what kind of life do you think Nicholas Nye had before he was put in the field
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Answer:
Nicholas Nye is “lean and gray, Lame of leg and old” and he seems to say “Poor Nicholas Nye!” There does seem to be an empathic connection between poet and donkey; the donkey at times seems to “smile” at the poet:
And over the grass would seem to pass
'Neath the deep dark blue of the sky,
Something much better than words between me
And Nicholas Nye.
This “something much better than words" can be understood as either an unspoken understanding of how life is for old donkeys (and old poets) or as a reference to poetry, or poetic inspiration, itself.
The final stanza, in which donkey and poet go to their rest at the end of the day, is a bit ambiguous in tone:
And there, in the moonlight, dark with dew,
Asking not wherefore nor why,
Would brood like a ghost, and as still as a post,
Old Nicholas Nye.
The donkey’s mute “brooding” through the night is in part an expression of his permanence: Nicholas Nye will always be there. We can think of the donkey as a source of poetic inspiration, a symbol of silent suffering, or representative of the inevitability of old age; in any case, his “brooding like a ghost” suggests there is something unknowable or inexpressible about the donkey, and, by extension, life.
Explanation: