Where she told her love

I saw her crop a rose
Right early in the day,
And I went to kiss the place
Where she broke the rose away
And I saw the patten rings
Where she o'er the stile had gone,
And I love all other things
Her bright eyes look upon.

If she looks upon the hedge or up the leafing tree,
The whitethorn or the brown oak are made dearer things to me.

I have a pleasant hill
Which I sit upon for hours,
Where she cropt some sprigs of thyme
And other little flowers;
And she muttered as she did it
As does beauty in a dream,
And I loved her when she hid it
On her breast, so like to cream.

Near the brown mole on her neck that to me a diamond shone;
Then my eye was like to fire, and my heart was like to stone.

There is a small green place
Where cowslips early curled,
Which on Sabbath day I traced,
The dearest in the world.
A little oak spreads o'er it,
And throws a shadow round,
A green sward close before it,
The greenest ever found.

There is not a woodland nigh nor is there a green grove,
Yet stood the fair maid nigh me and told me all her love.

The Flitting (excerpt)

I’ve left mine own old home of homes
Green fields & every pleasant place
The summer like a stranger comes
I pause & hardly know her face.

I miss the hazels happy green
The bluebells quiet hanging blooms
Where envy’s sneer was never seen
Where staring malice never comes.

I miss the heath its yellow furze
Molehills & rabbit tracts that lead
Through beesom, ling & teazle burrs
That spread a wilderness indeed.

The woodland oaks & all below
That their white powdered branches shield
The mossy paths—the very crow
Croaks music in my native field.

Sonnet: On a Lane in Spring

A Little Lane, the brook runs close beside
And spangles in the sunshine while the fish glide swiftly by
And hedges leafing with the green spring tide
From out their greenery the old birds fly
And chirp and whistle in the morning sun
The pilewort glitters 'neath the pale blue sky
The little robin has its nest begun
And grass green linnets round the bushes fly
How Mild the Spring Comes in; the daisy buds
Lift up their golden blossoms to the sky
How lovely are the pingles and the woods
Here a beetle runs; and there a fly
Rests on the Arum leaf in bottle green
And all the Spring in this Sweet lane is seen

'O Death, where is thy victory'

[Image: ‘Easter Springtide’ by Vitali Linitsky]

‘O Death, where is thy victory! O Grave, were is thy sting’
The inspired Bard & holy prophet sung;
His hands exulting swept the trembling string —
And all around with heavenly Music rung.

More loud & louder thrills the trembling chords,
His hands more Faster moves along the lyre —
The Bard’s strong faith triumphant joy affords,
And all his soul's enrapt in heavenly Fire

The sounds vibrating still the Notes prolong,
And listening Seraphs throng the Bard around
On Wings of Easter— flock to hear the song;
And smile in concert to the pleasing sound

T'was thou O Jesus! Saviour of the World
T'was thou that filled the Bard’s prophetic eye
He saw thy flag of ‘Peace on Earth’ unfurled
And heard ‘Glad tidings’ melt along the Sky

But O! a Tear! — The Magic Scenes ensue
The Saviour dies — that sinners might be blest.
Dies! — Death & Hell's grim terrors to subdue,
And make the grave a-wished-for-place of rest.

The Botanist's Walk

The Forest meets the blessings of the Spring;
The chestnut throws her sticky buds away,
And shows her pleasant leaves and snow-white flowers;
The nightingale is loud, and often heard
The notes of every song, and hardly known,
She hides and sings, a stranger all the day;
The spurge, with caper-flowers of yellow green—
And called ‘wild capers’, when I went in woods
To look for nests and hear the nightingale;
Dog-mercury shoots; the sloe is full of flowers;
A willow flowers, and just above the ground,
The furze, like myrtle, scarce a finger long,
Is everywhere, and full of golden flowers;
And butterflies, the colour of the flowers—
As if the winds had blown them from their stalks—
Are all about, and every where is Spring!

April

[Image from Carry Akroyd’s linocut illustrating April from “The Shepherd’s Calendar 2007” published by Carcanet Publications]

In April time, flowers come like dreams;
The nightingales, and cuckoo's sing,
The may-fly settling on the streams,
Makes wrinkles with its russet wing.
The rivers sedge is sprouting green,
The mare-blobs are in burnished gold,
The daisies spread about the green,
And all is lovely to behold.

The skylark winnows in the air,
And cheers the valley with his song.
The slopes are green, the scene is fair,
And herd-boys whistle all day long.
The ash tree's they are full of flower,
The fallen ones float on the stream.
The sun through haze like misty shower,
Shines warmly on the lovely scene.

The meadows they are emerald green,
The river sparkles with the light.
Like snow storms are the orchard seen—
The fields are with daisies white,
The buttercups are buds of green—
That bye-and bye-are flowers of Gold.
The fields look warm, the air serene,
And all is lovely to behold.

'Tis Spring, the April of the year,
The holiday of birds and flowers,
Some build ere yet the leaves appear,
While others wait for safer hours.
Hid in green leaves that shun the shower,
They're safe and happy all along—
The meanest weed now finds a flower,
The simplest bird will learn a song.

Lines, to Mary

The brook goes winding like a snake
Through many crooks and turns
Loud are the gurgles which it makes
Like music—and then mourns
The thorn leans o'er its mimic waves
That o'er the pebbles run
The mimic foam in dark place raves
Then crimples in the sun.

Will Mary teach me how to love,
Or nature how to woo
The brook below the clouds above
Each others track pursue
Do breezes speak fond woman’s name
Are portraits seen in flowers
Of those we love yet dare not claim
In springs delightful hours.

Yes in this brook I sit beside
Her voice like music dwells
The flower her presence shows with pride
And loves true story tells
The very birds within the hedge
Love's happy thoughts proclaim
All heard or seen in Spring’s first pledge
Seem speaking Mary’s name.

March/44

Ballad - The Rose Of The World

The Rose Of The World Was Dear Mary To Me
In The Days Of My Boyhood & Youth
I Told Her In Songs Where My Heart Wished To Be
& My Songs Were The Language of Truth
I Told Her In Looks When I Gazed In Her Eyes
That Mary Was Dearest To Me

I Told Her In Words & The Language Of Sighs
Where My Whole Hearts Affections Would Be
I Told her in love that all nature was true
I convinced her that nature was kind
But love in his trials had labour to do
Mary would be in the mind

Mary met me in spring where the speedwell knots grew
& the king cups were shining like flame
I chose her all colours red yellow & blue
But my love was one hue & the same
Spring summer & winter & all the year through
In the sunshine the shower & the blast
I told the same tale & she knows it all true
& Mary's my blossom at last

(Lines 1139-1158 of 'Child Harold' - Spring 1841 in High Beech, Epping) - The poem where Clare stopped capitalising every word – no-one knows why he started, nor why he ceased, doing so.

[Especially for the Students of City College, Plymouth]

Our Little Ones

When with our little ones we spent
Each Sunday after tea,
And up the wood's dark side we went
Or pasture's rushy lea,
To look among the woodland boughs
To find the bird's retreat,
Or crop the cowslip for the cows;
Then sat to rest the little feet
In many a pleasant place,
And see the lambs, who tried to bleat,
Come first in every race,
Then laugh'd the children's joys to view,
Who ran across the lea
At birds that from the rushes flew,
And many a wandering bee.

The red-bagged bee

The red-bagged bee on never weary wing
Pipe's his small trumpet round the early flowers
& the white nettles by the hedge in spring
Hears his low music all the sunny hours
Till clouds come on & leaves the falling showers
Herald of spring & music of wild blooms
It seems the minstrel of spring’s early flowers
On banks where the red nettle flowers it comes
& there all the long sunny morning hums

Tall grows the nettle

Tall grows the Nettle by the hedgeway side
& bye the old barn end they shade the wall
In sunshine nodding to the angry tide
Of winds that winnows bye—these one & all
Makes up the harmony of Spring—& all
That passes feel a sudden love for flowers
They look so green—& when the soft showers fall
They grow so fast—Dock, Burdocks, Henbane—all
Who loves not wild flowers bye the old stone wall

The Droning Bee

The droning bee has wakened up

& humming round the buttercup

& round the bright star daisy hums—

O'er every blade of grass he passes—

The dewdrop shines like looking glasses

In every drop a bright sun comes—

'Tis march, and spring, bright days we see—

Round every blossom hums the bee.

As soon as daylight in the morning

The crimson curtains of the dawning—

We hear, and see, the humming bee—

Searching for hedgerow violets

Happy with the food he gets—

Swimming o'er brook,& meadow lea—

Then sits on maple stools at rest

On the green mosses velvet breast.

About the molehill round & round,

The wild bee hums with honeyed sound—

Singing a song of spring and flowers—

To schoolboys heard in sunny hours

When all the waters seem a blaze

Of fire and sunshine in such days

When bees buzz on with coal black eye

Joined by the yellow butterfly

& when it comes a summer shower

It still will go from flower to flower

Then underneath the rushes—

It sees the silver daisy flower

& there it spends a little hour

Then hides among the bushes

But whence they come from where they go

None but the wiser schoolboy's know

(Knight Transcript - from the Northampton Asylum, therefore after 1841)

March

The insect world, now sunbeams higher climb,
Oft dream of spring, and wake before their time:
Bees stroke their little legs across their wings,
And venture short flights where the snowdrop hings
Its silver bell, and winter aconite
Its buttercup-like flowers that shut at night,
With green leaf furling round its cup of gold,
Like tender maiden muffled from the cold;
They sip and find their honey-dreams are vain,
Then feebly hasten to their hives again.
The butterflies, by eager hopes undone,
Glad as a child come out to greet the sun,
Beneath the shadows of a sunny shower
Are lost, nor see to-morrow's April flower.

Winter (excerpt)

With, it seems, the return of winter by the end of the week after 2 weeks of warmer weather, a part of Clare's 'Winter'. Hope it's not that cold here this week:

Oft o’er one flys the chirping lark
With rhyme hung round his chilly breast
Complaining of some dogs rude bark
That scared him from his chilly rest
& oft from snowbanks ridgy edge
The hare steps hirpling o’er the plain
Till found a bush or bunch of sedge
Then drops its ears & squats again
& feebly whines the puddocks wail
Slow circling naked woods around
& wild geese ranks that swifter sail
Oft start one with a hoarser sound
While towering at the farthest height
The heron brawls its lonely cry
Who intercepts the dazzled light
& looks a cloud speck in the sky

Gleaners or thieves?

Blackberrying may appear to be a trivial subject in John Clare's poetry, generally referred to in passing as a characteristic autumnal activity, along with collecting elderberries to make wine, or hazel nuts, or mushrooms, or water-cress, or gathering rotten wood for the cottage-fire. Essentially, it is not different from those other rural activities, which formed part of the cottager's economy in every part of Europe.

In Helpston, too, "it was highly dangerous, to say the least of it, to walk or ride on any of the highroads... at dusk, and... during the night." In the English fens, the inhabitants believed that the produce of the wasteland came to them by right. Also in the fens: "At dusk, the passer-by might be confronted by silently-moving lines of shadowy figures, their backs bent under the weight of trunks and piled-up wood, as they headed for home". Clare referred to this wood as "rotten," omitting the word "wood" occasionally.

Where stickers stroll from day to day
And gather loads of rotten wood
And poachers left in safety stray
When midnight wears its deepest mood.
(from Walks in the Woods)

Clare's natural sympathies are with the "stickers," as he calls them: the "wood-men," on the other hand, the agents of the landowners, are "terrifying rascals" who "make a prison of the forrests and are its joalers." (sic) Just as the fallen wood belonged by right to the local inhabitants in the forests in all parts of Europe, so, according to popular belief, did the fallen wood belong to the locals near the oak woods of Stamford, and, in both regions, led to conflict between landowners and peasants, between the lord's steward and gypsies, or the woodman and villagers.

The conflict over wood extended to other products of the waste -- rabbits, hares, birds, withies, reeds, cresses, sloes, dewberries, nuts, mushrooms, elderberries, wild strawberries and blackberries, not to mention eggs, snakes, deer, eels, fish, and other edibles. The custom of nutting, which Clare celebrates, was particularly disliked by the landowners, their servants and the tenant-farmers. The pages of the Stamford Mercury and Drakard's Stamford News are filled with advertisements and articles regarding the practice; the Mercury, upholding the rights of the landowners, the News those of the rural population.

From a essay by Eric Robinson ~ Wordsworth Circle (2007)

Song: 'By A Cottage Near A Wood'

By A Cottage Near A Wood
Where The Small Birds Build & Sing
In My Dreaming Hours I've Stood
To Review The Lovely Spring
There Once Dwelt A Lovely Maiden
Whose Name I Sought In Vain
Some Called Her Lovely Lucey
& Others Honest Jane

Bye That Cottage Near A Wood
I Have Often Stood Alone
In A Sad Or Happy Mood
& Wished She Was My Own
The Small Birds Flitted Round Me
But Nature Pleased in Vain
For The Dark & Lovely Maiden
I Never Saw Again

Bye The Cottage Near The Wood
I Wished With Peace To Be
& The Blossoms Where She Stood
They Were More Then Gems To Me
More Fair Or Sweeter Blossoms
My Rambles Sought In Vain
& The Dark & Lovely Maiden
I Never Found Again

Bye That Cottage Near A Wood
The Childern Held Her Gown
& On The Turf Before It
Ran Laughing Up & Down
They Played Around Her Beauty
While I Sought Joys In Vain
But The Dark Haired Lovely Maiden
I Ne'er Could Find Again

Bye That Cottage Near A Wood
Where The Childern Used To Play
Spring Has Often Burst The Bud
& As Often Passed Away
But My Spring Joys Will Ne'er Return
Nought Can Their Shade Restore
Though She Left Her Image In My Heart
& I Love Her Evermore

Bye That Cottage Near A Wood
Though The Summer Flowers Appear
They Charm Not Me—& Where She Stood
Tis Winter All The Year
They Charm Me Not Now Loves Away
& Beauty Blooms In Vain
For The Dark & Lovely Maiden
I Never Found Again

[Clare’s capitalising of every word points to a composition of 1840/41 whilst in High Beech, Epping. Certainly in keeping with the subject].

---oOo---

Especially for the students of City College Plymouth who are studying Clare for their exams in June '07 -- Looking forward to meeting you all next month.

---oOo---

Word from Wormingford

[Helpston after the Enclosure Acts]

I am writing about the more or less penniless John Clare, whose publishers have sent him a dateless “Student’s Journal” in which they hope he will make notes for a natural history book rather like that written by Gilbert White. It has no printed dates; so Clare can start it in September.

He is ravished by its paper. Being prolific, he has never possessed nearly enough paper for his needs. Those who could well afford to do so never think of giving him a ream or two. Instead, they give him ad­vice. And when finally he collapsed, the Lunacy Board put it down to covering too much paper.

Before this tragedy, Clare got out. He walked the fields and woods. He socialised in the pub. He would, on a fine day, lie low, and, out of the eye of the labouring world, would be out sensuously watching butter­flies, or sniffing wild flowers. Sometimes with a girl.

Those who understood money doled out his slender royalties in case he blued them all at once. The seasons passed; the Glinton bells rang; the new profitable farming wrecked his village; the boardrooms had him in mind. Having read and met Hazlitt, he refused to stick to poetry, and now and then went into the economy-protest business, showing more knowledge of money than he was entitled to — not to say nerve.

The clear white pages of the “Student’s Journal” grew dark with ink. Sometime or other, feeling low, he also felt like someone else. Some­one who had a great deal more to say about money than about sex. Finding a sad hymn by another author, he wound himself in it:

A stranger did once bless the earth
Who never caused a heart to mourn,
Whose very voice gave sorrow mirth,
And how did earth his worth return?
It spurned him from his lowliest lot:
The meanest station owned him not.

To be sung to Surrey. And sung by Ted Hughes and myself, and crowds of other people, when we placed a memorial to this “tenant of the fields” in Poets’ Corner.

Ronald Blythe ~ Church Times
20 February 2009

Flowers shall hang upon the pawls

Flowers shall hang upon the pawls
Brighter than patterns upon shawls
And blossoms shall be in the coffin lids
Sadder than tears on grief’s eyelids
Garlands shall hide pale corps faces
When beauty shall rot in charnel places
Spring flowers shall come in dews of sorrow
For the maiden goes down to her grave tomorrow

Last week she went walking and stepping along
Gay as first flowers of spring or the tune of a song
Her eye was as bright as the sun in its calm
Her lips they were rubies her bosom was warm
And white as the snowdrop that lies on her breast
Now death like a dream is her bedfellow guest
And white as the sheets—aye and paler than they
Now her face in its beauty has perished to clay

Spring flowers they shall hang on her pawl
More bright than the pattern that bloom'd on her shawl
And blooms shall be strewn where the corps lies hid
More sad than the tears upon grief’s eyelid
And ere the return of another sweet May
Shall be rotting to dust in the coffined clay
And the grave whereon the bright snowdrops grow
Shall be the same soil as the beauty below

11th Feb 1847

To a Friend

[The light of the sun - Lesser Celandines (ranunculus ficaria, aka pilewort) in bloom in woodland in Co. Clare. How very apt]

Under hedges the violets are coming in bloom
& the Pilewort it shines like the Sun
The Spring it is bursting from the winters cold Tomb
& the sun of Life's smiles has begun

Tis Valentine's Day tomorrow fair maid
& the Snowdrops are looking for thee
The Crocus has got his gold suit ready made
& hopes thy companion to be

So out of two sweethearts be sure & choose one
While choosing is left to thy choice
For Valentine day only comes to be gone
And then true love will be left without voice

King's School, Ottery St. Mary.

[St. Mary's Church in Ottery St. Mary]

I have had the pleasure over the past week of speaking over three separate sessions to the 6th form of King's School in Ottery St. Mary about Clare and his work. Bit difficult to adequately deal with such a prolific and complex poet in that time, but we did cover Clare’s “Life and Language”, “Love and Sex”, and “Enclosures and Madness”, touching upon Gypsies, Fame, Social Change, Natural History, Folk Song, Wildness, and the sense of Longing found in many Clare poems.

A treat for me; I hope it was helpful for such a great group. Thanks Sandra for the invitation.

Two of Clare’s poems, especially for them. The first a little known bit of Clare fun, and the second, as befits the season, one of Clare’s lovely ‘Valentine’ poems.

A Schoolboys Wit

Go ‘Silly Brains’ the Master said
To one who'd missed a letter
A Dunce’s Cap shall fit your head
If you don’t do no better.

‘Boy instant upward cast his eye
On's masters nodle winking
The Master asked the reason why
Why sir says he I’m thinking:

As yours & my head seem o' kin
To save ye farther trouble
It would when once your hand is in
Be best to make a couple

Valentine

The morning is up betimes my dear
Each postman is loaded by Cupid
The letters are nothing but lovers and rhymes
Some loving or joking or stupid

'Tis an old fashioned thing to go church to be wed
And then nothing can alter the fashion
But today like the birds many lovers are led
More warmly revealing their passion.

Thy love at the first gave such witching delight
No maiden on earth could be neater
And absence has kept thee so long from my sight
That thy beauty shines sweeter and sweeter.

The flowers of summer are showy and fine
But the blossoms of spring are the dearest
And just so it is with my fair Valentine
The best are the sweet and the sincerest.

There's the cyclamen flower of a delicate hue
There's the snowdrop so drooping of delicate white
There's the violet and crocus all over dark blue
That makes in a nosegay a Valentine quite.

I'll wed thee and love thee, and this is the day
We must call those we love Valentine
And I hope when we see the sweet blossoms of May
Thou'lt be a sweet blossom of mine.

---oOo---