The Wish

And now a garden planned with nicest care

Should be my next attention to prepare;
For this I'd search the soil of different grounds
Nor small nor great should mark its homely bounds:

Between these two extremes the plan should be
Complete throughout and large enough for me.

A strong brick wall should bound the outward fence
Where by the suns all cheering influence

Walltrees should flourish in a spreading row
And Peach and Pear in ruddy lustre glow.
A five foot bed should follow from the wall
To look complete or save the trees withal

On which small seeds for sallading I'd sow
While curl-leaf Parsley should for edges grow.
My Garden in four quarters I'd divide
To show good taste and not a gaudy pride;

In this the middle walk should be the best.

Being more to sight exposed than [all] the rest.

The woodbine tree should all her sweets unfurl
Close to my door in many a wanton curl.

Aside my wall the vine should find a place
While damask roses did my window grace:
And now a walk as was the plan before
Exactly corresponding with the door
Should lead my footsteps to another bower
Whenever leisure gave the pleasant hour.

(Lines 104-164)

The Early Poems of John Clare 1804-1822,

ed. Eric Robinson, David Powell and Margaret Grainger

(Oxford, 2 volumes, I-II, 1989)

Song: I peeled bit o straws..."

I peeled bits o straws and I got switches too
From the grey peeling willow as idlers do
And I switched at the flies as I sat all alone
Till my flesh, blood & marrow wasted to the dry bone;

My illness was love though I knew not the smart
But the beauty o love was the blood o my heart.

Crowded places I shunned them as noises too rude
And flew to the silence of sweet solitude;

Where the flower in green darkness, buds, blossoms & fades
Unseen of a shepherds & flower loving maids

The hermit bees find them but once & away
There I'll burry alive & in silence decay

I looked on the eyes of fair woman too long
Till silence and shame stole the use of my tongue
When I tried to speak to her I’d nothing to say
So I turned myself round & she wandered away;

When she got too far off—why Id. something to tell
So I sent sighs behind her & talked to my sell.

Willow switches I broke, & I peeled bits o straws
Ever lonely in crowds in natures own laws.

My ballroom the pasture, my music the bees
My drink was the fountain, my church the tall trees
Whoever would love or be tied to a wife
When it makes a man mad all the days of his life.

John Clare, Selected Poems,

ed. Elaine Feinstein (1968)

Content

I'm silverless, and pennyless

I've no small coin about me
And yet I'm not in wants distress
The rich may live without me

Though money makes the married glad

And finds the single nappy
Yet wanting wealth—I'm never sad
While health can make me happy

For health's the flower of mountains pride
The lily of the valley
The red rose by the cottage side
While sickness keeps the alley

In poverty there is no shame
Industry's not the slave on't
And self-content's a happy name
So I whistle o'er the leave on't

I'm silverless, and pennyless
And poor enough God knows
Yet in no pinfold of distress
While I get food and clothes

The heart that keeps its own command
Of little makes the more
Content—and all may understand
I've no wishes from my door

John Clare, Selected Poems,

ed. J.W. and Anne Tibble (Everyman, 1965)

Song

Mary Appleby

I look upon the hedge row flower

I gaze upon the hedge-row tree
I walk alone the silent hour
And think of Mary Appleby
I see her in the brimming streams
I see her in the blooming hour
I hear her in the summer dreams
Of singing bird, and blooming flower

For Mary is the dearest bird
And Mary is the sweetest flower
That in spring bush was ever heard
That ever bloomed on bank or bower
O bonny Mary Appleby

J.L. Cherry, Life and Remains of John Clare

(London and Northampton: Frederick Warne and J. Taylor and Son, 1873)

The Gipsies Evening Blaze

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!’

Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820)

Summers in its Glory Now

Summer's in its glory now     Sweet the flower and green the bough

Dry is every swamp and slough     My own kind deary

Could I press thy bonny bosom     Swelling like a bursting blossom
Sweetly ripe as I suppose 'em     Then heaven would be near thee

Fair and buxsome bonny Lassie     Let us seek for places grassy
Where the brook it dimples glassy     There I'll love thee deary

On thy lilly bosom leaning     View thy eyes to guess their meaning
Kiss where not a look has been in     Thy lilly bosom deary

Clasp thee round thy gimpsy middle     Playing loves tunes without the fiddle
And loves secret joys unriddle     To kiss and cheer me

To throw my arms about thy shoulders     And in the band O' love enfold us
I' these green shades where none behold us     Where heaven would be near thee

Come my blyth and bonny deary     Let me clasp thee and lie near thee
And I of love shall ne'er be weary     To clasp my bonny deary

To kiss thy cheeks O' new blown roses     Thy breasts where hills O' alpine snow's is
As sweet as ever love supposes     To glad and cheer me

About thy bonny arms I'll clasp thee     And i' the vice o' fondness grasp thee
Till matrimony's charms shall hasp thee     And bind thee aye my deary

The Later Poems of John Clare,

ed. Eric Robinson and Geoffrey Summerfield

(Manchester University Press, 1964)

Wild Flowers

Beautiful mortals of the glowing earth

And children of the season crowd together
In showers and sunny weather
Ye beautiful spring hours
Sunshine and all together
I love wild flowers

The rain drops lodge on the swallows wing
Then fall on the meadow flowers
Cowslips and enemonies all come with spring
Beaded with first showers
The skylarks in the cowslips sing
I love wild flowers

Blue-bells and cuckoo's in the wood
And pasture cuckoo's too
Red yellow white and blue
Growing where herd cows meet the showers
And lick the morning dew
I love wild flowers

The lakes and rivers—summer hours
All have their bloom as well
But few of these are childrens flowers
They grow where dangers dwell
In sun and shade and showers
I love wild flowers

They are such lovely things
And make the very seasons where they come
The nightingale is smothered where she sings
Above their scented bloom
O what delight the cuckoo music brings
I love wild flowers

John Clare, the Poet and the Place

Peter Moyse, (Helpston: the Crossberry Press, 1993)

Ronnie Blythe on Clare

Well, yes... as well as much else.  A special treat for Clareans worldwide may be found here :

http://wormingford.blogspot.co.uk/

Ronnie's piece published in the 'Church Times' today... always a wonderful read and available in most newsagents.  Ronnie has been writing his 'Word from Wormingford' now for decades.

Swaddywell, the present quarry site, was first excavated after Clare's death and the quarry he knew was Swordy Well alongside King Street. Now filled in it would have appeared in Clare's time like the present Hills and Hollows at Barnack. Apparently this method of excavation arose through people quarrying stone for their individual houses. The photo (below) shows how the old quarry at Barnack now looks, presumably very similar to the holes where Clare hid himself from view.  (With thanks to Peter Leverington)

The Rose

Or a Wish for Transformation To E. N.

How highly esteem'd is the sweet smelling rose
Tis reckon'd the ‘finest of Flowers’
Unrival'd in flower-pots and posies it glows
Nay the Queen of Parnassuse's Bowers
And was I like Proteus so powerful indew'd
With that uncommon magical power
My form should this instant be chang'd and renew'd
Yes turn'd to this beautiful flower

Tho this strange Metamorphus by me so excited
'T'is not for my love of the flowers
Nor is it the title with which I'm delighted
To be ‘Queen of parnassion bowers’

No no thats a trifle not worth the possesing
Far beneath the fond wish of a swain
In the way that I crave it—'t'would—O a blessing!
A blessing not call'd so in vain

My wish for the change—is to win Chloe's bosom
Those two swelling mountains of snow
Where so nice in the Valley—each side to repose—on!
I could see them both heave too and fro
There posses'd of my Love a rose-life (or a day)
I would kiss all its heaving alarms
And when doom'd to wither I'd secretly stray
To die in the midst of her charms

This is why I wish for't:—my Chloe my dear
Believe the fond truth that I show
Tho you cannot expect the strange scene to appear
Yet my Uncommon Love you may know!

The Early Poems of John Clare 1804-1822

ed. Eric Robinson, David Powell and Margaret Grainger

(Oxford, 2 volumes, I-II, 1989)

See too: http://johnclare.blogspot.co.uk/2007/09/loves-emblem.html

from "Wanderings in June"

The season now is all delight,

Sweet smile the passing hours,
And Summer's pleasures, at their height,
Are sweet as are her flowers;
The purple morning waken'd soon,
The midday's gleaming din,
Grey evening with her silver moon,
Are sweet to mingle in.
While waking doves betake to flight
From off each roosting bough,
While Nature's locks are wet with night,
How sweet to wander now!

The London Magazine (Jul 1822)

Lines 1-12

To Anna, three years old

My Anna, summer laughs in mirth,

  And we will of the party be,

And leave the crickets in the hearth

  For green fields' merry minstrelsy.

I see thee now with little hand

  Catch at each object passing bye,

The happiest thing in all the land

  Except the bee and butterfly.

       *       *       *       *       *

And limpid brook that leaps along,

  Gilt with the summer's burnished gleam,

Will stop thy little tale or song

  To gaze upon its crimping stream.

Thou'lt leave my hand with eager speed

  The new discovered things to see--

The old pond with its water weed

  And danger-daring willow tree,

Who leans an ancient invalid

  Oer spots where deepest waters be.

In sudden shout and wild surprise

  I hear thy simple wonderment,

As new things meet thy childish eyes

  And wake some innocent intent;

As bird or bee or butterfly

  Bounds through the crowd of merry leaves

And starts the rapture of thine eye

  To run for what it neer achieves.

But thou art on the bed of pain,

  So tells each poor forsaken toy.

Ah, could I see that happy hour

  When these shall be thy heart's employ,

And see thee toddle oer the plain,

  And stoop for flowers, and shout for joy.

Poems: Chiefly from Manuscript

ed. Edmund Blunden and Alan Porter

(London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1920)

The Flower Pot

or Morality and Reflection

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!’

The Early Poems of John Clare 1804-1822,

ed. Eric Robinson, David Powell and Margaret Grainger

(Oxford, 2 volumes, I-II, 1989)

Song: Mary leave thy lowly cot

Mary leave thy lowly cot

When thy thickest jobs are done
When thy friends will miss the[e] not
Mary to the pasture run
Where we met the other night
Neath the bush upon the plain
Be it dark or be it light
Ye may guess we'll meet again
Shoud ye go or shoud ye not
Never shilly shally dear
Leave yer work & leave yr cot
Nothing need ye doubt or fear
Chaps may tell ye lies in spite
Calling me a roving swain
Think what passd the other night
Then Ill bound yell meet again

Poems: Chiefly from Manuscript

ed. Edmund Blunden and Alan Porter

(London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1920)

John Clare 'gold medal' at Chelsea

Adam Frost the designer of the 'Clare' themed garden...

Click on the link below...
http://www.stamfordmercury.co.uk/news/local/adam-frost-takes-gold-at-chelsea-flower-show-for-garden-inspired-by-poet-john-clare-1-3868820

from "Helpstone"

Oh happy Eden of those golden years

Which memory cherishes & use endears
Thou dear beloved spot may it be thine
To add a comfort to my life[s] decline
When this vain world & I have nearly done
& times drain'd glass has little left to run

When all the hopes that charm'd me once are oer
To warm my soul in extacys no more

By dissapointments prov'd a foolish cheat
Each ending bitter & beginning sweet
When weary age the grave a r[e]scue seeks
& prints its image on my wrinkl'd cheeks
Those charms of youth that I again may see
May it be mine to meet my end in thee
& as reward for all my troubles past
Find one hope true to die at home at last

So when the Traveller uncertain roams
On lost roads leading every where but home
Each vain desire that leaves his heart in pain
Each fruitless hope to cherish it in vain
Each hated track so slowly left behind
Makes for the home which night denies to find
& every wish that leaves the aching breast
Flies to the spot where all its wishes rest

Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820)

The Pansy

It does me good, thou flower of spring,

Thy blossoms to behold;
Thou bloom'st when birds begin to sing,
In purple and in gold.
Along the garden-beds so neat
Thy flowers their blooms display,
When sparrows chirp and lambkins bleat
And hopes look up for May.

Then Emma thinks the heart's-ease blooms
When she the pansy sees;
But I see sleep among the tombs,
With heart that's ill at ease,
That asks for what it's lost and loved—
A quiet home and friends,
Where nature's feelings were approved
And peace made life amends.

Where love was all I had to sing,
And there these pansy flowers
Came shining in the dews of spring
To cheer the sunny hours.
But years may pass, as they have passed,
And I may hope in vain,
With hopes that linger to the last,
To see them bloom again.

The fairest flower that ever bloomed,

Or garden ever blest,
Looks cold to care, and ne'er was doomed
To ease the heart's unrest.
The heart's-ease in her happy hour
Might Emma's fancy please,
But life will often pluck the flower
And feel but ill at ease.

The Later Poems of John Clare 1837-1864,

ed. Eric Robinson and David Powell

(Oxford, 2 volumes, I-II, 1984)

from "The Shepherd's Calendar - May"

Each morning now the weeders meet
To cut the thistle from the wheat
And ruin in the sunny hours
Full many wild weeds of their flowers
Corn poppys that in crimson dwell
Calld ‘head achs’ from their sickly smell
And carlock yellow as the sun
That oer the may fields thickly run

And ‘iron weed’ content to share
The meanest spot that spring can spare
Een roads where danger hourly comes
Is not wi out its purple blooms
And leaves wi pricks like thistles round
Thick set that have no strength to wound
That shrink to childhoods eager hold
Like hair—and with its eye of gold

And scarlet starry points of flowers
Pimpernel dreading nights and showers
Oft calld ‘the shepherds weather glass’
That sleep till suns have dryd the grass
Then wakes and spreads its creeping bloom
Till clouds or threatning shadows come
Then close it shuts to sleep again
Which weeders see and talk of rain

And boys that mark them shut so soon
Will call them ‘John go bed at noon’
And fumitory too a name
That superstition holds to fame
Whose red and purple mottld flowers
Are cropt by maids in weeding hours
To boil in water milk and whey
For washes on an holiday

To make their beauty fair and sleak
And scour the tan from summers cheek
And simple small forget me not
Eyd wi a pinshead yellow spot
Ith middle of its tender blue
That gains from poets notice due
These flowers their toil by crowds destroys
And robs them of their lonly joys

That met the may wi hopes as sweet
As those her suns in gardens meet
And oft the dame will feel inclind
As childhoods memory comes to mind
To turn her hook away and spare
The blooms it lovd to gather there

My wild field catalogue of flowers
Grows in my ryhmes as thick as showers

The Shepherd's Calendar, with Village Stories, and Other Poems (1827) - 'May' (lines 147 to 194)

Song on Tobacco

Some sing about love in their season of roses,

But love has in sorrow no blossoms to wear;
So I'll sing tobacco, that cheers and composes,
And lulls us asleep in our trouble and care.

So here's to tobacco, the Indian weed,
The peaceful companion through trouble and strife;
May it prove every smoker's best friend in his need,
And be to his heart a restorer through life.

There's the husbandman hourly tormented with care,
By his daily companion, a troublesome wife;
But a pipe of tobacco will soothe his despair,
And bring him sunshine in the shadows of life.

Then here's to tobacco, the Indian weed,
May it bless honest smokers with peace to the end,
For such a companion is friendship indeed,
Since it proves in the midst of all trouble a friend.

The statesman, the lawyer, the parson will find,
When business oppresses and sorrow grows ripe,
To steer clear of follies and strengthen the mind,
There's nothing like leisure and smoking a pipe.

So here's to that cheering tobacco once more;
May each honest smoker prove blest with the weed,
May it mend broken hopes and lost pleasures restore,
And always prove dear as a friend in his need.

The Later Poems of John Clare 1837-1864

ed. Eric Robinson and David Powell

(Oxford, 2 volumes, I-II, 1984)

from "The Wish"

[My garden in East Devon - click on the image for the full effect]

And now a garden pland with nicest care
Should be my next attention to prepare;
For this I'd search the soil of different grounds
Nor small nor great should mark its homley bounds:
Between these two extreems the plan should be
Compleat throughout and large enough for me;
A strong brick wall should bound the outward fence
Where by the suns allcheering influence
Walltrees should flourish in a spreading row
And Peach and Pear in ruddy lustre glow.
A five foot bed should follow from the wall
To look compleat or save the trees withall
On which small seeds for sallading I'd sow
While curl-leaf Parsley should for edges grow.
My Garden in four quarters I'd divide
To show good taste and not a gaudy pride;
In this the middle walk should be the best
Being more to sight exposed than the rest

How beautiful May and its morning comes in!

[A beautiful, May day poem - largely unknown]

How beautiful May and its morning comes in!

The song of the maidens you hear them begin,
To sing the old ballads while cowslips they pull,
While the dew of the morning fills many pips full.
The closes are spangled with cowslips like gold,
Girls cram in their aprons what baskets can't hold;
And still gather on to the heat of the day,
Till force often throws the last handful away.

Then beneath an old hawthorn they sit one and all,
And make the May garlands and round cuck a ball
Of cowslips and blossoms so showy and sweet,
And laugh when they think of the swains they shall meet.
Then to finish the garland they trudge away home,
And beg from each garden the flowers then in bloom;
Then beneath the old eldern, beside the old wall,
They sit out to make it, maids, misses, and all.

The ribbons the ploughmen bought maids at the fair,
Are sure to be seen in a garland so fair;
And dolls from the children they dress up and take,
While children laugh loud at the show they will make.
Then they take round the garland to shew at each door,
With kerchief to hide the fine flowers cover'd o'er;
At cottages also, when willing to pay,
The maidens their much admired garland display.

Then at duck under water adown the long road,
They run with their dresses all flying abroad;
And ribbons all colours how sweet they appear!
May seems to begin the new life of the year.
Then the garland on ropes is hung high over all,
One end to a tree and one hooked to a wall;
Where they cuck the ball over till day is nigh gone,
And then tea and cakes and the dancing comes on.

And then, lawk! what dancing and laughing is there,
While the fiddler makes faces within the arm chair;
And then comes the cushion, the girls they all shriek
And fly to the door from the old fiddler's squeak;
But the doors they are fastened, so all must kneel down
And take the rude kiss from the unmannerly clown.
Thus the May games are ended, to their houses they roam,
With the sweetheart she chooses each maiden goes home.

The Later Poems of John Clare 1837-1864

ed. Eric Robinson and David Powell

(Oxford, 2 volumes, I-II, 1984)