Spirit of the woods awake (excerpt)

[Image of Holm Fen by Anne Lee]

A manuscript I dug out of the Peterborough Archives... which had originally only been published in the Clarendon Editions, but now also in my Arbour Editions Chapbook (No.6) 'Trees - In a Strange Stillness'.  An early Clare poem that is virtually impossible to read from the manuscript notebook. Clare wrote all the poems therein in pencil, then erased to reuse the little book - he was very short of paper.  The notebook dates from 1819 or thereabouts, certainly before his marriage to Patty in March 1820. Because of the difficulties in transcription, most of the poems in the notebook have been largely overlooked.  Here is an excerpt, the first two verses.

Spirit of the woods awake

In thy wildest dress appear
Trace with me the curdled brake
Sound thy wildness in my ear
Genius of the woods that dwells
Sweeping boughs & grains among
As I climb thy rough rude dells
Breath thy roughness in my song

While I brush the branches by
& this woods still ways forsake
Woodland spirit meet my eye
Genius of the woods awake
Breath thy wildness in my ear

To thy trees  I do belong
Genius of the woods appear
Sound thy roughness in my song

The Early Poems of John Clare 1804-1822

ed. Eric Robinson, David Powell and Margaret Grainger

(Oxford, 2 volumes, I-II, 1989)