The Lodge House (excerpt)

On a heath stood a farm house as lone as coud be
Let em look where they woud nothing else coud they see
But here an odd furze bush & there an odd tree
            Green corn field & fallow land brown
More lonsomly too in a hollow it lay
The hermit like tennants no neighbours had they
To pop in & chat a few hours of the day
            Twas two mile or more from a town

The farmer was wealthy as many coud tell
He managd wi care & he ploughd his land well

& card not for living in such a lone cell
            If he coud get crops to his will
Of servants for labour he kept a good clan
Stiff chaps five or six & a sturdy head man
A house keeping maid & a under wench nan
            Who had in a dairy good skill

Who lives at a lodge but gen dangers prepard
So wealthy & lonly he kept a good guard
& four mettle bull dogs turnd loose in his yard
            & guns ready chargd for alarms
Twas nothing unlikley for rogues coming here
So noted for hurded up wealth as he were
Tho towns round about him for miles far & neer
            Had heard of his dogs & his arms

Tho nothing to scare em as yet hadnt been
Of any one tempting down right to get in
But folks lunging round it at night time was seen
            Which left em suspisions of fear
& maids often sed when the rest were gone church
That shagger-down fellows theyve seen on the lurch
That tryd at the front door & then at the porch
            & begd in excuse bread or beer

(lines 1-32)

Cottage Tales

Carcanet Press (1993)
Robinson, Powell & Dawson

Clare... and Faith

From Ronnie Blythe
(Church Times -- 28th July 2006)

OBSERVING the white night at 3 p.m., I can see the heat resting, as it were. The corn is solid gold, huge, still wedges of it fitted between the headlands; and the garden flowers remain open. There is no dawn chorus, but here and there I can hear a listless soloist. Two horses talk to each other beneath a may-tree. 

Should I get up and write? Should I lie back in the cool, ancient room? Should I listen to horrors on the bedside radio? If I make a sound, the cat will dash in for breakfast.

My oldest friend has died: should I mourn her? At 91? Come, come! I can hear her say. "Try not to be silly, dear." I will read John Donne's soliloquy at her committal, the one about "coming to that holy room, Where . . . I shall be made thy music". But fancy dying during such a summer!

To Helpston for the 25th John Clare Festival. The handsome stone village burns in the sunshine, his cornfields, too. The bar in whose threshing-dust the poet wrote a little algebra with his finger is like an oven. His birthplace would be unrecognisable to him, so white and smart -- his pub, too, with its lavish ploughman's lunch and crowd of authors.

But here is his great -- (several greats) grandson, and here are his readers come to do him honour. Homage-paying literary societies must have begun in the Mermaid Tavern after Shakespeare had departed. Or possibly in Athens, when Sappho had gone to Olympus.

I had to write about John Clare's faith. His church was out of doors. He describes it constantly. Like William Wordsworth, he drew his beliefs from "Nature and her overflowing soul". Clare was the outside worshipper, and poem after poem by him delights in the freedom of the sabbath fields and hearing distant bells. His creed began: "Nature, thou truth from Heaven".

His fellow worshippers were shepherds, gypsies, and herdboys, though mostly he preferred to sing alone amid birds and flowers. The annual cycle of growth, the seasonal weather, and the continuity of creatures and plants in more or less the same few acres, witnessed to him the eternal. In fact, he summed up his religion in a long statement, "The Eternity of Nature", and in a perfect epigram for himself:

He loved the brook's soft sound,
The swallow swimming by;
He loved the daisy covered round,
The cloud bedappled sky;
To him the dismal appeared
The very voice of God. . . 
A silent man in life's affairs,
A thinker from a Boy,
A Peasant in his daily cares --
The Poet in his joy.

In a tender hymn, "A Stranger once did bless the earth", he saw Christ as "An outcast thrown in sorrow's way", and this tragic figure contrasts with his magnificent God, "creator of Nature". Even when cast into the very depths of this world's suffering, in Northampton Asylum, Clare was kept sane by the huge truth of "my Creator God". He and "the insects in the brake" were brothers.

To a favourite tree

Old favourite tree art thou too fled the scene

Could not the ax thy clining age delay
& let thee stretch thy shadows oer the green
& let thee dye in picturesque decay
What hadst thou done to meet a tyrants frown

Be dragd a captive from thy native wood
What was the cause the raige that hewd thee down
Small value was the ground on which thou stood
So sweet in summer as thy branches spread
In such gay cloathing as thy boughs where drest
Where many a shepherd swain has laid his head
& on thy cooling fragrance sunk to rest
Adieu old friends ye trees & bushes dear
The flower refreshd by Morning dews
Hopeful blooms in asure skies
Anon the Noontide heat ensues
It hoples Withers droops & dies
O Cruel change of Love like mine
To bid me hope one only day
& ere that worst of days declind
To snatch that only hope away

Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820)

On some friends leaving a favourite spot

[Image: Anne Lee]

Is this a poem about the beauties of Walkerd and therefore written especially with Patty in mind?  Unfortunately, it is now virtually impossible to get anywhere near Walkherd Lodge, although Mike Hobson did manage two atmospheric photographs that we used in our book "The Poet in Love"... the story of the meeting, courtship and marriage of John and Patty.  

Is it significant that in line 3 Clare deleted ‘gardens’ and substituted ‘edens’? Certainly we think that the poem beautifully describes the environs of the Lodge. (RR & ProfER)

Tho thou wert not the place of my being & birth

Tho I spent not the sports of my childhood in thee

Mid the dear spots we call edens on earth

Thou art one of the fairest thats known unto me

Five beautiful springs thee & thine have I known

Thy woods & thy brooks winding peacful at will

Thy heaths & like hermitage standing alone

Thy cottage that smoaks by the side of a hill

I have rambld the plains were no being beside

Hath intruded the whole summers day

& followd the shepherds paths dimly descryd

By the hedges all lind with dog roses & may

& wilds were no tracks but the rabbits hath been

Were flowers bloom untouched till they dye

Were the whole summer thro neer a schoolboy is seen

& the linnets brood lives in its nest till they flue

I have turnd to thy springs with the birds when adry

& hunted the flowers with the hoarse honey bee

& the few scantly pleasances that manhood supply

Were some of them sought for & gathered in thee

& a flower that grew with thee the fairest of all

That decks the soft bosom of april & may

Blooming lovly & wild by the lone cottage wall

Love wood it with rapture & won it away

& Ive walkd oer thy wilds with that flower I esteem

& livd in the peace of her cottage a guest

& mused by the charms of thy hearth & thy shame

As she shrunk on our walks on my bosom to rest

& the bowers on thy heaths sprinkld over with cows

Were we sat down in some a cool minute to spend

Enjoying the wind that fannd thro the green boughs

Where I left them & bade them farwell like a friend

Tho spring brings  the wild heath its annual bloom

Spreading white sheets of flowers on

Yet tyrants have been with the friends of her home

& strangers are there to inhabit it now

The footpath as usual inviteth us on

& the old cottage chimney still peeps oer the dell

But the friends of the blossom I gathered are gone

& bidden the fields & the dwelling farwell

We might roam as wont to the heaths yellow oer

With furze flowers & lamb toe that creeping I rove

Down the crookd path that leads to the fountain once more

The scenes of her childhood & haunts of her love

& the cottage might shine just the same in her eye

But the voice of old welcomes woud meet us no more

We might pass her lovd dwelling as strangers pass by

& no eye would notice or open the door

I lovd the dear haunts of the sweet solitudes

That round its lome walls in the circle do lye

Were no living thing all the season intrudes

But a bird or a bee humming wearisome bye

& Ive hunted for spots by the brook & have found

The lonliest existing an hour to abide

With nought but the green light of trees flitting round

& the shadow that seemed stretchd asleep by my side

The wood rides as wont wound beneath the oak bough

Still tempting the eye that admires to rove on

But stranger feet with in their lonliness now

& their old fellow hermits that lovd them are gone

The birds in the gardens shades nesting among

As fond of their neighbours that used to dwell bye

Hear strange voices now & stop short in the song

& startled peep down of fresh faces flye

The sparrows no doubt will grow coy & complain

To medlesome foes that their freedom is oer

& the fond robin pauses ere he ventures again

To pick up the crumbles of bread by the door

The martin that comes to the cottage repairs

& once met a welcome & quiet enjoyd

May now find a tyrant as cruel as theirs

& morning retreat its dwelling destroyd

The black bee that hums by the mud creviced wall

Eaen they may old friend & old neighbours deplore

While meddlesome childen with frolicsome brawl

Shoutest loudly that friendship & freedom is oer

Ive seen these delights in their season of peace

When their old friends & neighbours was labouring nigh

Ere a tyrants intrusions had warnd them to cease

& I deeply regret that such seasons are bye

Long long in seclusion their lives had been nurst

Neighbours only to blossoms to birds & to bees

Till plumb stones & damsons set when they came first

& small apple curnels had grown up to trees

& a thorn that was not when they came to the spot

Which a linnet might bring when an awe from the dell

Had grown when thet left half as high as the cot

& quite overshadowed the cub of the well

The wood bine that crept up the door & peepd in

May with them of its bloom & its home be bereft

That clung to the cot with its inmates akin

& they felt that it viewd them as such when they left

When they left birds & flowers all their neighbours behind

In the nise & the strife of a village to dwell

They seemd to have borrowd the voice of the wind

& to sigh when their last look turnd on them “farewell”

Pet MS A21 p25-9

Pet MS A30 p141-6

MP II 55

To the Nightingale

Ah eve lov'd bird how sweet thy music floats
E'en hodge fine musics vulgar tasteles foe
Entirely thoughtless where's he's got to go
Stands struck with wonder at thy varied notes
Untill a pause ensuing brings to mind
His work at which he starts but touch'd so strong
Rememb'rance makes him as he plods along
Sing ‘Sweet jug, jug,’ and often look behind
To where they first begun—then such as these
O bird again repeat and let me know
If they (which do so much with others please)

Can sooth in me this anguish more than woe
For sure no anguish more tormenting stings
Then that which vexing dissapointment brings

EP I 456 (unpublished elsewhere)