Superstitions Dream (excerpt)

For All Hallows Eve, I though it might well be in order to post one of Clare's little known 'gothic' works.  After all he shared a publisher with Percy Shelley, whose wife Mary published 'Frankenstein' anonymously in London in 1818, and under her own name in 1823 (I've always wondered if her husband's death in June 1822 prompted her to add her name to the second and subsequent editions?)  Such writing seemed to be 'in the air' in this post-Napoleonic world.

So here is part of 'The Dream', originally written as 'Superstitions Dream' before 1822.  Mrs Emmerson wrote to Clare on 7th January 1822, "What a treasure have you this day placed before me in your 'Superstitions Dream' "... John Taylor, his publisher wrote "perhaps the ablest Poem you have written".  A real surprise to me that it is not better known...

I felt all terrors of the d-----d & fell

With conscious horror that my doom was hell

And memory mockd me like a haunting ghost

With light & life & pleasures that were lost

As dreams turn night to day & day to night

So memory flashd her shadows of that light

That bade the mornings suns in glory rise

To bless green fields & trees & purple skies

& wakend life its pleasures to behold

That light flashd on me like a story told

& days mispent with friends & fellow-men

& sins committed all was with me then.

The boundless hell were tortures never tire

Glimmerd beneath me like a world on fire

That soul of fire like to its souls entombd

That still consumes & never is consumd

Seemd nigh at hand -- where oft the sulphry damps

Oerawd that light as glimmers dying lamps

Spreading a horrid gloom from side to side

A twilight scene of terrors half descryd

Sad boild the billows of that burning sea

And fates sad yellings dismal seemd to be

Blue rolld its waves with horrors uncontroled

& its live wrecks of souls dashd howling as they rolld

Again I struggld & the spell was broke

& midst the laugh of mocking ghosts I woke

& my eyes opend on a hopless sight

The early morning & its welcome light

& as I ponderd oer the past profound
I heard the cock crow and I blest the sound

(lines 143-172)
MP I 325