Just as mornings rosy lass (excerpt)

One of the poems from our latest collection "The Poet in Love"

only previously published in the Clarendon Editions. 
Image by Anne Lee.

Just as mornings rosy lass

Unbeds from sleep & gins to dress
Just as draws her curtains bye
How sweet to watch her opening eye
As her cheek is glowing warm
& her finely turned arm
First unfolding on the stretch
Her mantles crystal sheets to reach
Sweet is then the graceful folds

As round her lovly limbs it rolls
Half revealing to the sight
That seat of rapture & delight
In beautys melting mingling hue
Skin so white & veins so blue
Heaveing on the ravishd eye
Warming charms of extasy
Till it fades in witching pale
Neath a seeming swelling vale
Of morning while it 'lopes away
Mid the modest blush of day

The Early Poems of John Clare 1804-1822

ed. Eric Robinson, David Powell and Margaret Grainger
(Oxford, 2 volumes, I-II, 1989)