Music & glee

Among the green bushes the songs of the thrushes
Are answering each other in music & glee
While the magpies & rooks  in woods hedges near brooks
Mount their Spring dwellings on every high tree
There meet me at eve love we'll on grassy banks lean love
& crop a white branch from the scented may tree
Where the silver brook wimples & the rosy cheek dimples
Sweet will the time of that courting hour be

We'll notice wild flowers love that grow by thorn bowers love
Though sinful to crop them now beaded with dew
The violet is thine love the primrose is mine love
To Spring & each other so blooming & true
With dewdrops all beaded the feather grass seeded
The cloud mountains turn to dark woods in the sky
The daisy bud closes while sleep the hedge roses
Theres nothing seems wakeful but you love & I

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Insect tribes

Then crooked stile with little steps that aid

The climbing meets us & the pleasant grass

& hedgerows old with arbours ready made

For weariness to rest in pleasant shade

Surround us & with ecstasy we pass

Wild flower & insect tribes that ever mate

With joy & dance from every step we take

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Lovley Butterflye

Then thy starry gems & gold

Admiration would unfold

For what insect is't can vie

With the lovley Butterflye

Lo! the arching heav'nly bow

Does all his dyes on thee bestow

Crimson Blue & watry Green

Mixd with Azure shade between

These are thine—thou first in place

Queen of all the insect race

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Flies in the window

Some of John Clare’s prose on flies.

"These little window dwellers in cottages and halls were always entertaining to me     after dancing in the window all day from sunrise to sunset they would sip of the tea     drink of the beer & eat of the sugar & be welcome all summer long     They look like things of mind or fairies & seem pleased or dull as the weather permits     In many clean cottages & genteel houses they are allowed every liberty to creep fly or do as they like & seldom or ever do wrong     In fact they are the small or dwarfish portion of our own family & so many fairy familiars that we know & treat as one of ourselves”

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Grasshoppers

Grasshoppers go in many a thumming spring
& now to stalks of tasseled sow-grass cling
That shakes & swees awhile but still keeps straight
While arching oxeye doubles with his weight
Next on the cat tail grass with farther bound
He springs that bends until they touch the ground

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image by my friend Carry Akroyd

Fallen friends

I hate to see mans strength employ’d
To desolate the wood
To see a favourite tree destroy’d
That has for ages stood
To see the stript oak stretch’d its length
A mournful thought the scene attends
Those seem thats left still green in strength
To mourn their fallen friends

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Sophia

On the 24th July 1830 Sophia was born to Patty and John - the family then consisted then of 6 children, Anna (10), Eliza (8 ), Freddy (6) John (4), William (2), and baby Sophia. Grandfather Parker (70) and Ann (66) made up the crowded household of 10 all living in the tenement in Woodgate (a quarter of what is now called ‘Clare Cottage’). What a struggle it must have been, seeking to support such a family.

When with our little ones we spent

Each Sunday after tea,

& up the woods dark side we went

Or pastures rushy lea

To look among the woodland boughs

To find the birds retreat

Or crop the cowslip for the cows

Then sat to rest the little feet

In many a pleasant place

& see the lambs who tried to bleat

Come first in every race

Then laughd the childrens joys to view

Who ran across the lea

At birds that from the rushes flew

& many a wandering bee

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