March Nosegay

[A posy (poesy) from my garden for my Clare friends]

The bonny March morning is beaming

   In mingled crimson & grey

White clouds are streaking and creaming

   The sky till the noon of the day

The fir deal looks darker and greener

   And grass hills below look the same

The air all about is serener

   The birds less familliar and tame

Heres two or three flowers for my fair one,

   Wood primroses & celandine too

I oft look about for a rare one

   To put in a posy for you

The birds look so cleanly and neatly

   Though theres not a leaf on the grove

The sun shines about me so sweetly

   I cannot help thinking of love

So where the blue violets are peeping

   By the warm sunny side of the woods

& the primrose 'neath early morn weeping

   Amid a large cluster of buds

The morning it was such a rare one

   So dewy so sunny and fair

I sought the wild flowers for my fair one

   To wreathe in her glossy black hair.

The Later Poems of John Clare 1837-1864
ed. Eric Robinson and David Powell
(Oxford, 2 volumes, I-II, 1984)