English rural village in its ideality--rural loveliness--enshrining
rural innocence and joy--and to show how man's vices, invading it from
the outside, might bring all to ruin. Crabbe's purpose was different. He
aimed to awaken pity and sympathy for rural sins and sorrows with which
he had himself been in closest touch, and which sprang from causes
always in operation within the heart of the community itself, and not to
be attributed to the insidious attacks from without. Goldsmith, for
example, drew an immortal picture of the village pastor, closely
modelled upon Chaucer's "poor parson of a town," his piety, humility,
and never failing goodness to his flock.--

"Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride,
And even his failings leaned to virtue's side;
But in his duty prompt at every call
He watched and wept; he prayed and felt for all.
And as a bird each fond endearment tries
To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies,
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,
Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way."

Crabbe remembered a different type of parish priest in his boyhood, and
this is how he introduces him. He has been describing, with an
unmitigated realism, the village poorhouse, in all its squalor and
dilapidation:--

"There children dwell who know no parents' care:
Parents, who know no children's love, dwell there.
Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed,
Forsaken wives, and mothers never wed"