Cupids adorning

Her hair bound in tortoise or else loosley flowing

(Lo each is a beautiful show)
More blacker than jet the fine ringlets seem glowing
Nay they rival the Micaelmas sloe.
Her face cloth'd in blushes like the east in a morning
Sheds a lustre so healthful and gay
And O! her sweet neck is with Cupids adorning
More whiter than blossoms of May

 

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Bubbles of the brook

Now as even's warning bell 

Rings the day's departing knell

Leaving me from labour free

Solitude, I'll walk with thee

Whether 'side the woods we rove

Or sweep beneath the willow grove

Whether sauntering we proceed 

Cross the green, or down the mead

Whether, sitting down, we look 

On the bubbles of the brook

 

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Full of health & toil

The autumn morn looks mellow as the fruit
& ripe as harvest—every field & farm
Is full of health & toil—yet never mute
With rustic mirth & peace the day is warm
The village maid with gleans upon her arm
Brown as the hazel nut from field to field
Goes cheerily—the valleys native charm—
I seek for charms that autumn best can yield
In mellowing wood & time bleaching field

 

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Image by my friend #CarryAkroyd

Yellow leaves fall

The dark days of Autumn grows cloudy and rainy
The sun pales like sulphur the shadows grow long
To me the dull season the sweetest of any
I love to see yellow leaves fall in my song
The rush covered green and thistle capped mountain
The dead leaves a falling and winds singing round
The willow and ash leaves they choak up the fountain
There's health i' the strife o't and joy i' the sound

 

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Zig zag lane

O now the crimson east its fire streak burning

Tempts me to wander neath the blushing morn 

Winding the zig zag lane turning & turning 

As winds the crooked fences wilderd thorn 

O wheres the eye can gaze upon the dawn  

That flushes yon blue sky of cloudless heaven 

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Image: My Chapbook No.7 ‘Walking with John Clare’

A silver streak

Where winding gash wirls round its wildest scene

On this romantic bend I sit me down

On that side view the meads their smoothing green

Edg'd with the peeping hamlets checkering brown

Here the steep hill as dripping headlong down

While glides the stream a silver streak between

As glides the shaded clouds along the sky

Brightning & deep'ning loosing as they're seen

In light & shade—so when old willows lean

Thus their broad shadow—runs the river bye

With tree & bush repleat a wilderd scene

& mossd & Ivyd sparkling on my eye—

O thus wild musing am I doubly blest

My woes unheeding—& my heart at rest

#photography #poetry #environment

Intruding cow

The steeple perking just above the trees

Whose dangling leaves keep rustling in the breeze
And thoughtful shepherd bending o'er his hook
And maidens stript haymaking too appear
And Hodge a-whistling at his fallow plough
And herdsman hallooing to intruding cow
All these with hundreds more far off and near
Approach my sight and please to such excess
That language fails the pleasure to express

#photography #poetry #environment

The autumn tans

Crimson & yellow bloch'd with Iron Brown

The Autumn tans and varigates the leaves
The nuts are ripe in woods about the Town
Russet the cleared fields where the bindweed weaves
Round stubbles and still flowers the trefoil seeds
And troubles all the land from rig to furrow
Ther's nothing left but rubbish and foul weeds
I love to see the rabbits snug made burrow
Under the old edge bank or hugh mossed oak
Claspt fast with Ivy there the rabbit breeds
Where the Kite pelews and the Ravens croak
And hares and Rabbits at their leisure feed

#photography #poetry #environment

Image by my friend #RachelBurch

Across the river

Across the river winds along.

In coat of orange, green, and blue
Now on a willow branch I view,
Grey waving to the sunny gleam,
Kingfishers watch the ripple stream
For little fish that nimble bye
And in the gravel shallows lie.

#photography #poetry #environment

Image by my friend #JohnAbbott

Patty

O once I had a true love

As blest as I could be
Patty was my turtle dove
& Patty she loved me
We walked the fields together
By roses & woodbine
In Summers sunshine weather
& Patty she was mine

#photography #poetry #environment

My latest Chapbook published today

The drowking flower

& upon the dripping ground

As the shower had ceasd again
As the eye was wandering round
Trifling troubles causd a pain
Overtaken in the shower
Bumble-bees I wanderd by
Clinging to The drowking flower
Left without the power to fly

#photography #poetry #environment

Image by my friend #CarryAkroyd

The tramp

He eats (a moment's stoppage to his song)

The stolen turnip as he goes along

& hops along & heeds with careless eye

The passing crowded stage coach reeling by

He talks to none but wends his silent way

& finds a hovel at the close of day

Or under any hedge his house is made

He has no calling & he owns no trade

An old smoked blanket arches oer his head

A wisp of straw or stubble makes his bed

#photography #poetry #environment

Spreading shady oak

Neath a spreading shady oak

For awhile to muse I lay
From its grains a bough I broke
To fan the teasing flies away
Then I sought the woodland side
Cool the breeze my face did meet
& the shade the sun did hide
Though twas hot it seemed sweet

#photography #poetry #environment

To naked fen they fly

The crow will tumble up & down

At the first sight of spring

& in old trees around the town

Brush winter from its wing

No longer flapping far away

To naked fen they fly

Chill fare as on a winters day

But field & valley nigh

#photography #poetry #environment

Image by my friend #JohnAbbott

Streamlet bubling bye

Flowrets sleeps within their hoods

Daisys button into buds

From soiling dew the butter cup

Shuts his golden jewels up

& the Rose & wood bine they

Wait again the smiles of day

Neath the willows wavy boughs

Nelly singing milks her cows

While the streamlet bubling bye

Joins in murmuring melody

#photography #poetry #environment

Image by my friend #RachelBurch

Rude rags of nature

Swamps of wild rush beds & sloughs squashy traces

Grounds of rough fallows wi thistle & weed
Flats & low vallies of king cups & daiseys
Sweetest of subjects are ye for my reed

Ye commons left free in the rude rags of nature
Ye brown heaths be cloathed in furze as ye be
My wild eye in rapture adores e'ery feature
Yere as dear as this heart in my bosom to me

#photography #poetry #environment

That map of boyhood overcast

#JohnClare

After long abscence how the mind recalls

Pleasing associations of the past

Haunts of his youth—thorn hedges & old walls

& hollow trees that sheltered from the blast

& all that map of boyhood overcast

With glooms & wrongs & sorrows not his own

That oer his brow like the scathed lightening past

That turned his spring to winter & alone

Wrecked name & fame & all—to solitude unknown

#photography #poetry #environment

Against ale (?)

The parson may preach

Against ale, and beseech

His church folks to head no such liquor

But in neat sanded rooms

With young girls in their blooms

Pray who'd ever think of the vicar?

Then leave that dull dunce

Let's have sandwich for lunch

And pull at the tankard or pitcher

#photography #poetry #environment

In glory run

#JohnClare

The scattered clouds lie calm and still,
And day throws gold on every hill;
Their thousand heads in glory run,
As each were worlds and owned a sun.
The rime it clings to everything,
It beards the early buds of spring;
The mossy pales, the orchard spray,
Are feathered with its silver-grey.

#photography #poetry #environment

Loving thee

To words vain words no power is given

The torments of my soul to tell

I slept & had a dream of heavn

I woke & felt the pangs of hell

Yet I woud not forget thee – No!

Tho thou had witherd hope in me

Nor for a world of joys forego

The one sweet joy of loving thee

#photography #poetry #environment

Tracing the lane path

#JohnClare

O simple nature how I do delight

To pause upon thy trifles—foolish things

So some woud call em—on the summer night

Tracing the lane path where the dog rose hings

Wi dew drops seathd while chickering cricket sings

My eye cant help but glance upon its leaves

Where loves warm beauty steals her sweetest blush

When sweet the while the even silence heaves

Her pausing breath just trembling thro the bush

#photography #poetry #environment

Their very nakedness I love

I love thee nature in my inmost heart
Go where I will thy truth seems from above
Go where I will thy landscape forms a part
Of heaven—e'en these fens where wood nor grove
Are seen—their very nakedness I love
For one dwells nigh that secret hopes prefer
Above the race of women—like the dove
I mourn her abscence—fate that would deter
My hate for all things—strengthens love for her

#photography #poetry #environment

Image by my friend #CarryAkroyd

Sukey

Sukey's rare and Sukey's fair

Sukey's got the coal black hair

And in her neck the curl'd drakes tail
That makes her looks so very fine
And in her breast this heart of mine
That keeps me like a thief in jail
Which is so very fair and white
It keeps me waken half the night

#photography #poetry #environment

[Image: One of Lady Clementina Hawarden's lovely daughters, photographed around 1860]