The Courtship (excerpt)

Where are you going lovely maid

The morning fine & early

“I’m going to Walkerd”, Sir she said

& made across the barley

I asked her name she blushed away

The question seemed to burn her

A neighbour came & passed the day

& called her Patty Turner

I wrote my better poems there

To beautys praise I owe it

The muses they get all the praise

But woman makes the poet

A womans is the dearest love

Theres nought on earth sincerer

The leisure upon beautys breast

Can any thing be dearer

I saw her love in beauty’s face

I saw her in the rose

I saw her in the fairest flowers

In every weed that grows

Poems of John Clare's Madness

ed. Geoffrey Grigson (RKP, 1949)

Helpstone (excerpt)

Each morning wak'd with hopes before unknown

& eve possesing made each wish their own
The day gone bye left no pursuit undone
Nor one vain wish save that they went too soon
Each sport each pastime ready at their call
As soon as wanted they posses'd em all
These joys all known in happy infancy
& all I ever knew where spent on thee

& who but loves to view where these where past

& who that views but loves em to the last

Feels his heart warm to view his native place

A fondness still those past delights to trace

The vanish'd green to mourn the spot to see

Where flourish'd many a bush & many a tree

Where once the brook (for now the brook is gone)

Oer pebbles dimpling sweet went wimpering on

Oft on whose oaken plank I've wondering stood

(That led a pathway o'er its gentle flood)

To see the beetles their wild mazes run

With getty jackets glittering in the sun

So apt & ready at their reels they seem

So true the dance is figur'd on the stream

Such justness such correctness they impart

They seem as ready as if taught by art

(lines 61 to 84)

 Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820)

I am - Video

Clare's 'I am' -- worth a look I reckon : >>>>> Click Here <<<<<

STANZAS : To Adelaide

Adelaide beautiful Adelaide see
The spring is returning to beauty and thee
The snowdrops are breaking the soil and appear
As white as thy neck at the spring of the year

Adelaide beautiful Adelaide here

The primroses come and tis spring of the year
The primroses come and the birds mate in pairs
O when will my life be as happy as theirs

O when shall I woo thee and sit in the shade
‘Mong violets and primroses my sweet Adelaide
When in those bright eyes will those baby's appear
That I saw when I kissed thee last spring of the year

O Adelaide beautiful Adelaide hear
The snowdrops have brought thee the spring of the year
The aconites open like rays of the sun

And tell thee the pleasures of spring is begun

Then Adelaide beautiful Adelaide hear
Let us take lovers walks at the spring of the year

The Later Poems of John Clare 1837-1864

ed. Eric Robinson and David Powell

 (Oxford, 2 volumes, I-II, 1984)

The Mothers Lullaby

Tune: BBC Recording 1951 published in Folksongs of Britain and Ireland, 1975

Hush lullaby my baby nor mix thy tears with mine

I grieve to think my parents would be no friends of thine

I grieve to think thy father - O grief my words oppose

To think thy little innosence should find so many foes

Hush lullaby my baby upon thy mothers arm

My prayers shall still the storm to rest to leave my baby warm

While to thy fathers Hall we go who fast asleep doth lye

Did he know his door was lockd on thee it might unclose his eye

Hush lullaby my baby he yet thy friend may be
& bye & bye I hope to find a friend again in thee
So hush my little baby the day comes bye & bye
The storm is gone the moon is up so hush & lullaby

Hush lullaby my baby I wake thee when I sigh

To think my parents turned us out nor bade thee a goodbye

Nor sighed to see thy breath nigh gone to meet the storm so high

But god has heard & the wind is gone so hush & lullaby

Poems of the Middle Period

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

Volumes I-II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)

Volumes III-IV (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998)

John Clare and the Folk Tradition
George Deacon, 1983

Another Manuscript

A photo I took in the archive in November 2012... and this of another unpublished Clare manuscript.  It is an honour to be able to go and study these texts -- and seek to decipher Clare's handwriting!

The book I love is everywhere,
And every place the same;
God bade me make my dwelling there,
And look for better fame.
I never feared the critic's pen,
To live by my renown;
I found the poems in the fields,
And only wrote them down.

(from "Sighing for Retirement)
(lines 9 to 16)

Unpublished John Clare poem will sell for thousands

The handwriting looks authentic.  I wonder just how many 'unpublished' Clare poems are lying in wait for discovery?  BUT... there are lots unpublished in the Peterborough Library archive.

Click here to read

Ballad : Where is the heart thou once hast won

(Image : The blackened lintel of the Joyce Farmouse where Mary Joyce burned to death in 1838)

Here is Clare writing some years before in prescient mood:

Where is the heart thou once hast won

Can cease to care about thee

Where is the eye thou'st smiled upon

Can look for joy without thee

Lorn is the lot one heart hath met

That’s lost to thy caressing

Cold is the hope that loves thee yet

Now thou art past possessing

Fare thee well

We met we loved we’ve met the last

The farewell word is spoken

O Mary canst thou feel the past

& keep thy heart unbroken

To think how warm we loved & how

Those hopes should blossom never

To think how we are parted now

& parted, oh! for ever

Fare thee well

Thou wert the first my heart to win

Thou art the last to wear it

& though another claims akin

Thou must be one to share it

Oh, had we known when hopes were sweet

That hopes would once be thwarted

That we should part no more to meet

How sadly we had parted

Fare thee well

The Rural Muse (1835)

Second edition, ed. R. K. R. Thornton (Ashington and Manchester, 1982)

(Memorably sung by Carry Akroyd in Glinton Church as part of the 2009 John Clare Festival)