The Gipsy Camp

[Image: 'The Gipsy Camp' by Walter Tyndale]

The snow falls deep; the Forest lies alone:

The boy goes hasty for his load of brakes,
Then thinks upon the fire and hurries back;
The Gipsy knocks his hands and tucks them up,
And seeks his squalid camp, half hid in snow,
Beneath the oak, which breaks away the wind,
And bushes close, with snow like hovel warm:
There stinking mutton roasts upon the coals,
And the half-roasted dog squats close and rubs,
Then feels the heat too strong and goes aloof;
He watches well, but none a bit can spare.
And vainly waits the morsel thrown away:
'Tis thus they live -- a picture to the place;
A quiet, pilfering, unprotected race.

John Clare, Selected Poems,

ed. R.K.R. Thornton (Everyman's Poetry, 1997)