WHICH?

And Prytherch - was he a real man,
Rolling his pain day after day
Up life's hill? Was he a survival
Of a lost past, wearing the times'
Shabbier casts-off, refusing to change
His lean horse for the quick tractor?
Or was a wish to have him so
Responsible for his frayed shape?

Could I have said he was the scholar
Of the fields' pages he turned more slowly
Season by season, or nature's fool,
Born to blur with his moist eye
The clear passages of a book
You came to finger with deft touch?