The lonely lake

I love to see the old heaths withered brake
Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze & ling
While the old heron from the lonely lake
Starts slow & flaps his melancholy wing
& oddling crow in idle motions swing
On the half rotten ashtrees topmost twig
Beside whose trunk the gipsy makes his bed
Up flies the bouncing woodcock from the brig
Where a black quagmire quakes beneath the tread
The fieldfares chatter in the whistling thorn
& for the awe round fields & closen rove
& coy bumbarrels twenty in a drove
Flit down the hedgerows in the frozen plain
& hang on little twigs & start again

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

Iris by the pool

The summer morn is beautifull   In crimson & in blue 
So is the Iris by the pool   Besprent wi' firey dew 
The sedge birds song is beautifull   I’th’' rustle of the reed 
The river neath the Willows cool   Flows with the sweetest speed 
But Lucy o' Northampton town   Is sweeter far than these 
Than golden Chain & Sattin gown.  & songs o' honey bees 
Sweet Lucy o' Northampton town   So bonny & so fair 
With red rose cheeks & hair so brown   How beautifull you are 

Then meadow sweet and burnet too   How finer far to see 
Sweeter than sweetbrier pearled wi dew   You are my dear to me

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

Green sunny green

I lean upon the window-sill
The trees & summer happy seem
Green sunny green they shine but still
My heart goes far away to dream
Of happiness & thoughts arise
With home-bred pictures many a one,
Green lanes that shut out burning skies
& old crook'd stiles to rest upon

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks

Mortal decay

On a fine Sunday morning the house swep so clean
And a flower pot for ornament plac'd
Compos'd of oak branches so spreading and green
Intermingled with blue-bells the window-board grac'd.
To view their gay colors I rather inclin'd
While resting myself near the wall
Which soon brought morality into my mind
And thus I had model'd their fall.

‘Tho your charms seem so tempting ye gay blooming flowers
‘As to make every stranger look on
‘Yet if I stay here three or four passing hours
‘I shall see you all whither'd and gone!’
But afterwards thinking on what I had said
Reflection soon made me to sigh
And once more reviewing their sweet smelling shade
I suppos'd from the flowers this reply.

‘Vain unthinking mortal how ready thou'rt prone
‘To condemn the short date of our flowers
‘But stop with thy morals—turn the case to thine own!
‘And thou'l find it a deal worse than our's.’
‘For go where thou pluck't us next year o'er the ground
‘There thou'lt find us as gay as before!
‘But when once moralizer thy spring's gone its round
‘It never will blossom no more!’

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks

A fragment

A few years ago I was flying out to Tunis visiting family, I sat next to a lady who was very interested in what I was reading... John Clare.  I showed her these small fragments on my iPad, and she promptly photographed the screen.  The power of even Clare's shortest fragmentary poems!

Natures sweet bard of spring the sable bee
Hums round each cottage wall its minstrelsy

& the gay wasp in its stript jacket comes

To sunny banks in terryfying hums

Waking the herd boys fears that ramble nigh

& threatning vengance to each passer bye

Swarthy yet lovly by each zepher fan'd
As the soft cheek of milkmaids summer tan'd

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks

Down the lane

Now rising ground permits the plain 
To change the restless view
The pathways leading down the lane 
My pleasures still renew
The osiers slender shade is by
& bushes thickly spread
Again the ground is firm & dry
Nor trembles neath the tread

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks

Image by my friend #JaneAir

The ant

What wonder strikes the curious while he views

The black ants city by a rotten tree

Or woodland bank! In ignorance we muse

Pausing annoyed -- we know not what we see
Such government & thought there seem to be
Some looking on & urging some to toil
Dragging their loads of bent-stalks slavishly
& whats more wonderful when big loads foil
One ant or two to carry quickly then
A swarm flock round to help their fellow-men
Surely they speak a language whisperingly
Too fine for us to hear & sure their ways
Prove they have kings and laws & that they be
Deformed remnants of the Fairy-days

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks

Crossing a brook

Wereover many a stile neeth willows grey 

The winding footpath leaves the public way
Free from the dusty din & ceasless chime
Of bustling waggons in the summer time
Crossing a brook—were braving storms in vain
Two willows fell & still for brigs remain
Corn field & clover closes leading down
In peacful windings to the neighbouring town

Were on bridge wall or rail or trees smooth bark
The passing eye is often stopt to mark
The artless vanity of village swains
Who spend a leisure hour with patient pains
& put to sculptors purposes the knife
To spin a cobweb for an after life
Nicking the letters of their little names
In rudest forms that untaught science frames

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks 

Sweet solitude

Sweet solitude what joy to be alone

In wild wood shady dell to stay for hours
Twould soften hearts if they were hard as stone
To see glad Butterflies & smiling flowers
Tis pleasant in these quiet lonely places
Where not the voice of Man our pleasure mars
To see the little bees with coal black faces
Gath'ring sweets from little flowers like stars

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks

Oak trees dancing

Oak trees dancing round & round 
Green was the shade—I love the woods 
When autumns wind is mourning loud 
To see the leaves float on the floods 
Dead within their yellow shroud 
The wood was then in glory spread 
I love the browning bough to see 
That litters autumns dying bed 
Her latest sigh is dear to me 
Neath a spreading shady oak 
For awhile to muse I lay 
From its grains a bough I broke 
To fan the teasing flies away

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks

The Orchis

I saw it in the evening sun & in the morning dew 
I saw't o evenings i' the week Each sunday i' the year 
& purposed journeys came to seek When orchis flowers appear 
O they are clods that never seek For true loves living powers 
When beans grow up as green as leeks I hunt the Orchis flower

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks

Image by my friend #JaneAir

Sunset so golden

The scene it was cheery when I met my deary

In even’s cool mantle of dew
T’was heaven unfolding in sunset so golden
But ah it was sweeter far sweeter beholding
Fond love at its first interview

O fond loves excesses the heart how it blesses
Wi the jem of our raptures in view
We fancy none fairer we fancy none dearer
There may be as true but we think none sincerer
Loves sketches are perfectly drew

But fancy is waining & love is complaining
Of beautys that time weareth thro
Summers day may be golden ripe flowers sweet beholding
But the honey of sweetness is springs bliss unfolding
Wi tender loves first interview

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks 

Image by my friend #JaneAir

The tempting season

May’s mildness mocks the gladdend sky

& clouds as swiftly clouds pursue

Save that no swallow cares to flye

Nor cuckoo sings the story true

Thus some few days may idly dwell

& hold the tempting season still

& tempt the early buds to swell

For lurking winters blast to kill

& many a flower on sunny slopes

That startles up the spring to see

Is doomd to loose their early hopes

& perish in their infancy

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks

Image by my friend #CarryAkroyd

Shining like guineas

Tis May and yet the March flower Dandelion 

Is still in bloom among the Emerald grass 

Shining like guineas with the suns warm eye on 

We almost think they are gold as we pass 

Or fallen stars on a green sea of grass 

The[y] shine in fields on waste grounds near the town 

They closed like painters brush when even was 

At length they turn to nothing else but down 

While the rude winds blow of[f] each shadowy crown 

.

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks

Dobbin

With arms and legs at work and gentle stroke
That urges switching tail nor mends his pace,
On an old ribbed and weather beaten horse,
The farmer goes jogtrotting to the fair.
Both keep their pace that nothing can provoke
Followed by brindled dog that snuffs the ground
With urging bark and hurries at his heels.
His hat slouched down, and great coat buttoned close
Bellied like hooped keg, and chuffy face
Red as the morning sun, he takes his round
And talks of stock: and when his jobs are done
And Dobbin's hay is eaten from the rack,
He drinks success to corn in language hoarse,
And claps old Dobbin's hide, and potters back.

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks

The sun unveils his smiles

Soon as the twilight through the distant mist
In silver hemmings skirts the purple east
Ere yet the sun unveils his smiles to view
& dries the mornings chilly robes of dew
Young Hodge the horse-boy with a soodly gait
Slow climbs the stile or opes the creaky gate
With willow switch & halter by his side
Prepared for Dobbin whom he means to ride
The only tune he knows still whistling oer
& humming scraps his father sung before
As "Wantley Dragon” & the "Magic Rose”
The whole of music that his village knows
Which wild remembrance in each little town
From mouth to mouth through ages handles down

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks

May

Come Queen of months in company

Wi all thy merry minstrelsy
The restless cuckoo absent long
And twittering swallows chimney song
And hedgerow crickets notes that run
From every bank that fronts the sun
And swathy bees about the grass
That stops wi every bloom they pass
And every minute every hour
Keep teazing weeds that wear a flower
And toil and childhoods humming joys
For there is music in the noise

The first 12 lines from ‘May’ from ‘The Shepherd’s Calendar’.

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks

Image by my friend #CarryAkroyd

The bluebell

I pluck Summer blossoms

& think of rich bosoms
The bosoms Ive leaned on & worshipped & won
The rich valley lilies
The wood daffodillies
Have been found in our rambles when Summer begun

Where I plucked thee the bluebell
'Twas where the night dew fell
& rested till morn in the cups of the flowers
I shook the sweet posies
Bluebells & brere roses
As we sat in cool shade in Summers warm hours

Bedlam-cowslips & cuckoos
With freckd lip & hooked nose
Growing safe near the hazel of thicket & woods
& water blobs ladies smocks
Blooming where haycocks
May be found in the meadows low places & floods

& cowslips a fair band
For May ball or garland
That bloom in the meadows as seen by the eye
& pink ragged robin
Where the fish they are bobbing
Their heads above water to catch at the fly

Wild flowers & wild roses
'Tis love makes the posies
To paint Summer ballads of meadow & glen
Floods cant drown it nor turn it
Even flames cannot burn it
Let it bloom till we walk the green meadows again

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks

Black grows the southern sky

Black grows the southern sky betokening rain

& humming hive bees homeward hurry bye

They feel the change so let us shun the grain

& take the broad road while our feet are dry

Ay there some dropples moistened on my face

& pattered on my hat tis coming nigh

Let's look about & find a sheltering place

The little things around like you and I

Are hurrying through the grass to shun the shower

Here stoops an ash-tree hark the wind gets high

But never mind this ivy for an hour

Rain as it may will keep us dryly here

That little wren knows well his sheltering bower

Nor leaves his dry house though we come so near

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks

A dark extract from ‘Child Harold’

My life hath been one love—no blot it out

My life hath been one chain of contradictions


Madhouses Prisons wh---re shops—never doubt


But that my life hath had some strong convictions

That such was wrong—religion makes restrictions

I would have followed—but life turned a bubble


& clumb the jiant stile of maledictions


They took me from my wife & to save trouble


I wed again & made the error double


Yet abscence claims them both & keeps them too

& locks me in a shop in spite of law


Among a low lived set & dirty crew


Here let the Muse oblivions curtain draw


& let man think—for God hath often saw


Things here too dirty for the light of day


For in a madhouse there exists no law—


Now stagnant grows my too refined clay
I envy birds their wings to flue away

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks

Backed deceptions wrong

A ‘political’ poem I discovered in the Peterborough Archive a few years ago.  As far as I know entirely previously unknown, but WHAT a message, not only for his own time, but for our times too.   How familiar it is.

They give me eight pence by the day

& make it up at night

With six pence worth of parish pay

& can ye call it right

Im going to justice just to see

What she will have to say

& faith I doubt I shall not see

Yer honour there today

No friend I am a faithful mate

To justice but ye mean

What may be named a magistrate

& there Im never seen

Nay they have stopt me when Ive gone

To take that weight away

& backed deceptions wrong        
To take your gains away

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks

Woodlands gentle ride

Berrys freed from rhyme awhile 
Shines red on hedgrow twigs again 
One may a midday hour beguile 
To walk in shielding wood & plain 
To track some woodlands gentle ride 
Where hanging branches lend a screen 
Or banks slopd down on either side 
Were sheltering vallys creep between 
As down such hollows one proceeds 
We instant feel a warmer day 
While mong each bank tops rustling weeds 
Winds noise their unfelt rage away

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks

Image by my friend #JohnAbbott

The old Kirk at Upton

[The Kirk at Upton]

Her voice shouted Roger like throwing a stone

So give up old Soldier & let her alone

Go away with ye Roger young Man do I see

If youre an old Soldier you may march on with me

I went with the maiden over heath & oer plain

& when Sunday was come too I saw her again

I saw her & courted the sun from the West

& left my last kiss on the mole of her breast

I kissed & were married & bedded & all

& the old Kirk at Upton the green wedding saw

For the grass it was green & our years was the same

& from morning to Evening none called us to blame

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks

Love is past

[Image:  Mary Joyce’s grave]

A shattering poem, written 7 years after Clare’s incarceration in Northampton.  His mind is ranging back to the death of his muse, Mary Joyce.

To come upon in line 9 the line “Lord how young bonny Mary burnt”, even if he is speaking of her blushes at their first meeting, is an astonishing shock for readers of Clare’s work.  Clare, possibly unconsciously, recording the manner of her death in the most shocking way imaginable.

Mary had, as Clare had been avoiding for so long, perished in the fire in the brew house next to her parent’s farm-house in Glinton on the 14th of July 1838.  Her grave in the churchyard of St. Benedict’s Church, Glinton was, and is, clear for all to see.

A Ballad

Love is past and all the rest
Thereto belonging fled away
The most esteemed and valued best
Are faded all and gone away

How beautiful was Marys dress
While dancing at the meadow ball

—'Tis twenty years or more at least
Since Mary seemed the first of all

Lord how young bonny Mary burnt
With blushes like the roses hue
My face like water thrown upon't
Turned white as lilies i' the dew

When grown a man I went to see
The school where Marys name was known
I looked to find it on a Tree
But found it on a low grave stone

Now is past—was this the now
In fine straw-hat and ribbons gay
I'd court her neath the white thorn bough
& tell her all I had to say

But all is gone—and now is past
& still my spirits chill alone
Loves name that perished in the blast
Grows mossy on a church-yard stone

Follow the blog for daily #JohnClare posts

Comments welcome below

#poetry #environment #chapbooks