There's music in the songs of birds

There's music in the songs of birds

There's music in the bee
There's music in a womans voice
When sitting on your knee
While walking in the mossy vales
Beneath the spreading beech
Song lives in singing nightingales
And in a womans speech

To hear her wisper in the dark
'Tis heavens melody
Her calm reply her wise remark
Is more than song to me
The harp can touch no sweeter chord
In music's thrilling choice
Nor music breathe a sweeter word
Than comes from womans voice

There's music in the singing lark
That carols to the sky
To hear her wisper in the dark
'Tis heavens melody
There's music in a womans voice
While sitting on your knee
And Emma is my own heart's choice
When e'er she chooses me

The Later Poems of John Clare 1837-1864

ed. Eric Robinson and David Powell

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

She's Lovely in her Person

She's lovely in her person               And taller in her size

Then some bards make a verse on   And lovely are her eyes
She's worth a Poets ransome          She chills my heart on fire
Her face is very handsome              And warm as my desire
O' beautifull is woman                    In her secret love for Man
Like flowers eternal blooming          And I'll win her if I can
I'll win her and I'll wear her             Like a nose gay on the breast
And on my heart I'll bear her           Like a nosegay sweetly prest
She shall be mine for ever               And that I'm sure she shall
And a pleasant kiss I'll give her       As a sweet and lovely girl
Her cheeks are like two roses          And her lips are ruby red
And whatever truth supposes          I should like her downy bed
Her cheeks are bonny roses           And auburn is her hair
Her eye as dark as sloes is            Her neck is lilly fair
She's love among the roses           When the leaves wear morning gems
Her bosom white as snows is         Her eyes two diadems
To conquor and to kill ye               If ye worship them too long
And will ye love or will ye              She's the sweetest girl in Song

The Later Poems of John Clare 1837-1864

ed. Eric Robinson and David Powell

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

From "Reccolections After a Ramble"

The rosey day was sweet & young

The clod brown lark that haild the morn
Had just her summer anthem sung
& trembling dropped in the corn

The dew raisd flower was perk & proud
The butterflye around it playd
The skyes blue clear save wooly cloud
That passt the sun without a shade
On the pismires castle hill
While the burnet buttons quakd
While beside the stone pavd rill
Cowslap bunshes nodding shakd
Bees in every peep did try
Great had been the honey shower
Soon their load was on their thigh
Yellow dust as fine as flour

(lines 1-16)

The Village Minstrel, and Other Poems (2 volumes, 1821)

The Moth a Coy Lover

The Moth a coy lover now ventures to creep

Out at night to steal kisses from flowers when asleep

But the Butterflye bold as the Bee for a plot

Kisses the flowers all the day whether willing or not

Now no longer able his sports to pursue

He lay neath a leaf to get out of the dew

Heres the Cockchaffer to with his old sullen drone

Sings as if he thought no song sweet as his own

The Bee too with grains of red dust on each thigh

Who had drained thro the day all the honey flowers dry

& in vain he attempted straight forward to drive

He reeled and mistook the way home to his hive

Till lost on this spot in a considerable fright

He makes on this thistle a bed for the night

Heres the rope dancing spider a trusting his threads

From his web on the branches high over their heads

Ah well may you laugh at the sports he doth make

While he dances away in no fears for his neck

The rest were all coupled & happy & they

Song the old merry songs which they sang at his day

Pet MS A31 p9

(Unpublished as far as I can tell)

'August'

The fields now claim them where a motley crew
Of old and young their daily tasks pursue
The barleys beard is grey and wheat is brown
And wakens toil betimes to leave the town
The reapers leave their beds before the sun
And gleaners follow in the toils begun
To pick the littered ear the reaper leaves
And glean in open fields among the sheaves
The ruddy child nursed in the lap of care
In toils rude strife to do his little share
Beside his mother poddles oer the land
Sun burnt and stooping with a weary hand
Picking his tiney glean of corn or wheat
While crackling stubbles wound his little feet
Full glad he often is to sit awhile
Upon a smooth green baulk to ease his toil
And feign would spend an idle hour to play
With insects strangers to the moiling day
Creeping about each rush and grassy stem
And often wishes he was one of them
In weariness of heart that he might lye
Hid in the grass from the days burning eye
That raises tender blisters on his skin
Thro holes or openings that have lost a pin
Free from the crackling stubs to toil and glean
And smiles to think how happy he had been
Whilst his expecting mother stops to tye
Her handful up and waiting his supply

Misses the idle younker from her side
And shouts of rods and morts of threats beside
Pointing to the grey willows while she tells
His fears shall fetch one if he still rebells

(Lines 15 to 46)
The Shepherd's Calendar with Village Stories and Other Poems (1927)

A Morning Walk

[Image : “Waiting for a Smile”(1890) by Alfred Stieglitz]

Ah sure it is a lovely day
As ever summers glory yields
& I will put my books away
& wander in the fields
Just risen is the red round sun
Cocks from the roost doth loudly bawl
& house bee busily begun
Hums round the mortered wall
& while I take my staff to start
Birds sing among the eldern leaves
& fighting sparrows glad at heart
Chirp in the cottage eaves
Nor can I help but turn & view
Ere yet I close the creaking door
The sunbeams eager peeping through
Upon the sanded floor

(lines 1-16)

The Midsummer Cushion

ed. Kelsey Thornton and Anne Tibble

(Ashington and Manchester: Mid-NAG and Carcanet, 1979)

A Song

In Fashionable Style

O throw aside those carless ways
My conscous heart to move
Affected anger but betrays
Suspicous doubts of love
That face were frowns at will can dwell
Were cold deciet beguiles
May just as easy & as well
Dissemble while it smiles
Tis cruel when false smiles betrays
The heart into a snare
But crueler when slighting ways
Turns pleasures to despair
Thy face is fair let that suffice
& scorn a meaner power
Truth adds to beautys fading price
As fragrance to the flower
Yet tho you frown or smile in jest
My folly must declare
A weakness burning in my breast
Feels all in earnest there

The Letters of John Clare

ed. Mark Storey (1985)

The Shy Lover

I often longed, when wandering up and down,

To hear the rustle of thy Sunday gown;
And when we met, I passed, and let thee go,
And felt I loved, but dare not tell thee so:
Snares are so thickly spread on woman's way,
The common ballad teaches, men betray.
I thought and felt it rudeness if I tried,
And well-meant kindness might be misapplied.
I longed to walk with thee, where waters play
And lined with water-cresses all the way;
And read the poets as I went along
And thought they knew thy name in every song.
The mind on thee and beauty's music dwells,
And listens to the sound of Glinton bells.

John Clare, Northborough Sonnets,

ed. Eric Robinson, David Powell and P.M.S. Dawson

(Ashington/Manchester: Mid-NAG/Carcanet, 1995)

Clare's attitude to 'work'

"After I had done with going to school it was proposed that I should be bound apprentice to a shoemaker, but I rather disliked this bondage.   I whimpered and turned a sullen eye on every persuasion, till they gave me my will.  A neighbour then offered to learn me his trade -- to be a stone mason, but I disliked this too... I was then sent for to drive the plough at Woodcroft Castle of Oliver Cromwell memory; though Mrs. Bellairs the mistress was a kind-hearted woman, and though the place was a very good one for living, my mind was set against it from the first; ... one of the disagreeable things was getting up so early in the morning... and another was getting wetshod ... every morning and night -- for in wet weather the moat used to overflow the cause-way that led to the porch, and as there was but one way to the house we were obliged to wade up to the knees to get in and out... I staid here one month, and then on coming home to my parents they could not persuade me to return.  They now gave up all hopes of doing any good with me and fancied that I should make nothing but a soldier; but luckily in this dilemma a next-door neighbour at the Blue Bell, Francis Gregory, wanted me to drive plough, and as I suited him, he made proposals to hire me for a year -- which as it had my consent my parents readily agreed to."

from Clare's unfinished autobiography

The Green Wood Side

I wandered down a green wood side
On Sunday noon in spring
Where little birds their dwellings hide
And Thrushes sweetly sing
The moss so green round Hazel roots
The Primrose by its side
That in its brimstone livery shoots
In bunches far and wide

Oh there I met a pretty maid
The fairest of her kind
She stood beneath the Hazels shade
Where lightly blew the wind
I gave her cheek a hearty smack
As leaning on her neck
Her soft hair trailed adown her back
Without a mark or Speck

Within the dyke the bullrush grew
Although the place was dry
And Thrushes nest wi’ Eggs o' blue
Did on the hedge ribs lye
The Woodbines in green leaves look'd wan
The Blue bell stooped i' pride
And there I claspt my bonny Ann
Along the greenwood side

Oh bonny Ann Oh bonny Ann
What makes you look so fair
Is it the love for some fond man
Or is't for none you care
My love to thee my bonny Ann
Where primrose blooms wi’ pride
I’ll talk and please thee all I can
Down by the greenwood side

Robinson, et. al
Poems of the Middle Period
OUP

Eternity of time

Amazing, grand eternity of time!

Where things of greatest standing grow sublime,
Less from long fames, and universal praise,
Than wearing as the ‘ancient of old days’
‘Old days,’ once spoken, seems but half the way
To reach that night-leap of eternal day.
Miltonic centuries, each a mighty boast,
Shakespearian eras — worlds, without their host,
Engraved upon the adamant of fame
By pens of steel, in characters of flame —
To which the forest oaks' eternal stay
Are but as points and commas in their way —
These less than nothings are to ruin's doom,
When suns grow dark, and earth a vast and lonely tomb.

The Poems of John Clare

ed. J. W. Tibble (2 volumes, Dent, 1935)

To a Primrose

At the age of sixteen, if we may trust the account given by his early friend Mr. Octavius Gilchrist, in the "London Magazine" for January, 1820, Clare composed the following sonnet "To a Primrose":

Welcome, pale primrose, starting up between
Dead matted leaves of oak and ash, that strew
The every lawn, the wood, and spinney through,
'Mid creeping moss and ivy's darker green!
How much thy presence beautifies the ground!
How sweet thy modest, unaffected pride
Glows on the sunny bank and wood's warm side!
And where thy fairy flowers in groups are found
The schoolboy roams enchantedly along,
Plucking the fairest with a rude delight,
While the meek shepherd stops his simple song,
To gaze a moment on the pleasing sight,
O'erjoyed to see the flowers that truly bring
The welcome news of sweet returning Spring.
   
J.L.CHERRY

LIFE AND REMAINS of JOHN CLARE (1872)

"I Am" and the unveiling of the new Clare display...

A Message from the President of the John Clare Society

This was John Clare’s church.  He was baptised in it and buried beside it.  He wrote of its “wholesome and reasonable admonitions” but its message reached him via its bells as it did so many countrymen.

The shepherds and the herding swains

Keep their Sabbath on the plains ..

For them the church bells vainly call

Fields are their church and house and all

Amongst so many things, Clare was also an archaeologist and his wandering gaze would have travelled round this ancient building, settling maybe on the carved stone leaves.  It is a moving experience to see what a great writer saw, to hear the music which he heard.  Most of those who Clare put into his poetry sat here, were wed here, played around here.  Charles Mossop the Vicar was good to him here, extraordinary parishioner that he was.  Clare’s God would break all parochial bounds in the majestic statement ‘I Am’.

Ronald Blythe

The above text appears on the new new display about John Clare and St. Botolph's Church Helpston - to be dedicated at the John Clare Society Festival Service on the 14th July 2013.

'I AM'

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky. 

To His Wife

In my young days, I pluck't a rose;

It grew upon a pleasant tree,—
No prickles on its stem arose,—
It never wounded me.

It grew upon a pleasant spot;
On mountain heath so fair,
And pleasant was the little cot;
Near which it flourished there.

I knew it when a blooming bud,
Nursed by the morning dew,
I knew the cottage where it stood,
And beautiful it grew.

Flowers on the hills had grown,
The woods were all in tune,
The bud became full blown;
The sweetest rose of June.

I saw it every day,
A hue that health will seek;
There's such a rose in May,
Comes on the maidens cheek.

I went again in spring;
'Twas somewere near the may,
Birds had begun to sing,—
When I took the rose away.

I planted it with care,
I watched it bloom from ill,
It scented all the air,
And blossoms sweeter still.

The Later Poems of John Clare 1837-1864

ed. Eric Robinson and David Powell

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

Come away come away to the wild wood

[Photo : Anne Lee]

[Really not a complete poem, but a series of jottings later to be worked up.  Clare never came back to them again - I feel some memorable images that I am glad were not lost]

Come away come away to the wild wood
Where the bramble o'erhangs the footway
The scenes o' my love youth and childhood
Where I with young Hannah did stray
The bits of wood hang on the briar
Which small birds seek for nests
The pettichap that sings so quere
And robins riddle brests—

Come away come away to the scenes of our childhood
And we'll find out the red robins nest
The bramble bush grows in the wild wood
That owns the song thrush for a guest

Come away come away to the bramble

Come away to the hazle and thorn
To the scenes o' our youth let us ramble
And be happy as sunshine just born

Come away to the oak and the ivy
To the fox earths that hides i' the thorn
Where the oak trunks look whiter than smoke in the morn

Come away come away at the burst of the sun
There is flowers to be gathered and joy to be won
So come on my sweet one—and let us be there
Where hyacinth and primroses blossom so fair

Come away to the haunts o' the bird and the bee
And listen to music o' natures grand art
Where the flowers beat all painting do come now with me
For music and beauty must never more part

Come away to the woods where the oaks glitter green
And brown lie in heaps where last winter has been
Where the bloom o' the thorn is as white as a sheet
And the moss like green velvet flowers under your feet

Come away my sweet one my choice come away
And we'll spend a sweet hour in the woodlands today

The Later Poems of John Clare 1837-1864

ed. Eric Robinson and David Powell

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

Mary

A shattering poem, written 7 years after his incarceration in Northampton.  Clare's 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 at 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 Mary's 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 Mary's 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
And tell her all I had to say

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

(11^th November 1848)

from : ‘O for one real imaginary blessing’

[Image: Eddie Bairstow]

I wooed a Gipsy wench on Sunday e'ens

& worshiped beggar girls & courted Queens

Love is the fire that burns the heart to cinders
Love is the thought that makes the poets sigh

Sweet as Queen’s portraits stuck in London windows

For loyal subjects in their love to buy

Love is of every heart the painted toy

The idol of man’s worship — faces fair
Were my enchanted magic from a boy
The pouting lip, the colour of the hair
Left me in raptures, next of kin to care
I loved & wooed them in the field like gems

Of too much value for the clown who sung
The azure bluebells in their sapphire stems
Among green bushes low their mute bells hung
These seemed love's modest maidens, dew bestrung
With blebs o' mornings glittering pearls
I loved them in the valleys where I sung

With their green drapery & crispy curls
I loved them as a crowd of blooming girls
With bonny bosom white as is the May

The wild brere blushes wi' the break o' day
Sweet as the cowslip fields that spread before thee
Sweet are the dusky clouds that sprinkle oer thee

(lines 17 to 37, 39-41)

The Later Poems of John Clare 1837-1864

ed. Eric Robinson and David Powell

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

The line I’ve removed for this post (line 38 of the poem) reads :

‘Sweet milkmaid o' May mornings — Queen Victoria’

Song, from Child Harold

In this cold world without a home
Disconsolate I go
The summer looks as cold to me
As winters frost & snow
Though winters scenes are dull & drear
A colder lot I prove
No home had I through all the year
But Marys honest love

But Love inconstant as the wind
Soon shifts another way
No other home my heart can find
Life wasting day by day
I sigh & sit & sit & sigh
For better days to come
For Mary was my hope & joy
Her truth & heart my home

Her truth & heart was once my home
& May was all the year
But now through seasons as I roam
Tis winter everywhere
Hopeless I go through care & toil
No friend I e'er possest
To reccompence for Marys smile
& the love within her breast

My love was ne'er so blest as when
It mingled with her own
Told often to be told agen
& every feeling known
But now loves hopes are all bereft
A lonely man I roam
& abscent Mary long hath left
My heart without a home

Poems of John Clare's Madness

ed. Geoffrey Grigson (RKP, 1949)

The Firetail*

Around the old and ruined wall,

About the dead and hollow tree,
The firetail's ‘tweet-tut’ fretting call
Keeps up a teasing melody.
It starts at every passer-by,
And boys that by its dwelling roam
Well know its danger-daunting cry
And watch it till its ventures home.
Its nest is made of hair and moss
And down and cobwebs very fine;
Its eggs are blue withouten gloss,
I've found as many oft as nine.
The female has a fiery tail,
And is a dull and sandy brown,
But beautiful appears the male
With crimson breast and jetty crown.

* ( Clare's 'Firetail' is the Redstart)

John Clare, Bird Poems

introduced by Peter Levi (London: Folio Society, 1980)

Read by Chris Packham on BBC TV's "Spring Watch' in early June 2013

The Fen

[Photo  : Anne Lee]

The dreary fen a waste of water goes,

With nothing to be seen but Royston crows;
The traveller journeying on the road for hours
Sees nothing but the dykes and water-flowers.
The lonely lodges scattered miles away
Lock up from fear and robbers all the day;
The merry maiden that no place dislikes
Runs out and fills her kettle from the dykes.
She hurries wildly from the face of men
And knows no company but cock and hen.
Here highland maiden sees in Sunday's hour
The glorious sight of sainfoin grounds in flower,
And meets the savoury smells that wake the morn,
The woodbine hedges and the poppied corn.

The Oxford Authors: John Clare

ed. Eric Robinson and David Powell (Oxford, 1984)