John Clare Festival 2010

We seem as startled from unnatural dreams
To hear the summer voice of woods and streams
And feel the sunny air, right green and young
Breathe music round as though a siren sung
(from 'Old Poesy - II')

9 July (Friday)
1.30 pm at Helpston Parish Church – the Midsummer Cushion Ceremony. Pupils from the John Clare Primary School place these cushions of flowers around Clare’s grave. The pupils’ prize winning poems are read and prizes awarded.

6 pm – Guided walk around Helpston. Meet at the Butter Cross.

7 pm onwards – The Langdyke Trust. Official opening of the heritage site at Torpel Manor Field, part of Helpston’s history since the Norman Conquest. The Trust will be hosting a range of walks and talks based on the history of the site from 7 pm onwards.

7.30 pm to 11 pm – Folk Music. John Clare’s Birthday Music and Song Session – an informal evening in the front room of the Exeter Arms, 3 Church Lane, Helpston – free admission – limited space, so arrive in good time – musicians and singers especially welcome – details 01778 571563 or pete@peteshaw.co.uk.

10 July (Saturday)
From 9.30 am – coffee and toast in the Botolphs Barn – near the Exeter Arms!

10 am – Festival opens in the School Hall - stalls include the J C Society sales, booksellers, local tourist offices, and exhibitions. Buy your tickets for the afternoon coach tour or the evening performance of John Clare and the music of what happens.

10 am – in the marquee – behind the School – St Botolphs Music Group will play before the meeting starts.

10.30 am – in the marquee – welcome and introduction to the Festival, followed by the AGM of the JC Society.

11.15 am – the President’s Address by Ronald Blythe.

From 11 am – An artists quarter in Botolphs Barn.

12 noon – 1 pm and 1.30 pm to 2.30 pm – poetry workshops in the Scout and Guide Centre – for children aged 6 to 12 years, led by Keely Mills and Luke Payn.

Lunches in the Village Hall
John Clare cottage open 10 am to 5 pm

Botolphs Barn – artists and crafts

Bluebell and Exeter Arms – morris dancers and the Peterborough Folk Dance Society perform

Carry Akroyd will be signing her book at Annakin’s Art Shop (near the village shop and post office on West Street) – for more on Carry, visit www.carryakroyd.co.uk.

1.45 pm – The Poet’s Wife – Judith Allnatt, poet and writer will talk about her recently published book, a reimagining of the life of John Clare through the eyes of his wife, Patty. Judith will be ready to sign books and discuss the novel with any who wish to stay after her talk.

3 pm – coach outing to Great Casterton (tickets available from 10am) and the church where John & Martha (Patty) Clare were married, including a programme of prose, poetry and song by Clare.

3 pm – guided walks around Helpston – meet at the Butter Cross.

3.15 pm – 4 pm – in the Church, read your favourite poem

Enjoy a traditional English tea in the village hall

5.30 pm – in the Church – another chance to read your favourite Clare poem!

7 pm – in the marquee at the John Clare Primary School (by ticket only) – 'John Clare and the music of what happens', poet Malcolm Guite and Jazz Poetry Collective Riprap explore the contemporary resonances of John Clare’s poetry (tickets £10 and £8 concessions).

From 7.30 pm onwards – in the Blue Bell, Frumenty perform a selection of music, including songs about Clare. Frumenty are a three piece band encompassing guitars, mandolin, mandola, banjo and percussion as well as vocals and singing a range of traditional and contemporary folk music.

11 July (Sunday)

11 a.m. – special church service at St Botolphs, led by the Rev Ron Ingamells, Vice Chair of the Society.

For more detail leave a comment on this weblog.

The Meadow Flags

The meadow flags now rustle bleached & dank
& misted oer with down as fine as dew
The sloe & dewberry shine along the bank
Where weeds in blooms luxuriance lately grew
Red rose the sun & up the morehen flew
From bank to bank the meadow arches stride
Where foamy floods in winter tumbles through
& spread a restless ocean foaming wide
Where now the cowboys sleep nor fear the coming tide

(Child Harold lines 714-722)

Ballad - The Rose of the World...

The Rose Of The World Was Dear Mary To Me
In The Days Of My Boyhood & Youth
I Told Her In Songs Where My Heart Wished To Be
& My Songs Where The Language of Truth

I Told Her In Looks When I Gazed In Her Eyes
That Mary Was Dearest To Me
I Told Her In Words & The Language Of Sighs
Where My Whole Hearts Affections Would Be

I Told her in love that all nature was true
I convinced her that nature was kind
But love in his trials had labour to do
<        > Mary would be in the mind

Mary met me in spring where the speedwell knots grew
& the king cups were shining like flame
I chose her all colours red yellow & blue
But my love was one hue & the same

Spring summer & winter & all the year through
In the sunshine the shower & the blast
I told the same tale & she knows it all true
& Mary's my blossom at last

(Child Harold – lines 1139-1158)

(In this poem, written early in 1841, Clare stops capitalising every word. No-one knows why he started, or stopped, this practice).  The first word of line 12 is a blank in the manuscript.

The Wild Rose

The hedge rose blossoms like thy face
Sweet red and white together
And shadows wave about the place
Where branches twist together

The leaves dance to a merry tune
And boughs wave like to billows
A flowry carpet throughout june
And concert in the willows

Dews bead the headaches like to gems
And corn blades like to rain
God's love does nothing here condemn
All live free from sins pain

Then let us meet at dewy morn
Or else at golden noon
Or evening mid the waving corn
Or night while shines the moon

The hedge row was our tristing place
Beside the rose tree fair
There nature smiled on thy sweet face
The fairest wild rose there

Two Summer Sonnets

June
Go where I will, naught but delight is seen;
The blue and luscious sky is one broad gleam
Of universal ecstasy; the green,
Rich, sweeping meadows and the laughing stream,
As sweet as happiness on heaven's breast,
Lie listening to the never-ceasing song
That day or night ne'er wearies into rest
But hums unceasingly the summer long.
The very grass, to music's rapture stirred,
Dances before the breeze's wanton wing,
While every bush stirs with a startled bird
Who eager wakes morn's dewy praise to sing.
Yet mid this summer glee I cannot borrow
One joy, for sadness chills them all to sorrow.

Summer Amusements
I love to hide me on a spot that lies
In solitudes where footsteps find no track
To make intrusions; there to sympathize
With nature: often gazing on the rack
That veils the blueness of the summer skies
In rich varieties; or o'er the grass
Behold the spangled crowds of butterflies
Flutter from flower to flower, and things that pass
In urgent travel by my still retreat,
The bustling beetle tribes; and up the stem
Of bents see lady-cows with nimble feet
Climb tall church-steeple heights—or more to them—
Till at its quaking top they take their seat,
Which bows, and off they fly fresh happiness to meet.

The humble flower...

(A carpet of wild flowers growing in Swaddywell, July 2005)

The humble flowers that buds upon the plain
& only buds to blossom but in vain
By sensless rustics with unheeding eyes
Still troden down as they attempt to rise
So like the humble blossom of the Fields
Unculturd Genius humble life consceals

The Flitting (final)

And why? this shepherd's purse that grows
In this strange spot, in days gone by
Grew in the little garden rows
Of my old home now left; and I
Feel what I never felt before,
This weed an ancient neighbour here,
And though I own the spot no more
Its every trifle makes it dear.

The ivy at the parlour end,
The woodbine at the garden gate,
Are all and each affection's friend
That rendered parting desolate.
But times will change and friends must part,
And nature still can make amends;
Their memory lingers round the heart
Like life, whose essence is its friends.

Time looks on pomp with vengeful mood
Or killing apathy's disdain;
So where old marble cities stood
Poor persecuted weeds remain.
She feels a love for little things
That very few can feel beside,
And still the grass eternal springs
Where castles stood and grandeur died.

The Flitting (penultimate)

I love the verse that, mild and bland,
Breathes of green fields and open sky,
I love the muse that in her hand
Bears flowers of native poesy;
Who walks nor skips the pasture brook
In scorn, but by the drinking horse
Leans o'er its little brig to look
How far the sallows lean across.

And feels a rapture in her breast
Upon their root-fringed grains to mark
A hermit moor-hen's sedgy nest
Just like a naiad's summer bark.
She counts the eggs she cannot reach,
Admires the spot and loves it well,
And yearns, so nature's lessons teach,
Amid such neighbourhoods to dwell.

I love the muse who sits her down
Upon the mole-hill's little lap,
Who feels no fear to stain her gown
And pauses by the hedgerow gap;
Not with that affectation, praise
Of song, to sing and never see
A field flower grow in all her days
Or e'en a forest's aged tree.

E'en here my simple feelings nurse
A love for every simple weed,
And e'en this little shepherd's purse
Grieves me to cut it up; indeed
I feel at times a love and joy
For every weed and every thing,
A feeling kindred from a boy,
A feeling brought with every spring.

(tbc)

The Flitting (V)

No, pasture mole-hills used to lie
And talk to me of sunny days,
And then the glad sheep resting by
All still in ruminating praise
Of summer and the pleasant place;
And every weed and blossom too
Was looking upward in my face
With friendship's welcome ‘How do ye do?’

All tenants of an ancient place
And heirs of noble heritage,
Coeval they with Adam's race
And blest with more substantial age.
For when the world first saw the sun
These little flowers beheld him too,
And when his love for earth begun
They were the first his smiles to woo.

There little lambtoe bunches springs
In red-tinged and begolden dye
For ever, and like China kings
They come but never seem to die.
There may-bloom with its little threads
Still comes upon the thorny bowers
And ne'er forgets those pinky heads
Like fairy pins amid the flowers.

And still they bloom as on the day
They first crowned wilderness and rock,
When Abel haply wreathed with may
The firstlings of his little flock,
And Eve might from the matted thorn
To deck her lone and lovely brow
Reach that same rose that heedless scorn
Misnames as the dog rosey now.

Give me no high-flown fangled things,
No haughty pomp in marching chime,
Where muses play on golden strings
And splendour passes for sublime,
Where cities stretch as far as fame
And fancy's straining eye can go,
And piled until the sky for shame
Is stooping far away below.

(tbc)

The Flitting (IV)

Strange scenes mere shadows are to me,
Vague impersonifying things;
I love with my old haunts to be
By quiet woods and gravel springs,
Where little pebbles wear as smooth
As hermits' beads by gentle floods,
Whose noises do my spirits soothe
And warm them into singing moods.

Here every tree is strange to me,
All foreign things where'er I go,
There's none where boyhood made a swee
Or clambered up to rob a crow.
No hollow tree or woodland bower
Well known when joy was beating high,
Where beauty ran to shun a shower
And love took pains to keep her dry.

And laid the sheaf upon the ground
To keep her from the dripping grass,
And ran for stooks and set them round
Till scarce a drop of rain could pass
Through; where the maidens they reclined
And sung sweet ballads now forgot,
Which brought sweet memories to the mind,
But here no memory knows them not.

There have I sat by many a tree
And leaned o'er many a rural stile,
And conned my thoughts as joys to me,
Naught heeding who might frown or smile.
'Twas nature's beauty that inspired
My heart with raptures not its own,
And she's a fame that never tires;
How could I feel myself alone?

(tbc)

The Flitting (III)

The hawthorns here were hung with may,
But still they seem in deader green,
The sun e'en seems to lose its way
Nor knows the quarter it is in.
I dwell on trifles like a child,
I feel as ill becomes a man,
And still my thoughts like weedlings wild
Grow up to blossom where they can.

They turn to places known so long
I feel that joy was dwelling there,
So home-fed pleasures fill the song
That has no present joys to heir.
I read in books for happiness,
But books are like the sea to joy;
They change—as well give age the glass
To hunt its visage when a boy.

For books they follow fashions new
And throw all old esteems away,
In crowded streets flowers never grew,
But many there hath died away.
Some sing the pomps of chivalry
As legends of the ancient time,
Where gold and pearls and mystery
Are shadows painted for sublime.

But passions of sublimity
Belong to plain and simpler things,
And David underneath a tree
Sought when a shepherd Salem's springs,
Where moss did into cushions spring,
Forming a seat of velvet hue,
A small unnoticed trifling thing
To all but heaven's hailing dew.

And David's crown hath passed away,
Yet poesy breathes his shepherd-skill,
His palace lost—and to this day
The little moss is blooming still.

(tbc)

The Flitting (II)

I walk adown the narrow lane,
The nightingale is singing now,
But like to me she seems at loss
For Royce Wood and its shielding bough.

I lean upon the window-sill,
The trees and summer happy seem;
Green, sunny green they shine, but still
My heart goes far away to dream
Of happiness, and thoughts arise
With home-bred pictures many a one,
Green lanes that shut out burning skies
And old crook'd stiles to rest upon.

Above them hangs the maple tree,
Below grass swells a velvet hill,
And little footpaths sweet to see
Go seeking sweeter places still,
With by and by a brook to cross
O'er which a little arch is thrown:
No brook is here, I feel the loss
From home and friends and all alone.

The stone pit with its shelvy sides
Seemed hanging rocks in my esteem;
I miss the prospect far and wide
From Langley Bush, and so I seem
Alone and in a stranger scene,
Far, far from spots my heart esteems,
The closen with their ancient green,
Heaths, woods, and pastures' sunny streams.

The Flitting (I)

I've left my own old home of homes,
Green fields and every pleasant place;
The summer like a stranger comes,
I pause and hardly know her face.
I miss the hazel's happy green,
The bluebell's quiet hanging blooms,
Where envy's sneer was never seen,
Where staring malice never comes.

I miss the heath, its yellow furze,
Mole-hills and rabbit tracks that lead
Through besom-ling, and teazle burrs
That spread a wilderness indeed;
The woodland oaks and all below
That their white-powdered branches shield,
The mossy paths: the very crow
Croaks music in my native field.

I sit me in my corner chair
That seems to feel itself from home,
And hear bird music here and there
From hawthorn hedge and orchard come;
I hear, but all is strange and new:
I sat on my old bench in June,
The sailing puddock's shrill ‘peelew’
On Royce Wood seemed a sweeter tune.

(tbc)

Native Scenes

O native scenes for ever, ever dear
So blest so happy where I long have been
So charmd with nature in each varied scene
To leave ye all is cutting & severe

Ye hanging bushes that from winds woud screen
Where oft I've shelterd from an april's shower
In youths past bliss in Childhoods happy hour
Ye Woods I've wanderd searching out the nest

Ye Meadows gay that reard me many a flower
Culling my cow slips I've been doubly blest
Huming gay fancies As I bound the prize
O Fate unkind beloved scenes adieu
Your vanishd pleasures crowd my swimming eyes
& makes this wounded heart to bleed anew

May

Image: 'The Shepherd's Calendar ~ May' by Carry Akroyd

Come queen of months in company
Wi all thy merry minstrelsy
The restless cuckoo absent long
And twittering swallows chimney song
And hedge row crickets notes that run
From every bank that fronts the sun
And swathy bees about the grass
That stops wi every bloom they pass
And every minute every hour
Keep teazing weeds that wear a flower
And toil and childhoods humming joys
For there is music in the noise

The winter time is over love

The winter time is over love
White thorns begin to bud
& brown & green of freshness love
Enlivens all the wood
Theres white clouds got agen the sun
One daisey open on the green
The primrose shows its sulphur bud
Just where the hazel stulps are seen
& ere the april time is out
Along the ridings gravel walk
The bedlam primrose blooms about
Wi' twenty blossoms on a stalk
How happy seems the drop of dew
That nestles in the daiseys eye
How blest the cloud seems in the blue
That near the sun appears to lie
How happy does thy shadows seem
That stretches oer the morning grass
They seeims to walk as in a dream
I know their shadows as they pass
The primrose over withered leaves
Now beautifully shines

Mary, Mary, charming Mary

[Image: ‘Wet Meadow’ by Carry Akroyd]

Mary, Mary, charming Mary
Now the sun has sunk to rest
& the even breeze so airy
Tries to bare thy snowy breast —
How I love wi thee to wander
Mary O how sweet wi thee,
Dusky meadows to meander
Where no soul can hear or see.

As we pause by lake or fountain
On thy bosom bending free
Ah how sweet sensations counting
When I know each throbs for me —
As thy face turns on the azure
Looking where the moon may dwell,
As I fold thy beauty’s treasure
Wheres the kiss can taste so well.

As the hour of even closes
& my lingering wi thy charms
Plants thy cheek wi maiden roses
& thy modesty alarms —
Who sweet girl could not adore thee
& tho beauty thee has blest,
When that modesty comes o’er thee
Prove that virtue pleases best.

The Swallow

Pretty swallow, once again
Come and pass me in the rain.
Pretty swallow, why so shy?
Pass again my window by.

The horsepond where he dips his wings,
The wet day prints it full of rings.
The raindrops on his [........] track
Lodge like pearls upon his back.

Then again he dips his wing
In the wrinkles of the spring,
Then oer the rushes flies again,
And pearls roll off his back like rain.

Pretty little swallow, fly
Village doors and windows by,
Whisking oer the garden pales
Where the blackbird finds the snails;

Whewing by the ladslove tree
For something only seen by thee;
Pearls that on the red rose hing
Fall off shaken by thy wing.

On that low thatched cottage stop,
In the sooty chimney pop,
Where thy wife and family
Every evening wait for thee.

Land of perpetual summer, Italy

Land of perpetual summer, Italy
Land of the golden City of the sun
Cradle of Europe’s Empire — but for thee
The rest were darkness & perpetual dun
Celestial clime & garden of the sun

Country of Virgil Hessiod — once the free
Latium & Greece both kingdoms of the sun
Their infant cradles rocked by Liberty
& still the sunniest Land is Italy

Greece Land of Homer & the muses fire
How nations read & kindle at thy name
The freeman’s sword the poet’s native lyre
Have filled thy history with a classic fame
& is not Greece, that Land of Isles, the same?

The sun shines o’er its freedom & wars cease
The despot’s chains near made it stoop to shame
Its hills & classic skys repose in peace
& freedom owns it as the soil of Greece

An early Northampton Asylum poem from 1842
(for Simona in Ancona, in the “Land of perpetual summer”)

Early Nightingale

When first we hear the shy-come nightingales,
They seem to mutter oer their songs in fear,
And, climb we eer so soft the spinney rails,
All stops as if no bird was anywhere.
The kindled bushes with the young leaves thin
Let curious eyes to search a long way in,
Until impatience cannot see or hear
The hidden music; gets but little way
Upon the path--when up the songs begin,
Full loud a moment and then low again.
But when a day or two confirms her stay
Boldly she sings and loud for half the day;
And soon the village brings the woodman's tale
Of having heard the newcome nightingale.

A Special Posting... via YouTube

The Dying Child
"He could not die when trees were green,
For he loved the time too well.
His little hands, when flowers were seen,
Were held for the bluebell,
As he was carried oer the green."

His eye glanced at the white-nosed bee;
He knew those children of the Spring:
When he was well and on the lea
He held one in his hands to sing,
Which filled his heart with glee.

"Infants, the children of the Spring!
How can an infant die
When butterflies are on the wing,
Green grass, and such a sky?
How can they die at Spring?"

"He held his hands for daisies white,
And then for violets blue,
And took them all to bed at night
That in the green fields grew,
As childhood's sweet delight."

And then he shut his little eyes,
And flowers would notice not;
Birds' nests and eggs caused no surprise,
He now no blossoms got:
They met with plaintive sighs.

"When Winter came and blasts did sigh,
And bare were plain and tree,
As he for ease in bed did lie
His soul seemed with the free,
He died so quietly."

The reunitying of two poets

On a day of quite exceptional political shenanigans came the quiet statement that Ted Hughes is to be memorialised in Poets’ Corner. He and I took part in a wonderful event there: the inclusion of John Clare, this country’s finest rural voice.

It was in 1989, and the Abbey was filled with writers. Ted read Clare’s “The Nightingale’s Nest”, and I described his life. The stone was next to that of Matthew Arnold.

In March 1820, Clare had stood there on his first visit to London. His first book of poems had been published and he was fêted. Never again. A marvellous range of poetry would succeed it, but he himself would be out of sight. The tragi-triumph of his existence makes a famous story.

But at this moment in 1989, Ted and I are with Dean Mayne, and full of gratitude for his making this event possible.

Michael Mayne and I had met in Cambridge when he was Vicar of Great St Mary’s and liked to have writers preach at evensong. And Ted and I had met at the Roundhouse when we gave readings, I of Thomas Hardy and he of his own work. We used to have coffee at the ice-cream shop afterwards.

When Michael left Cambridge for Westminster Abbey, I would sometimes stay with him and Alison, and he would use the ancient Jerusalem Chamber for poetry readings. He was a genius who brought a fresh “literary” spirituality into the Abbey, both with his own writing and with George Herbert, etc.

On the day we celebrated Clare’s entrance to Poets’ Corner, I made what the children of Helpston, his Northamptonshire village, called a Midsummer Cushion. This was a square of turf stuck with wild flowers. I took it from the Stour Valley to Westminster Deanery in a carrier bag. It weighed a ton.

The Helpston schoolchildren brought flowers that had descended from those the great poet would have seen. And Ted drew the veil from the carved stone. And we all sang Clare’s sad hymn, “A stranger once did bless the Earth”. It would seem to speak of the vagabondage of Christ. Clare was homeless in “homes” for the mad.

Ted’s work is infused with natural history, and when he read Clare’s “The Nightingale’s Nest”, a poem in which a correct ornithology is fed into his own youthful experience on nesting, and the abandonment of such unkindness, he did so quite unforgettably. No one ever forgot a Ted Hughes reading — the rich voice, the perfect inflection.

And now his name calls out near Clare’s. Or soon will do. When I was with Michael, all the wall and floor-space had been used up by writers, and they had taken to the windows, where some missed-out poets, Oscar Wilde and Robert Herrick, were engraved.

This corner in the south transept is probably the most popular in the Abbey. A Tudor undergraduate started it. Wandering around, he had come across a pile of bones, dust, and armorials, all in a heap, and was shocked to find that they were Geoffrey Chaucer’s. So he reinterred them in the beautiful Purbeck marble altar-tomb, paying for it himself. Edmund Spenser would soon follow, and then nearly all Eng. Lit.

Clare’s body lies in Helpston churchyard. On 13 July, his birthday, it is carpeted with Midsummer Cushions. Once, when asked where he got his poetry, he said he kicked it out of the fields.

Ronald Blythe
Word from Wormingford
Church Times ~ 1st April 2010

April

Image: 'The Shepherd's Calendar ~ April’ by Carry Akroyd

The infant april joins the spring
And views its watery skye
As youngling linnet trys its wing
And fears at first to flye
With timid step she ventures on
And hardly dares to smile
The blossoms open one by one
And sunny hours beguile
But finer days approacheth yet
With scenes more sweet to charm
And suns arive that rise and set
Bright strangers to a storm
And as the birds with louder song
Each mornings glory cheers
With bolder step she speeds along
And looses all her fears
In wanton gambols like a child
She tends her early toils
And seeks the buds along the wild
That blossom while she smiles
And laughing on with nought to chide
She races with the hours
Or sports by natures lovley side
And fills her lap with flowers

(lines 1-24)

Spring (two versions)

SPRING (a)
Welcome gentle breathing Spring
Now the birds are heard to sing
And the budding tree is seen
Putting forth her tender green
O delightful season hail
May my footsteps never fail
When time permits to visit thee
And view thy new born scenery

SPRING (b)
Welcome gentle breathing spring
Now the birds begin to sing
Now the Swelling shade is seen
Putting forth its tender green
While the Suns extended way
Sweetly shows the lengthend day
O delightful Season hail
May my footsteps never fail
When I've time to trample where
All thy beauties reappear

Child Harold (again)

The Paigles Bloom In Shower's In Grassy Close
How Sweet To Be Among Their Blossoms Led
& Hear Sweet Nature To Herself Discourse
While Pale The Moon Is Bering Over Head
& Hear The Grazeing Cattle Softly Tread
Cropping The Hedgerows Newly Leafing Thorn
Sounds Soft As Visions Murmured Oer In Bed
At Dusky Eve Or Sober Silent Morn
For Such Delights Twere Happy Man Was Born

(Lines 966-974)

Ballad

I have been researching poems for the Festival in July, and have rediscovered this lovely song, part of the long series of 1841 Clare entitled "Child Harold". It dates from early in that year as the scholars tell us that at that time Clare was capitalising every word in his manuscript(s), no-one knows why. It's only title is 'Ballad'... my current favourite.

The Blackbird Has Built In The Pasture Agen
& The Thorn Oer The Pond Shows A Delicate Green
Where I Strolled With Patty Adown In The Glen
& Spent Summer Evenings & Sundays Unseen

How Sweet The Hill Brow
& The Low Of The Cow
& The Sunshine That Gilded The Bushes So Green

When Evening Brought Dews Natures Thirst To Allay
& Clouds Seemed To Nestle Round Hamlets & Farms
While In The Green Bushes We Spent The Sweet Day
& Patty, Sweet Patty, Was Still In My Arms

The Love Bloom That Redded Upon Her Sweet Lips
The Love Light That Glistened Within Her Sweet Eye
The Singing Bees There That The Wild Honey Sips
From Wild Blossoms Seemed Not So Happy As I

How Sweet Her Smile Seemed
While The Summer Sun Gleamed
& The Laugh Of The Spring Shadowed Joys From On High

While The Birds Sung About Us & Cattle Grazed Round
& Beauty Was Blooming On Hamlets & Farms
How Sweet Steamed The Inscence Of Dew From The Ground
While Patty Sweet Patty Sat Locked In My Arms

(lines 1108-1129 : Child Harold)

A Hunt for Dobin or the Force of Love

(lines 222-235)

The old deep pond where the coy morehen lyes
Where on whose side the turfy hillocks rise
Where the broad flag and fuzy bulrush grows
Curving adown to the least wind that blows
And where surrounding bushes form a shade
As wild as ever was by nature made
The oaken folliage shaken by the wind
The dark green ivy round their trunks entwind
With all the mingling many shaded greens
That decorate the woodlands mixing scenes
These are the haunts & these the scenes so wild
Which are so dear to Natures every child
To sport in wildness nature dearly loves
And all her Children of her taste approves

I love the little pond...

I love the little pond to mark at spring
When frogs & toads are croaking round its brink
When blackbirds yellow bills gin first to sing
& green woodpecker rotten trees to clink
I love to see the cattle muse & drink
& water crinkle to the rude march wind
While two ash dotterels flourish on its brink
Bearing key bunches children run to find
& water buttercups they're forced to leave behind

Somthing New

How varying is the taste of man
Still eager to pursue
That ever pleasing novelty
In meeting somthing new

In infancy the rage begins
(So tempting is the view)
Babes throw aside their once lov'd things
To sigh for somthing new

The hoop to day which boys are seen
So eager to pursue
To morrow lies a toy despis'd
Exchang'd for somthing new

Young miss's (if not catch'd in time)
—Be lovers ere so true
Grow fickle tires & turns 'em off
To seek for somthing new

Old maids whom every hope forsakes
The self same end pursue
& put their wrinkl'd mouths in form
To look for somthing new

E'en wives—but hasty muse for bear
(Tho wives shou'd have their due)
Will often harbour evil thoughts
& wish for somthing new

Lawers & doctors each in turn
One common aim pursue
When one good job is finish'd they
Look out for somthing new


Poor victim poets vainly priz'd
By the diserning few
Still ryhme in hopes o' better days
& dwell on somthing new

—Ah shatter'd coat & wanted groat
When wil't be mine to view?
Thee thrown aside? & pockets lin'd
With hopefull somthing new

—Booksellers often miss the chance
Their customers pursue
When throwing usless books about
They search for somthing new

Tho fashions change with every day
Their votaries will pursue
Come as they will or fast or slow
They cry is ‘somthing new’

So Gentlemen & ladies here
(In hopes to meet his due)
A humble clown exerts his skill
To offer somthing new

He wishes every taste to please
& hopes to find it true
So good or bad or what they will
This “Trifle’s” somthing new

When I met wi her...

When I met wi her I coud wish for my own
As fair & as blushing as blossoms full blown
Ah me I did heave a sigh
When she first met my eye
Poverty frownd she shoud not be my own

Life had a cloud that was sore to be nigh
Were hot love wi want woud get colded & dye
When I my love did meet
& saw her face so sweet
Poverty frownd wi many a sigh

Ah how I wishd the sweet maid for my own
Ah how I sighd upon troubles long known
But her sweet simple smile
Poverty did beguile
& hazard at last took the maid for my own

The Shepherd's Calendar - March

[Image: 'March' by Carry Akroyd]

March month of ‘many weathers’ wildly comes
In hail and snow and rain and threatning hums
And floods: while often at his cottage door
The shepherd stands to hear the distant roar
Loosd from the rushing mills and river locks
Wi thundering sound and over powering shocks
And headlong hurry thro the meadow brigs
Brushing the leaning willows fingering twigs
In feathery foam and eddy hurryng chase
Rolling a storm oertaken travellers pace
From bank to bank along the meadow leas
Spreading and shining like to little seas
While in the pale sunlight a watery brood
Of swopping white birds flock about the flood

(lines 1-14)

Billings Sorrows...

... in being Sober for want of money to get Drunk
[To the Tune “Doleful Dumps”]

Here like Johnny Horner
Confined in my corner
Half famished o’er terrible tea
I sit like an Owl
While the Cats Mew & yowl
A tale of my troubles to me

The taxes distress me
& parish rates dress me
Out of all my good money & calling
So here I sit growling
& Whooping and howling
Far away from the beer house a bawling

I’m as lean as a match
Nor a chance can I catch
Both money & credit is gone
I would pawn my coat
But its not worth a groat
Tho’ the best that I have when it’s on

So here I remain
For to mourn & complain
Keeping up a most damnable cry
Good people I pray
Do but heed what I say
Save a tester to drink when your dry.

Song "Sweet love I see the gales of Spring"

Sweet love I see the gales of Spring
Are wanton, wooing with thy hair
The missle thrush begins to sing
The sloe tree shews its blossoms fair

The white thorn bush is shewing leaf
The path is printed down the lane
The grass is green the shower brief
Come love now let us meet again

O let us meet and walk and love
And through the fir dale coppice stray
And view the scaley cones above
Droop brown as dropping all the way

The moss that warms the primrose roots
The buds their brimstone flowers contain
Where all unchecked the wood rose shoots
Sweet love do let us meet again

In hat of straw and russet gown
And shawl across thy shoulders thrown
We'll stroll the coppice up and down
Enjoying raptures all our own

The scolding calls of noisy jay
Shall please our ears and not in vain
We'll through the briery coppice stray
Sweet love do let us meet again

The Sharp Wind Shivers (part)

The sharp wind shivers in the warm gorse blossoms
And trembles in the dead grass o'er the heath
The silver rain pearls in the wild flowers bosoms
And moistens minute flowers of moss beneath
There i' the morning dew I early ramble
What time beneath the fern the weary moth
Hides from the sun in dew drops hangs the bramble
As down the rabbit track I venture forth

Bridge Casterton

[The Gwash at Great Casterton]

.

Thinking about the 2010 festival and the coach trip to Great Casterton, here is Clare sitting under the bridge by the river Gwash observing what there is around him... (just an excerpt)

While swift the mail coach rattles up the hill
Nearly unseen beneath a cloud of dust
& the poor beggar pined & weary still
Drops on the bank to rest or eat his crust
Upon thy winding side wild Gwash I lie
Viewing with curious eye the silver bream
Taking vaunting springs to trap the thoughtless flye
That heedless dances on thy gentle stream

The black snail wakens from the swoons of day
& from the boughs that nestle by thy side
The light wing'd moths steal out again to play
Crossing with hasty wing thy rippling tide
How sweet the blackbird chaunts her evening song
While the shrill larks in twittering chorus join
& O sad deed while boys thy shades among
With hardnd hearts her unfledg'd young purloin

Song: "There's a little odd house..."

There’s a little odd house by the side of the Lane
Where the daisy smiles sweet in the spring
Where the morning sun glitters like gold on the pane
& the hedge Sparrow trembles his wing
Where chaffinch green linnet & Sparrows have tones
That make the green Lane & the cottage their own
The sparrows they chirp & make nests i' the eaves
The chaffinch sings ‘pink’ in the hedge o' white thorn
That fences the garden & there the bird weaves
A nest of grey lichen soon as light i' the morn
& there bonny Susan will sit at the door
& see the green linnet at work at its nest
Where the robin flyes in for a crumb on the floor
& seems as if longing to sit on her breast

February

Image: 'The Shepherd's Calendar ~ February' by Carry Akroyd

The mavis thrush wi wild delight
Upon the orchards dripping tree
Mutters to see the day so bright
Spring scraps of young hopes poesy
And oft dame stops her burring wheel
To hear the robins note once more
That tutles while he pecks his meal
From sweet-briar hips beside the door
The hedghog from its hollow root
Sees the wood moss clear of snow
And hunts each hedge for fallen fruit
Crab hip and winter bitten sloe
And oft when checkd by sudden fears
As shepherd dog his haunt espies
He rolls up in a ball of spears
And all his barking rage defies
Thus nature of the spring will dream
While south winds thaw but soon again
Frost breaths upon the stiffening stream
And numbs it into ice—the plain
Soon wears its merry garb of white
And icicles that fret at noon
Will eke their icy tails at night
Beneath the chilly stars and moon

The Awthorn

I love the awthorn well
The first green thing
In woods & hedges—black thorn dell
Dashed with its green first spring
When sallows shine in golden sheen
These white thorn places in the black how green
How beautifully green
Though March has but begun
To tend primroses planted in the sun
The roots thats further in
Are not begun to bud or may be just begun
I love the white thorn bough
Hung over the mole hill
Where the spring feeding cow
Rubs off the dew drop chill
When on the cowslip pips & glossy thorn
The dews hang shining pearls at early morn

Emmonsail's Heath in Winter

I love to see the old heath's withered brake
Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling,
While the old heron from the lonely lake
Starts slow and flaps his melancholy wing,
And oddling crow in idle motions swing
On the half rotten ashtree's topmost twig,
Beside whose trunk the gipsy makes his bed.
Up flies the bouncing woodcock from the brig
Where a black quagmire quakes beneath the tread,
The fieldfares chatter in the whistling thorn
And for the awe round fields and closen rove,
And coy bumbarrels twenty in a drove
Flit down the hedgerows in the frozen plain
And hang on little twigs and start again.

Firwood

The fir trees taper into twigs and wear
The rich blue green of summer all the year,
Softening the roughest tempest almost calm
And offering shelter ever still and warm
To the small path that towels underneath,
Where loudest winds - almost as summer's breath -
Scarce fan the weed that lingers green below
When others out of doors are lost in frost and snow.
And sweet the music trembles on the ear
As the wind suthers through each tiny spear,
Makeshifts for leaves; and yet, so rich they show,
Winter is almost summer where they grow.

Ploughman Singing

Here morning in the ploughman's songs is met
Ere yet one footstep shows in all the sky,
And twilight in the east, a doubt as yet,
Shows not her sleeve of grey to know her bye.
Woke early, I arose and thought that first
In winter time of all the world was I.
The old owls might have hallooed if they durst,
But joy just then was up and whistled bye
A merry tune which I had known full long,
But could not to my memory wake it back,
Until the ploughman changed it to the song.
O happiness, how simple is thy track.
Tinged like the willow shoots, the east's young brow
Glows red and finds thee singing at the plough.

Song: I love the bonny lassie (excerpt)

Her gowns the yellow broom
& her face the blushing brere
Her cheeks have got the bloom
& she's handsome every where
& I'm welcome in her room
Where she sets the cushioned chair
What a winter fire she'll make
When I tarry as her guest
Wi' my arms about her neck
Then I kiss her into rest
Gin the hens are gone to bed
Gin the staple holds the pin
Gin the sparrows seek the shed
She will up & let me in
When I kiss & nothings sed
Rosey cheeks & lily skin

Nobody cometh to Woo

On Martinmas eve the dogs did bark,
And I opened the window to see,
When every maiden went by with her spark
But ne’er a one came to me.
And O dear what will become of me?
And O dear what shall I do,
When nobody whispers to marry me—
Nobody cometh to woo?

None's born for such troubles as I be:
If the sun wakens first in the morn
"Lazy hussy" my parents both call me,
And I must abide by their scorn,
For nobody cometh to marry me,
Nobody cometh to woo,
So here in distress must I tarry me—
What can a poor maiden do?

If I sigh through the window when Jerry
The ploughman goes by, I grow bold;
And if I'm disposed to be merry,
My parents do nothing but scold;
And Jerry the clown, and no other,
E’er cometh to marry or woo;
They think me the moral of mother
And judge me a terrible shrew.

For mother she hateth all fellows,
And spinning's my father's desire,
While the old cat growls bass with the bellows
If e’er I hitch up to the fire.
I make the whole house out of humour,
I wish nothing else but to please,
Would fortune but bring a new comer
To marry, and make me at ease!

When I've nothing my leisure to hinder
I scarce get as far as the eaves;
Her head's instant out of the window
Calling out like a press after thieves.
The young men all fall to remarking,
And laugh till they're weary to see't,
While the dogs at the noise begin barking,
And I slink in with shame from the street.

My mother's aye jealous of loving,
My father's aye jealous of play,
So what with them both there's no moving,
I'm in durance for life and a day.
O who shall I get for to marry me?
Who will have pity to woo?
Tis death any longer to tarry me,
And what shall a poor maiden do?

(from 'Address to a lark singing in winter')

Aye — little Larkie what’s the reason
Singing thus in winter season
Nothing surely can be pleasing
To make thee sing

For I see nought but cold and freezing
And feel it sting

Perhaps (all done wi' silent mourning)
Thou thinks that summer is returning
And this the last cold frosty morning
To chill thy breast

If so I pity thy discerning
And so I've guessed

(for a cold lady…)

Song (from Child Harold)

Say What Is Love—To Live In Vain
To Live & Die & Live Again
Say What Is Love—Is It To Be
In Prison Still & Still Be Free
Or Seem As Free—Alone & Prove
The Hopeless Hopes of Real Love
Does Real Love On Earth Exist
Tis Like A Sun beam On The Mist
That Fades & No Where Will Remain
& Nowhere Is Oertook Again
Say What Is Love—A Blooming Name
A Rose Leaf On The Page Of Fame
That Blooms Then Fades—To Cheat No More
& Is What Nothing Was Before
Say What Is Love—What E'er It be
It Centre's Mary Still With Thee

The Green Wood Side

I wandered down a green wood side
On Sunday noon in spring
Where little birds their dwellings hide
And Thrushes sweetly sing
The moss so green round Hazel roots
The Primrose by its side
That in its brimstone livery shoots
In bunches far and wide

Oh there I met a pretty maid
The fairest of her kind
She stood beneath the Hazels shade
Where lightly blew the wind
I gave her cheek a hearty smack
As leaning on her neck
Her soft hair trailed adown her back
Without a mark or Speck

Within the dyke the bullrush grew
Although the place was dry
And Thrushes nest wi’ Eggs o' blue
Did on the hedge ribs lye
The Woodbines in green leaves look'd wan
The Blue bell stooped i' pride
And there I claspt my bonny Ann
Along the greenwood side

Oh bonny Ann Oh bonny Ann
What makes you look so fair
Is it the love for some fond man
Or is't for none you care
My love to thee my bonny Ann
Where primrose blooms wi’ pride
I’ll talk and please thee all I can
Down by the greenwood side

(for a lady...)

A Christmas Treat

[Image: from the Shepherds Calendar ~ Carry Akroyd]

An excerpt from Ronnie Blythe's Word from Wormingford, published weekly in the Church Times...

"I HAD hardly turned my back on the late afternoon when the vast, bleached Advent moon swung up in the north-east. It whitened the puddles and lit the wet fields. The paths are darkened with sodden leaves, and rainwater dribbles from a blocked gutter.

Carry Akroyd arrives from far Northamptonshire, and we splash off to Lavenham for Sunday lunch. My boyhood lanes twist and turn through a scrubbed universe. The pub restaurants boom in and out of season.

When we walked here long ago, Lavenham was still asleep after all the toil of the Middle Ages, when the looms clattered in every cottage, the sheep were Abrahamic, and wool was gold. We visit Carry’s exhibition in the wildlife gallery, where her hares and foxes slink across canvas and paper. She is mistress of the fenland nocturn and of the geometry of sluices and cuts, of measureless skies, and this end-of-the-year moon. Our mutual passion is John Clare.

For everything I felt a love,
The weeds below, the birds above.

She can actually paint that amazing second when a thousand starlings turn left, turn right, all at once. Their only human equivalent is a thousand North Korean soldiers on parade, a breathtaking drill not without its absurdity.

Carry gone, I take part in the Advent carol service at Little Horkesley. Packed church and much expectancy. The stunning Advent antiphons, the gloriously scary Advent hymns. The first andsecond coming, the one precipit­ating the other... "

A very Happy and Blessed Christmas to all followers of this weblog... it's a labour of love for me.

The Stranger

His presence was a peace to all,
He bade the sorrowful rejoice.
Pain turned to pleasure at his call,
Health lived and issued from his voice.
He healed the sick and sent abroad
The dumb rejoicing in the Lord.

The blind met daylight in his eye,
The joys of everlasting day;
The sick found health in his reply;
The cripple threw his crutch away.
Yet he with troubles did remain
And suffered poverty and pain.

Yet none could say of wrong he did,
And scorn was ever standing bye;
Accusers by their conscience chid,
When proof was sought, made no reply.
Yet without sin he suffered more
Than ever sinners did before.

Song

I would not feign a single sigh
Nor weep a single tear for thee:
The soul within these orbs burns dry;
A desert spreads where love should be.
I would not be a worm to crawl
A writhing suppliant in thy way;
For love is life, is heaven, and all
The beams of an immortal day.

For sighs are idle things and vain,
And tears for idiots vainly fall.
I would not kiss thy face again
Nor round thy shining slippers crawl.
Love is the honey, not the bee,
Nor would I turn its sweets to gall
For all the beauty found in thee,
Thy lily neck, rose cheek, and all.

I would not feign a single tale
Thy kindness or thy love to seek;
Nor sigh for Jenny of the Vale,
Her ruby smile or rosy cheek.
I would not have a pain to own
For those dark curls and those bright eyes
A frowning lip, a heart of stone,
False love and folly I despise.

From: Poems Chiefly from Manuscript

Walks in the Woods (excerpt)

Oh, I do love to force a way
Through woods where lone the woodman goes,
Through all the matted shades to stray,
The brambles tearing at my clothes;
And it may tear; I love the noise
And hug the solitary joys.

The woodman, he from top to toe
In leathern doublet brushes on;
He cares not where his rambles go,
Thorns, briers, he beats them every one;
Their utmost spite his armour foils;
Unhurt, he dares his daily toils.

Knee-deep in fern he daily stoops
And loud his bill or hatchet chops,
As snug he trims the faggot up
Or gaps in mossy hedges stops;
While echo chops as he hath done
As if she counted every one.

You promised me, a year ago

COLIN
You promised me, a year ago,
When autumn bleach'd the mistletoe,
That you and I should be as one;
But now another autumn's gone—
Its solemn knell is in the blast,
And love's bright sun is overcast;
Yet flowers will bloom and birds will sing,
And e'en the winter claim the spring.

LUCY
The hedges will be green again,
And flowers will come on hill and plain;
And though we meet a rainy day,
The hawthorn will be white with May.
If love and nature still agree,
Green leaves will clothe the trysting-tree;
And when these pleasing days you view,
Think Lucy's heart yet be true.

After a fine winter's day

The sun lookd out the dreary scene to bless
Old winters grinning horrors forcful smild
His flinty bosom thawd wi tenderness
So fiercfull savages have melted mild
Neath the sweet looks of womans lovliness
So poesy thy witcheries so wild
Doth warm the chilly heart of wants distress
& forcful give a joy to natures child
Spite of his anguish—ah he coud express
Full many a pleasure & full many a pain
Mingling like gaul & honey sun & rain
A fine decembers day thou art to me
Tho winter still beneath thy rays remain
Her grinning frowns are melted soft by thee