A venerable tree

I never pass a venerable tree

Pining away to nothingness & dust
Ruins vain shades of power I never see
Once dedicated to times cheating trust
But warm reflection wakes her saddest thought
& views lifes vanity in cheerless light
& sees earths bubbles youth so eager sought
Burst into emptiness of lost delight
& all the pictures of lifes early day
Like evenings striding shadows haste away
Yet theres a glimmering of pleasure springs
From such reflections of earths vanity
That pines & sickens oer lifes mortal things
& leaves a relish for eternity

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Of blackberries and stickers

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 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.

(Robinson & Rowe)

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Non

The night wind

The night wind now with sooty wings
In the cotters chimney sings
Now as stretching oer the bed
Soft I raise my drowsy head
Listening to the ushering charms
That shake the elm tree's mossy arms
Till sweet slumbers stronger creep
Deeper darkness stealing round
Then as rocked I sink to sleep
Mid the wild winds lulling sound

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Soothing scene

One gloomy eve I roamed about
  Neath Oxeys hazel bowers
While timid hares were darting out
  To crop the dewy flowers
& soothing was the scene to me
  Right pleased was my soul
My breast was calm as summers sea
  When waves forget to roll
  

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Pleasant sounds

The rustling of leaves under the feet in woods & under hedges    The crumping of cat-ice & snow down wood rides   narrow lanes & every street causeways     Rustling through a wood    or rather rushing while the wind hallows in the oak tops like thunder     The rustles of birds wings startled from their nests or flying unseen into the bushes      The whizzing of larger birds over head in a wood such as crows puddocks buzzards &c     The trample of roburst wood larks on the brown leaves & the patter of Squirrels on the green moss   The fall of an acorn on the ground   the pattering of nuts on the hazel branches ere they fall from ripeness     The flirt of the ground-larks wing from the stubbles    how sweet such pictures on dewy mornings when the dew flashes from its brown feathers

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Startled frogs

From the hay-cocks moistend heaps

Startled frogs take vaunting leaps

& along the shaven mead

Jumping travellers they proceed 

Quick the dewy grass divides

Moistening sweet their speckled sides 

From the grass or flowrets cup

Quick the dew-drop bounces up

Now the blue fog creeps along

& the birds forgot his song

Flowers now sleep within their hoods

Daisies button into buds

From soiling dew the butter-cup 

Shuts his golden jewels up

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Life?

And what is Life? -- An hour-glass on the run,
A mist retreating from the morning sun,
A busy, bustling, still repeated dream;
Its length? -- A minute's pause, a moment's thought;
And happiness? -- A bubble on the stream,
That in the act of seizing shrinks to nought.

What are vain Hopes? -- The puffing gale of morn,
That of its charms divests the dewy lawn,
And robs each floweret of its gem -- and dies;
A cobweb hiding disappointment's thorn,
Which stings more keenly through the thin disguise

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