John Clare’s faith

His church was out of doors. He describes it constantly. Like William Wordsworth, he drew his beliefs from "Nature and her overflowing soul". Clare was the outside worshipper, and poem after poem by him delights in the freedom of the sabbath fields and hearing distant bells. His creed began: "Nature, thou truth from Heaven".

His fellow worshippers were shepherds, gypsies, and herdboys, though mostly he preferred to sing alone amid birds and flowers. The annual cycle of growth, the seasonal weather, and the continuity of creatures and plants in more or less the same few acres, witnessed to him the eternal. In fact, he summed up his faith in a long statement, "The Eternity of Nature", and in a perfect epigram for himself, here is part:

He loved the brooks soft sound
The swallow swimming by
He loved the daisy covered round
The cloud bedappled sky
To him the dismal appeared
The very voice of God
A silent man in lifes affairs
A thinker from a Boy
A Peasant in his daily cares
The Poet in his joy

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