Explication of Charlotte Mew's "The Farmer's Wife".

"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 30-33). "The Farmer's Bride" by Charlotte Mew offers so many vivid images of nature that it is difficult to believe the speaker is a farmer. Mew presents the argument of the poem straightforwardly: The farmer's bride feels an aversion to her marriage and uses …

…that is not what he is looking for. The final stanza allows the reader to sympathize with the farmer's wife and her avoidance of fulfilling her husband's only desire for her. Her only true consolation is with nature, and though it may seem that her husband has the ability to understand what his wife really wants, he does not understand. Despite his metaphorical speech, the farmer's true intention lies underneath his outside point of view.