Full of mirth

Right happy bird so full of mirth 
Mounting & mounting still more high 
To meet morns sunshine in the sky 

Ere yet it smiles on earth 

How often I delight to stand 
Listening a minutes length away 
Where summer spreads her green array 
By wheat or barley land 

To see thee with a sudden start 
The green & placid herbage leave 
& in mid air a vision weave 
For joys delighted heart

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Grasshoppers

Grasshoppers go in many a thumming spring
& now to stalks of tasseled sow-grass cling
That shakes & swees awhile but still keeps straight
While arching oxeye doubles with his weight
Next on the cat-tail-grass with farther bound
He springs that bends until they touch the ground

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Image by my friend Carry Akroyd

My love she is a modest girl

Another amazing Clare poem from his Asylum years.  Again, not in any collection I can find.  Love the internal rhymes.

My love she wore a muslin cap & trim[m]ed wi' ribbons blue 
What time the trees were full o' sap & meadows cowslips new 
In meadows & on meadow banks in baulks & clover too 
The white horse daisys stand in ranks all silvered wi' the dew 

My love she wore a pleasant gown & owned a rosy face 
The prettiest girl o' half the town the finest i' the place 
Her waist was sweet & sweet her size fleshy & fair not tall

Bright as the milkmaids were her eyes her neck white as the wall 

A muslin cap my love had on & trimmed wi' ribbons blue 
When grass was green to look upon & steamed wi' morning dew 
Her face was like the cabbage rose her bosom lilly white 
Her lips are red her mild eye glows like evens dewy light 

My love she is a modest girl a pleasant gown she wears 
Her teeth are like two rows O' pearl & glossy brown her hair 
I feel transported by her smile & by her frown undone 
I'll meet her by the awthorn stile where both will seem as one

(line 8 ‘Milkmaids’ = ladysmock)

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Image by my friend Annie Lee

The rose

Why this deceptively simple poem has never figured in any collection is hard to understand.  Such beauty in 16 lines.  I could swim in it for hours.

The rose in full bearing there is no other blossom 
So sweet & so flushing as that bonny flower 
It shines the delight O the young maidens bosom 
Its ever the sweetest in summers warm hour 
The beautiful rose tree how sweet its leaves blushes 
With dew drops like silver pearls hung on its leaves 
The sun light O summer its bonny bloom flushes 
How sweet is its blossom on midsummer eaves 
Tis as sweet as the breath O the midsum[m]er morning 
Where bees oer the hay fiel[d]s are singing all day 
When dews like white diamonds its leaves are adorning 
How sweet is the full blowing rose on the spray 
The maiden she loves it the beautiful maiden 
That goes i' the meadows a milking the kye 
She sees the heath brere with its roses oer laden 
& puts a rose bud in her bosom for joy

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Image?  

My ‘ballerina’ rambling rose growing up one of our apple trees

Glides the stream

Where winding gash wirls round its wildest scene 
On this romantic bend I sit me down 
On that side view the meads their smoothing green 
Edgd with the peeping hamlets checkering brown 
Here the steep hill as dripping headlong down 
While glides the stream a silver streak between 
As glides the shaded clouds along the sky 
Brightning & deepning loosing as theyre seen 
In light & shade so when old willows lean 
Thus their broad shadow runs the river bye 
With tree & bush repleat a wilderd scene 
& mossd & Ivyd sparkling on my eye 
O thus wild musing am I doubly blest 
My woes unheeding & my heart at rest

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Image by my friend John Abbott

Hay-making

Fair was the morn & Summer in its prime
For whats more lovlier than hay-making time
When sweet perfumes from every flower arise
& sweeter still from swaths that withering lyes
When work folks stript appear in every ground
&  thronging waggons ever rattling round
& Cows & Sheep as full as they can snive
In grounds made clear where shepherds all alive

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Gipsies

To me how wildly pleasing is that scene
Which does present in evenings dusky hour
A Group of Gipsies center'd on the green
In some warm nook where Boreas has no power
Where sudden starts the quivering blaze behind
Short shrubby bushes nibbl'd by the sheep
That alway on these shortsward pastures keep
Now lost now shines now bending with the wind
And now the swarthy Sybil kneels reclin'd
With proggling stick she still renews the blaze
Forcing bright sparks to twinkle from the flaze
When this I view the all attentive mind
Will oft exclaim (so strong the scene prevades)
‘Grant me this life, thou spirit of the shades!’

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