Victims of want

 

Quoted at the Tolpuddle festival in Dorset some years ago:

     "Inclosure came and trampled on the grave  

     Of labour's rights and left the poor a slave … 

     And birds and trees and flowers without a name 

     All sighed when lawless law's enclosure came."

Even 200 years later,  without any doubt Clare is as relevant as ever.  Here are the lines from his 1820 collection "Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery" that his publisher had expunged from the book in the Second and subsequent editions, much to Clare's annoyance:

     "Accursed wealth oer bounding human laws
     Of every evil thou remains the cause
     Victims of want those wretches such as me
     Too truly lay their wretchedness to thee
     Thou art the bar that keeps from being fed
     & thine our loss of labour & of bread
     Thou art the cause that levels every tree
     & woods bow down to clear a way for thee "

‘Accursed Wealth’ – those two words echo down the generations for any student of Clare, whether scholar or simply a reader of the great poet’s work.  Right from the early poems that have come down to us, we find in Clare an honesty that is often painful to observe.

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