At Helpston … I tried to make out the names of John Clare’s contemporaries; but lichens had drawn a veil over them for the most part. Jean de Santeuil, the hymn-writer, in the third verse of his "Disposer supreme" turns "frail earthen vessels and things of no worth", as Clare often thought of himself, into beings "Like clouds" that are borne about the universe to do God’s will. "They thunder, they lighten, the waters o’erflow."
We strolled around Helpston with umbrellas. A house agent’s board flagged Clare’s birthplace. The price? Near on half a million. And to think that his father relied on a good crop of apples to pay the Michaelmas rent. Next to the sign-board there was a plaque that Edmund Blunden unveiled in 1921. The whole village rocked with hollyhocks.
(Word from Wormingford : Church Times - 30 July 2004)
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