Jockey & Jinney or First Love

A Tale

---

“Thoughtless of beauty she was beautys self” 
  Thomson [The Seasons, Autumn l.207] 

---

Wereover many a stile neeth willows grey
The winding footpath leaves the public way
Free from the dusty din & ceasless chime
Of bustling waggons in the summer time
Crossing a brook—were braving storms in vain

Two willows fell & still for brigs remain
Corn field & clover closes leading down
In peacful windings to the neighbouring town

Were on bridge wall or rail or trees smooth bark
The passing eye is often stopt to mark
The artless vanity of village swains
Who spend a leisure hour with patient pains
& put to sculptors purposes the knife
To spin a cobweb for an after life
Nicking the letters of their little names
In rudest forms that untaught science frames

Pleasd with the feeblest shadow of renown
That warms alike the noble and the clown
Nigh to that path a sheltering hedge beside
A Cottage stands in solitary pride
Whose thatch with housleek flowers is yellowd oer
Where flock the bees from hives agen the door
Lonly & sweet as ever welcome spring
Neer fails its pleasant visitors to bring

Trees sheltering round it hide returning rooks
& twittering swallows seek its chimney nooks
In peace the sparrow chirps its joyous calls
& takes the feather to the crevisd walls
Nor fails the harmless robin & the wren
To seek such sweet secluded haunts agen
Beneath the eaves the martins still repair
& yearly build their mortard dwelling there

Here Jinney livd to grace the lovly scenes

Fair as the spring sweet blushing in her teens

Cottage Tales (Carcanet) 1993 (p 38

Clare reminding us of the power of simple words in the hands of a genius.  A 640 line poem that both publisher Taylor and supporter Mrs Emmerson loved but remained unpublished as it was 'too long'.