With our lines & hooks

Discoursing onward with our lines & hooks 
With some refreshments nor without some books 
Cheerd by the rural objects as we pass 
To were trees shadows keepeth green the grass 
Checking intrusions of the summer suns 
There drop us down close were the river runs 
In sight of rural sounds & pleasing strife 
That warms the laughing landscape into life 
& while in cheerfull mirth as we prepare 
Our sporting things & bait our angles there 
With flye or fish of artificial forms 
To shun the anguish of the wreathing worms 
Feel warm hopes glow with earnest eagerness 
To mark the signs that promise us success

Image by my friend Mike Hobson

Sat & mused

A path old tree goes by thee crooking on
& through this little gate that claps & bangs
Against thy rifted trunk what steps hath gone
Though but a lonely way yet mystery hangs
Oer crowds of pastoral scenes recordless here
The boy might climb the nest in thy young boughs
Thats slept half an eternity in fear
The herdsman may have left his startled cows
For shelter when heavens thunder voice was near
Here too the woodman on his wallet laid
For pillow may have slept an hour away
& poet pastoral lover of the shade
Here sat & mused half some long summer day
While some old shepherd listened to the lay

Say what is love

Say What Is Love—To Live In Vain
To Live & Die & Live Again
Say What Is Love—Is It To Be
In Prison Still & Still Be Free
Or Seem As Free—Alone & Prove
The Hopeless Hopes of Real Love
Does Real Love On Earth Exist
Tis Like A Sun beam On The Mist
That Fades & No Where Will Remain
& Nowhere Is Oertook Again
Say What Is Love—A Blooming Name
A Rose Leaf On The Page Of Fame
That Blooms Then Fades—To Cheat No More
& Is What Nothing Was Before
Say What Is Love—What E'er It be
It Centres Mary Still With Thee

From ‘Child Harold’

The heron

[tThe] heron stalking solitary thing 
Mount up into high travel far away 
& that mild indecision hanging round 
Skys holding bland communion with the ground 
In gentlest pictures of the infant day 
Now picturing rain—while many a pleasing sound 
Grows mellower distant in the mealy grey 
Of dewy pastures & full many a sight 
Seems sweeter in its indistinct array 
Than when it glows in mornings stronger light

Image by my friend #JohnAbbott

Natures glee

"Tootle tootle tootle tee"
Can it be
Pride & fame must shadows be
Come and see 
Every season own her own
Bird & bee
Sing creations music on
Natures glee
Is in every mood & tone
Eternity

Summer

The oaks slow-opening leaf of deepening hue
Bespeaks the power of Summer once again
While many a flower unfolds its charms to view
To glad the entrance of his sultry reign
Where peep the gaping speckled cuckoo-flowers
Sweet is each rural scene she brings to pass
Prizes to rambling school-boys vacant hours
Tracking wild searches through the meadow grass
The meadow-sweet taunts high its showy wreath
& sweet the quaking grasses hide beneath
Ah ‘barr’d from all that sweetens life below
Another Summer still my eyes can see
Freed from the scorn & pilgrimage of woe
To share the Seasons of Eternity

Spring love

When Jimmy did leave me the thorns wer in blossom
Three years have gone bye but I think on the day
I stoopt for a cowslip to stick in my bosom
While he from the bush got a branch of the may
& when we had done wi our vows & our parling
My heart when I think ont wi doubtfulness burns
He held it to me & he calld me his darling
Saying take this & keep it till Jimmy returns

A keep sake so odd did he mean to abuse me
& give me the thorn that his scorn I might see
But how foolish girl—coud he mean to ill use me
When he rubd off the pricks ere he gave it to me
We parted good friends & he hugld me dearly
& telld me hed neer gi me cause for a pain
& so coud I think were his last vow sincerly
Saying go where I will my heart stick to my Jane

Written in Clare's wonderful Northamptonshire dialect, with a word Clare no doubt learned from his gypsy friends   Written in what a recent anonymous 'scholar' writing of Clare in a recent paper called 'the stark "textual primitivism" of the Oxford edition', in which this poem may be found (EP II 208) in precisely the way that Clare wrote it (I've examined the manuscript).  An amazingly ignorant comment showing his/her total disregard for the incredible work of the lifetime of scholarship that the 9 volumes of the OUP Clarendon editions represents