By the time he has passed yet more happy scenes which bring offence to his eye and is nearing the friends whom Susan is visiting, John’s anger is cooling down. There is a happy reunion. John rides back home the next day and his vision is once again different…

Alone Orlando on the morrow paced
The well-known road; the gipsy-tent he traced;
The dam high-raised, the reedy dikes between,
The scatter’d hovels on the barren green,
The burning sand, the fields of thin-set rye,
Mock’d by the useless Flora blooming by;
And last the heath with all its various bloom,
And the close lanes that led the trav’ller home.
   Then could these scenes the former joys renew?
Or was there now dejection in the view? –
Nor one or other would they yield–and why?
The mind was absent, and the vacant eye
Wander’d o’er viewless scenes, that but appear’d to die.

When the mind is fully occupied the eye perceives absolutely nothing at all, and no subjective judgements, whether positive or negative, are brought to bear on the scenes which are presented to it. I will not pretend that Crabbe really pursues in any serious way the philosophical implications of the arguments which he lays out at the beginning of the poem. This Tale is fundamentally a light-hearted one in which Crabbe is having fun, with, among others, himself (always an excellent sign in a writer in my view); certainly it achieves the goal of proving that our perceptions depend on out mood – not that as a depressive I needed any proof of that. The Lover’s Journey provides some delightful light relief in The Tales as a whole – there is no heartbreak or death here ; of course its effect as light relief depends on its being set in context, so while I have said that it would be possible to extract it (and anthologise it) it is far better read where it is intended to be read. And those who question Crabbe’s ability to alter his tone should certainly be referred to this highly enjoyable Tale.