Clare's Grave

With another Clare Festival approaching it may be timely to remind pilgrims to Clare's grave that the designer of Clare's very distinctive gravestone, memorably described by Charles Causley* as 'an upturned stone boat', was one Michael Drury, a Lincoln architect, who happens to have been a son of Edward Bell Drury, the Stamford bookseller, originally from Lincoln, who alerted his publisher cousin John Taylor to Clare's talents. There is a nice symmetry in the fact that Drury senior first 'discovered' the poet and Drury junior commemorated his last resting place.

I owe this information to a clipping from the Stamford Mercury, 13 August 1864, preserved in a notebook in the Godfrey Collection at Peterborough Museum (PMS G2, p.21).

Edward Drury also had a brother named Michael, a Philadelphia bookseller, mentioned on p.156 of Jonathan Bate's biography. There was also a George Drury, of Barholm, near Market Deeping, on the committee that raised funds for the gravestone by public subscription, and it seems likely that he too belonged to this family. A quick search of the UK Telephone Directory shows that Drury is still quite a common name in Lincolnshire, and chances are the family line continues to this day. Perhaps at some future Festival we may even see Clare descendants and Drury descendants converge at the graveside, which would be a very fitting communion indeed.

Greg Crossan
John Clare Society Newsletter No 92 (June 2006)

* “Helpston”

Hills sank like green fleets on the land's long rim
About the village of toast-coloured stone.
Leaving the car beside the Blue Bell, we
Walked with a clutch of flowers the clear lane
Towards the grave.

It was well combed, and quiet as before.
An upturned stone boat
Beached at God's thick door.
Only the water in the spiked grave-pot
Smelt sourly of death.
Yet no wind seemed to blow
From off the fen or sea
The flowers flickered in the painted pot
Like green antennae,
As though John Clare from a sounding skull
Brim with a hundred years of dirt and stone
Signalled to us;
And light suddenly breathed
Over the plain.

Later, drinking whisky in The Bull at Peterborough,
The face of the poet
Lying out on the rigid plain
Stared at me
As clearly as it once stared through
The glass coffin-lid
In the church-side pub on his burial day:
Head visible, to prove
The bulging brain was not taken away
By surgeons, digging through the bone and hair
As if to find poems still
Beating there;
Then, like an anchor, to be lowered fast
Out of creation's pain, the stropping wind,
Deep out of sight, into the world's mind.

Charles Causley

[Cornishman Charles Causley died on November 4, 2003, at the age of 86.]

The red bagged bee...

The red bagged bee on never weary wing
Pipe's his small trumpet round the early flowers
& the white nettles by the hedge in spring
Hears his low music all the sunny hours
Till clouds come on & leaves the falling showers
Herald of spring & music of wild blooms
It seems the minstrel of springs early flowers
On banks where the red nettle flowers it comes
& there all the long sunny morning hums

On a Journey: Fragment

The coy hedge-sparrow flaps her wing
And hops about the hedges,
And soon to brood the early spring
Will have some downy pledges;
They'll lift their heads and cree and crow
Hid by the dyke's bulrushes,
Almost before the winter haw
Has left the leafing bushes.

The blackbird's wing was drabbling wet
With the shower so sudden coming
As on the whitethorn bush he sat
Where the wild white rose was blooming;
The young ones in a nest of love,
Where the hedge the bramble hopples,
Cree'd, cawed and stretched their necks above
With their down all hung with dropples.

The jay set up his copple crown
And screamed to see a stranger
And swopt and hurried up and down
To warn the birds of danger;
And magpies where the spinney was
Noised five and six together,
While patiently the woodman's ass
Stood stretching round his tether.

The World's End

To hunt birds' nests on summer morns,
So far my leisure seemed to run,
I've paused to wonder where I'd got
And thought I'd got beyond the sun;
It seemed to rise another way,
The very world's end seemed as near;
Some strange bush pointed where it lay,
So back I turned for very fear
With eager haste and wonder-struck,
Pursued as by a dreaded spell,
Till home—Oh, could I write a book,
I thought, what wonders I could tell!
And when again I left the town
To the world's end I thought I'd go
And o'er the brink just peep adown
To see the mighty depths below.

John Clare and the folk tradition

George Deacon's thesis is that John Clare, the Northamptonshire poet, was a product of the folk tradition. His evidence for this is largely taken from the Clare manuscripts at Northampton and Peterborough Libraries. From these sources he has reproduced Clare's collections of song texts, his two tune-books for the fiddle, and relevant references in his poetry, autobiographical notes, and correspondence, including mention of customs. These records are prefaced by an important essay that successfully relates Clare's poetry to the oral tradition in which he grew up, in which he participated, and of which he was an observer. Deacon asserts, “His poetry has a musicaliiy redolent of the tunes he played and assiduously collected, while its rhythm and metre are as much a product of ballad and song as they are of a conscious attempt to innovate” (p. 10). The book is a tour de force, meticulously edited and annotated, and the remarks that follow should be seen in this context.

Without doubt John Clare was a remarkable man and his legacy provides us with a unique insight into the village culture of Helpston in the early nineteenth century. There is justification to Deacon's claim that Clare was almost certainly the first song collector in southern England, preceding John Broadwood by twenty or more years. Following the Scottish tradition of publishing ballad collections exemplified by Allan Cunningham, Tannahill, and Burns, Clare set about preparing his own. His primary source was his parents, but he also included songs from a shoemaker and a shepherd. Most of the fifty-two songs are unsourced, and many of these show the signs of Clare's own hand to a greater or lesser extent. While it is to be regretted that Clare's documentation is so sparse and that he has failed to distinguish between accurate oral record and his own input, we cannot overlook the fact that Clare was working from within the tradition. After all, if Clare had not been the poet, he would certainty never have bothered recording any songs, and we would have missed out on such classic items as ‘The Maid of Ocram Or Lord Gregory,' his version of' ‘Robin Hood Rescuing Three Squires,' or 'The False Knight's Tradegy'.

A review of George Deacon’s seminal book
“John Clare and the folk tradition”
Sinclair Browne (1983)
(Unknown Source)


The book is still available - click on the link on the left.

The Maple Tree

The maple with its tassel flowers of green,
That turns to red a staghorn-shaped seed,
Just spreading out its scolloped leaves is seen,
Of yellowish hue, yet beautifully green;
Bark ribbed like corderoy in seamy screed,
That farther up the stem is smoother seen,
Where the white hemlock with white umbel flowers
Up each spread stoven to the branches towers;
And moss around the stoven spreads, dark green,
And blotched leaved orchis, and the blue bell flowers;
Thickly they grow and neath the leaves are seen;
I love to see them gemmed with morning hours,
I love the lone green places where they be,
And the sweet clothing of the maple tree.

June

[Image: The Shepherd’s Calendar (June) – Carry Akroyd]

The hay time butterflyes dance up and down
And gads that teaze like whasps the timid maid
And drive the herdboys cows to pond and shade
Who when his dogs assistance fails to stop
Is forcd his half made oaten pipes to drop
And start and halloo thro the dancing heat
To keep their gadding tumult from the wheat
Who in their rage will dangers overlook
And leap like hunters oer the pasture brook
Brushing thro blossomd beans in maddening haste
And stroying corn they scarce can stop to taste
Labour pursues its toil in weary mood
And feign woud rest wi shadows in the wood
The mowing gangs bend oer the beeded grass
Where oft the gipseys hungry journeying ass
Will turn its wishes from the meadow paths
Listning the rustle of the falling swaths

John Clare – The Shepherd’s Calendar (June - excerpt)

Bright June has come, and the barley's silken beard grows long and green, and on Lolham Bridge Field it nods and dances to every shifting whim of the wind.

From dawn to dusk the frantic bees wallow in fox-glove and bean flower as though no glut of labour or journeying could fill their store with honey enough for all. And from dawn to dusk, when the sun shines, the mowing teams are out upon Heath Field. The swish of their curved scythes is the sound of June breathing and the rasp of the whet-stones against the iron blades is the sound of June coughing. For sickness and health are as rain and shine, and all men know that for every week of fine weather there will be a debt to pay in slanting showers. And a closer look betrays the rotten teeth, the small-pox scars, the twisted spines, the swollen joints and all the curses that hard labour and a scant wage bring.

Parker Clare swings his blade in the mowing line, as ready as any though stiffer than some. From time to time he calls a halt to mop his face. Around him the cut swathes sweeten the air. Behind him the raking women turn and toss yesterday's labour and at the far end of the field the lifted hay-cocks wait upon the wain.

On Woodcroft Field Ann and Sophie Clare have been gathering and shelling beans with the other women in John Close's employ, Sophie's ears acute to the rise and fall of the gossip that surrounds her, gleaning what she can.

John has joined a shearing team, working his way from farm to farm these last five weeks.

Such is the timeless round of summer labour upon the face of the parish, an old, hard, familiar melody. But there is a new sound alongside the sighing of the scythe, the bleating of the sheep and the rising and falling of the talk. It is the sound of posts being hammered into the ground and measuring chains pulled tight between. The sound of ropes being stretched across fields and commons where new boundaries will fall, of men shouting from mark to mark where roads will be cut or streams straightened, of splashes of red paint being daubed onto trees that are to be felled. The Earl of Fitzwilliam has sent surveyors out to mark the lie of the land for enclosure. Slowly, from day to day, a new pattern of squares, fine as the web of a net or a snare, is set across the looping, winding limbs of the parish.

Hugh Lupton – The Ballad of John Clare (Chapter 4)

Farewell to love...

Farewell to love and all I see
In these dull English skies
For all the world turns round wi' me
Lost in thy two bright eyes

So fare-thee-well—a lover lost
I go where none can blame
And dearly shall I rue the cost
And scarcely keep a name

The little flowers and wild birds song
I leave them far away
In other lands and other tongues
A lonely bard to stray

In other lands I'll think of thee
Nor mortal love adore
The north star must its temple be
Where nought can change no more

The Pansy

It does me good, thou flower of spring,

Thy blossoms to behold;

Thou bloom'st when birds begin to sing,

In purple and in gold.

Along the garden-beds so neat

Thy flowers their blooms display,

When sparrows chirp and lambkins bleat

And hopes look up for May.

Then Emma thinks the heart's-ease blooms

When she the pansy sees;

But I see sleep among the tombs,

With heart that's ill at ease,

That asks for what it's lost and loved—

A quiet home and friends,

Where nature's feelings were approved

And peace made life amends;

Where love was all I had to sing,

And there these pansy flowers

Came shining in the dews of spring

To cheer the sunny hours.

But years may pass, as they have passed,

And I may hope in vain,

With hopes that linger to the last,

To see them bloom again.

The fairest flower that ever bloomed,

Or garden ever blest,

Looks cold to care, and ne'er was doomed

To ease the heart's unrest.

The heart's-ease in her happy hour

Might Emma's fancy please,

But life will often pluck the flower

And feel but ill at ease.

The memory of Love

Her face to me was memory for life
Her looks her ways in winning forms would steal
& left a pain I never ceased to feel
Her very voice would memory’s partner be
& music lingered in the sound with me
Her troubling form was long about my sight
O’er day dreams dozing or in sleep by night
My dreams wore constantly that pleasing pain
The face of her I loved & could not gain

An Acroustic

Matchless the maid whom I so highly prize
In whom my evry hope encenter'd lies
She seems to me the fairest of the fair
She's more to me then hurds to mizards are
But O alas my love can't meet return
Eternally in secresy I burn
Taught by those friends to Silence.—Fear & shame
Secret I sigh for what I durst not name
Yet when that form appears which all excels
Nature my love by conscious blushes tells
E'en when her lovly face from sight retires
Wish after wish in fruitles hopes expires
But now I will (tho fearfull) tell my mind
O then sweet maiden tender prove & kind
Nor treat my humble suit with slight disdain
A smart most piercing to a love-sick swain
So lovly maid if you will tender prove
Hear him who fond (tho truley) tells his love
Trust swains no more who oft in outward shew
On lies depend to gain the point in view
No turn from these to him that loves thee true

from "Solitude"

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;

Whether, curious, waste an hour,
Pausing o'er each tasty flower;

Or, expounding nature's spells,
From the sand pick out the shells;

Or, while lingering by the streams,
Where more sweet the music seems,

Listen to the soft'ning swells
Of some distant chiming bells

Mellowing sweetly on the breeze,
Rising, falling by degrees,

Dying now, then wak'd again
In full many a 'witching strain,

Sounding, as the gale flits by,
Flats and sharps of melody.

(lines 1 - 24)

The Gardener's Bonny Daughter (Click here)

A live recording of 'The Gardener's Bonny Daughter' from the Albion Band.  There have of course been many of Clare's songs and poems set to music, but few in the idiom that he would have known and loved.  Here, in a live album, Vikki Clayton sings her own arrangement of the song.

Slight changes from Clare's 'lyrics', but a treat!

The chaffinch in the hedgerow sings, by a brown and naked thorn
By it's tail the titmouse hings searching the buds at morn
I'll wish dirty roads away and the meadows flooded water
And court before I end the day the Gardner's bonny daughter

She's sweeter than the first of spring , more fair than Christmas roses
When Robins by the hovel sings sweet smiles this maid discloses
Her hair so brown her eyes so bright as clear as meadow water
I'll go and have a word tonight with the gardners bonny daughter

Her cheeks they're like a coloured rose, oh a kiss would surely burn ye
Her lips are gems more red than those for love I'll go the journey
When the white thorn comes in bloom and the chaffinch lays it's lauter
I'll walk where singing birds are brief with the gardners bonny daughter

I passed the gardeners house one night my heart burned to a cinder
I saw her face and her eyes so bright she was looking through the window
But when I passed the house again I'd been pounded in a mortar
But she smiled and looked upon me then, so I love the gardeners daughter

I love the gardners daughter -- Ooh that sweet daughter

from "The Pasture"

I think when the glad shepherd lay
On the velvet sward stretched, for a bed,
On the bosom of sunshiny May,
While a hillock supported his head.

I think when, in weeding, the maid
Made choice of a hill for her seat;
When the winds so deliciously played
In her curls, 'mid her blushes so sweet.

I think of gay groups in the shade,
In hay-time, with noise never still,
When the short sward their gay cushions made.
And their dinner was spread on a hill.

I think when, in harvest, folks lay
Underneath the green shade of a tree,
While the children were busy at play,
Running round the huge trunk in their glee.

Joy shouted wherever I went;
And e'en now such a freshness it yields,
I could fancy, with books and a tent,
What delight we could find in the fields.

A Walk on High Beach, Loughton

I loved the Forest walks and beechen woods,
Where pleasant Stockdale showed me far away
Wild Enfield Chase, and pleasant Edmonton;
While Giant London, known to all the world,
Was nothing but a guess among the trees,
Though only half a day from where we stood.
Such is ambition! only great at home,
And hardly known to quiet and repose.
I loved the Forest walk, and often stood
To hear boys halloo to their wilder sheep;
While quiet Turner sat upon a hill,
And gentle Howard cut his sticks and sang.
The Sticker trailed her faggot on the ground,
And all the Forest seemed to live with joy.

May

[Image: The Shepherd’s Calendar (May) – 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

John Clare – The Shepherd’s Calendar (May - excerpt)

This fortnight last John has worked the gardens of John Close's farm. Thistle, campion, poppy, fumitory, yellow charlock, pimpernel, groundsel, all must yield to the hoe before they bloom and seed and overwhelm, for all they're the common flowers that he loves best. But a man must work and John must sentence them as weeds and condemn them to have their green grip upon the soil scratched away. And having served his time as executioner, must trudge back to Close's yard, clean his hoe and take his place in line to receive his paltry wage.

And now, his pocket lined with pennies, he sought his solace.

Once inside the woods and shaken free of the ceaseless gossip and the women's shrill laughter and the hacking cough of poor Jem Farrar. Once he was free of the tireless scratching of iron to stony soil and the day's slate had been wiped clean by sweet solitude, John Clare set his mind to the next day's holiday.

From the willows bordering Round Oak Water he cut slim withies and wound them together into a loop. From the may the wood's margin he found sprays that were breaking into early white blossom...

Hugh Lupton – The Ballad of John Clare (Chapter 2)

Graves of Infants

Infants' gravemounds are steps of angels, where
Earth's brightest gems of innocence repose.
God is their parent, so they need no tear;
He takes them to his bosom from earth's woes,
A bud their lifetime and a flower their close.
Their spirits are the Iris of the skies,
Needing no prayers; a sunset's happy close.
Gone are the bright rays of their soft blue eyes;
Flowers weep in dew-drops o'er them, and the gale gently sighs.

Their lives were nothing but a sunny shower,
Melting on flowers as tears melt from the eye.
Each death
Was tolled on flowers as Summer gales went by.
They bowed and trembled, yet they heaved no sigh,
And the sun smiled to show the end was well.
Infants have nought to weep for ere they die;
All prayers are needless, beads they need not tell,
White flowers their mourners are, Nature their passing bell.

from Child Harold

I rest my wearied life in these sweet fields
Reflecting every smile in natures face
& much of joy this grass — These hedges yields
Not found in citys where crowds daily trace
Heart pleasures there hath no abideing place
The star gemmed early morn the silent even
Hath pleasures that our broken hopes deface
To love too well leaves nought to be forgiven
The Gates of Eden is the bounds of heaven

(lines 1222 to 1230)

A Special... First Love (click here)

... with thanks to the BBC Learning Zone.

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

Ballad (from Child Harold)

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

April

[Image: The Shepherd’s Calendar (April) – 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

John Clare – The Shepherd’s Calendar (April - excerpt)

The village band crossed the street and made its way slowly among the hobbling pilgrims, along Church Lane towards Eastwell Spring.

As they drew close they could see that the elms and willows, that last year had made a green and shady grove around the spring, had been dragged to the saw-mill. It is a scarred and barren slope that now leads down to the little pool. The crowds were lining up to fill their leather bottles and jugs. Charlie Turner stood white and shivering, waist deep in water, pulling his ragged half-wit daughter Isabel towards him while she wailed like a lost soul. Mrs Bullimore had set her jug upon a wooden table. Children were jostling around it with farthings in their fists, eager for a cup of sugared water.

Hugh Lupton – The Ballad of John Clare (Chapter 16)

My sundays harmless pleasures were forsook
Nor turnd my rambles to the pasture brook
Were in my youth at ‘Eastwells’ fountain side
Which winters never froze nor summer dryd
Young men & maidens usd to talk & play
n the cool shadows of its willows grey
Drinking loves healths in totts of sugard drink
On the soft swellings of its rushy brink
From the spring head like winter cold & chill
Were boils the white sand that is never still
Now swimming up in silver threads & then
Slow siling down to bubble up agen
There shepherds usd to sit & tell the while
Their tales & jokes to win each maidens smile

(From, “The Memory of Love”, lines 353-366)

Some Account of my Kin, my Tallents & Myself (II of II)

[Scriven's 1821 engraving]

Still tho my genius cant be reckond rich
That its origional youll all agree
& tho my pen is often on the itch
Ive kept as yet from thieving pretty free
To tell the truth Ive hardly stole from any
Save some few things from worthey mother Bunch
A joke from Miller (praisd as mine by many)
For an old pedlar once who acted punch

If you like this Ill tell you tales by dozens
Which youll find pretty or I miss my aim
To strengthen this I might bring in my cousins
Who swear Im hastning up the hill to fame
But of friends praise I cant say Im a lover
For they like all are very prone to puff
Oft magazines laud books upon the cover
That prove when read most disagreeable stuff

So here Ill leave this sample to its fate
Send me the ‘London’ if you take the hint
Twill get you half a crown at any rate
For Ill give that to see my name in print
& be as't will Ill wait & hope the better
Gran poor old creature will be all delight—
& as Aunt Prissey often ends a letter
When getting late—I wish you all good night

June 14, 1821 past 10 o'clock

Blog Views - read and try this today (!)

As regular readers of this Blog will know, the blog software is called Blogger. I have just discovered that Blogger offers five different views for its blogs:

• Flipcard: www.johnclare.blogspot.com/view/flipcard

• Mosaic: www.johnclare.blogspot.com/view/mosaic

• Sidebar: www.johnclare.blogspot.com/view/sidebar

• Snapshot: www.johnclare.blogspot.com/view/snapshot

• Timeslide: www.johnclare.blogspot.com/view/timeslide

---oOo---

These views require modern browsers such as Internet Explorer 8+, Firefox 3.5+, Chrome or Safari. Many elements of these views will not work should you have an older browser.

In all views, search is available in the upper right hand corner, and is really worth a look.

Go on... give it a go. Just click on one of the URLs above and have fun!

Some Account of my Kin, my Tallents & Myself (I of II)

[Clare by William Hilton - 1820]

Ryhme is a gift as our folks here suppose
Nor wealth nor learning ever makes a poet
Tis natures blessing so the story goes
& my condition goes the way to show it
Tho up to Bible classes I was taught
My school account is hardly worth the telling
I staid no time to master as I ought
A hardish chapter in it without spelling

A timber merchant father was—that is
A maker & a seller out of matches
This honest truth somes very apt to quiz
That can do nothing but such meddling catches
These I woud ask is the prime strops of Packwood
A pin the worse cause he has humbler been
Then why—but hold—I quake at Mr B[lackwood]
Hell rap my knuckles in his magazine

Things may (as gran observes of Turners Blacking)
Be very good & very worthy praise
But theres such puffing & such swindling quacking
That merits next to nothing now adays
Some praise themselves some by their friends are stuck
As highs our weathercock upon the steeple
While all beside are trampld in the muck
I humbly hope youre no such kind of people

Truth waits times touchstone as the just attacker
To burst the bubble & to put to rout
Each pompous sounding literary cracker—
Mine lives as long as many Ive no doubt
I will but print them as I hinted at
Deceit may be decieved its no great matter
Big as a frog I almost burst with that
She puffs me up but she is apt to flatter

From "Childhood"

When twelve o'clock was counted out,

The joy and strife began,

The shut of books, the hearty shout,

As out of doors we ran.

Sunshine and showers who could withstand?

Our food and rapture they;

We took our dinners in our hands

To lose no time in play.

The morn when first we went to school—

Who can forget the morn

When the birch whip lay upon the clock

And our horn-book it was torn?

We tore the little pictures out,

Less fond of books than play,

And only took one letter home

And that the letter ‘A.’

I love in childhood's little book

To read its lessons through,

And o'er each pictured page to look

Because they read so true.

From "The Poets Wish"

With all my friends encircled round
In golden letters, richly bound

While one snug room not over small
Containd my ness[ess]ary all
& night & day left me secure
'Mong books my chiefest furniture
With littering papers many a bit
Scrawld by the muse in fancied fit—
& curse upon that routing jade
My territorys to invade
That found me out in evil hour
To brush & clean & scrub & scour
& with a dreaded brush & broom
Disturbd my learned lumber room
Such Busy things I hate to see
Such troublers neer should trouble me
Let dust keep gathering on the ground
& roaping cobwebs dangle round

Oh Come to my Arms

O' come to my arms i' the cool o' the day
When the veil o' the evening falls dewy and grey
O' come to me under the awthorn green
When eventide falls i' the bushes serene
O come to me under the awthorn tree
When the lark's on his nest and gone bed is the bee
When the veil of the evening falls dark on the scene
And we'll kiss love and court i' the bushes so green

O come to me dear wi' thy own Maiden head
Where the wild flowers and rushes shall make thee a bed
We will lye down together in each others arms
Where the white Moth flirts by not give us alarms
Where the rush bushes bend and are silvered wi' dew
Ere the sunbeam the red cloud O' morning breaks through
Thy face is so sweet and thy neck is so fair
O' come at eve dearest and live with me there

Sighing for Retirement

O take me from the busy crowd,
I cannot bear the noise!
For Nature's voice is never loud;
I seek for quiet joys.
The book I love is everywhere,
And not in idle words;
The book I love is known to all,
And better lore affords.

The book I love is everywhere,
And every place the same;
God bade me make my dwelling there,
And look for better fame.
I never feared the critic's pen,
To live by my renown;
I found the poems in the fields,
And only wrote them down.

(excerpt)

The BBC Report on the Clare Cottage

Click on the title above to see the BBC Look East report from 2009. OK, I know that I am 18 months late with the posting, but no-one told me the BBC had produced this news item at the time. It's worth seeing...

Idle Fame

I would not wish the burning blaze
Of fame around a restless world,
The thunder and the storm of praise
In crowded tumults heard and hurled.
I would not be a flower to stand
The stare of every passer-bye;
But in some nook of fairyland,
Seen in the praise of beauty's eye.

--- oOo ---

20, Stratford Place, March 21st, 1828.

My Dear Patty,

I have been so long silent that I feel ashamed of it, but I have been so much engaged that I really have not had time to write; and the occasion of my writing now is only to tell you that I shall be at home next week for certain. I am anxious to see you and the children and I sincerely hope you are all well. I have bought the dear little creatures four books, and Henry Behnes has promised to send Frederick a wagon and horses as a box of music is not to be had. The books I have bought them are "Puss-in-Boots," "Cinderella," "Little Rhymes," and "The Old Woman and Pig"; tell them that the pictures are all coloured, and they must make up their minds to chuse which they like best ere I come home. Mrs. Emmerson desires to be kindly remembered to you, and intends sending the children some toys. I hope next Wednesday night at furthest will see me in my old corner once again amongst you. I have made up my mind to buy Baxter "The History of Greece," which I hope will suit him.

I have been poorly, having caught cold, and have been to Dr. Darling. I would have sent you some money which I know you want, but as I am coming home so soon I thought it much safer to bring it home myself than send it; and as this is only to let you know that I am coming home, I shall not write further than hoping you are all well -- kiss the dear children for me all round -- give my remembrances to all -- and believe me, my dear Patty,

Yours most affectionately,

John Clare

During this stay in London, Clare had had proofs that his poems were not completely overlooked. Strangers, recognizing him from the portrait in the "Village Minstrel," often addressed him in the street. In this way he first met Alaric A. Watts, and Henry Behnes, the sculptor, who induced Clare to sit to him. The result was a strong, intensely faithful bust (preserved now in the Northampton Free Library). Hilton, who had painted Clare in water-colours and in oils, celebrated with Behnes and Clare the modelling of this bust…

(from ‘Poems Chiefly From Manuscript’
Edited by Edmund Blunden and Alan Porter.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1921

March

[Image: The Shepherd’s Calendar (March) – Carry Akroyd]

And oft the shepherd in his path will spye
The little daisey in the wet grass lye
That to the peeping sun enlivens gay
Like Labour smiling on an holiday
And where the stunt bank fronts the southern sky
By lanes or brooks where sunbeams love to lye
A cowslip peep will open faintly coy
Soon seen and gatherd by a wandering boy
A tale of spring around the distant haze
Seems muttering pleasures wi the lengthning days
Morn wakens mottld oft wi may day stains
And shower drops hang the grassy sprouting plains
And on the naked thorns of brassy hue
Drip glistning like a summer dream of dew
While from the hill side freshning forest drops
As one might walk upon their thickening tops
And buds wi young hopes promise seemly swells
Where woodman that in wild seclusion dwells

John Clare – The Shepherd’s Calendar (March - excerpt)

Heath Field is caught tight now in a taut net of straight fences and new-planted hedgerows. She climbed over one fence after another. She pushed between the quick-thorn bushes and the thorns tugged at her cloak, A fox barked in Royce's Wood. She quickened her step. The wind sang among the branches of the willows along the dyke edge. She jumped the stream, holding up her skirts. She strode with a purpose. The moon came and went behind the scudding clouds and she seemed to walk through the darkness with a possessed assurance. She did not stumble. There was a shepherd's lambing wagon at the lower end of Heath Field. She gave it a wide berth. When she came to Torpel Way she followed it westward to Maxham's Green Lane, drawing her cloak about herself.

It was only as she passed the piles of fencing slats at the edge of Snow Common that her pace slowed and for the first time she caught her foot on the rough tussocks of the common.

Hugh Lupton – The Ballad of John Clare (Chapter 15 – Shrove Tuesday)

A Moments Rapture while bearing the Lovley Weight of A. S---R---S

[For once, I think a photo is superfluous -- just use your imagination]

Unequal'd raptures happiest happiness
For sure no raptures can compare with thee
Now lovley Anna in her sunday dress
In softest pressure sits upon my knee.—
For O to see the snowey bosom heave
And feel those robes to me so softley cleave
Robes which half show what modesty consceals
While round her slender wa[i]ste I fling my arms
And while her eye what's wanting yet reveals
To me apears such (more than heavenly) charms
That might I wish—and could I be so blest
To have it granted—O I'd wish to be
For ever of this matchles maid posses'd
To bear her weight through all Eternity

The Approach of Spring (IV)

I've met the Winter's biting breath
In Nature's wild retreat,
When Silence listens as in death,
And thought its wildness sweet;
And I have loved the Winter's calm
When frost has left the plain,
When suns that morning waken'd warm
Left eve to freeze again.

I've heard in Autumn's early reign
Her first, her gentlest song;
I've mark'd her change o'er wood and plain,
And wish'd her reign were long;
Till winds, like armies, gather'd round,
And stripp'd her colour'd woods,
And storms urged on, with thunder-sound,
Their desolating floods.

And Summer's endless stretch of green,
Spread over plain and tree,
Sweet solace to my eyes has been,
As it to all must be;
Long I have stood his burning heat,
And breathed the sultry day,
And walk'd and toil'd with weary feet,
Nor wish'd his pride away.

But oft I've watch'd the greening buds
Brush'd by the linnet's wing,
When, like a child, the gladden'd woods
First lisp the voice of Spring;
When flowers, like dreams, peep every day,
Reminding what they bring,
I've watch'd them, and am warn'd to pay
A preference to Spring.

The Approach of Spring (III)

This, my third posting of Clare's The Approach of Spring, is dedicated to the students of City College, Plymouth where yesterday I gave lectures (well chatted really) on The Life and Work of John Clare. A very attentive and interested group of students, most of whom had not previously been aware of the amazing poetic genius of Clare. A joy for me, and I hope for those present.

Bright dews illume the grassy plain,
Sweet messengers of morn,
And drops hang glistening after rain
Like gems on every thorn;
What though the grass is moist and rank
Where dews fall from the tree,
The creeping sun smiles on the bank
And warms a seat for thee.

The eager morning earlier wakes
To glad thy fond desires,
And oft its rosy bed forsakes
Ere night's pale moon retires;
Sweet shalt thou feel the morning sun
To warm thy dewy breast,
And chase the chill mist's purple dun
That lingers in the west.

Her dresses Nature gladly trims,
To hail thee as her queen,
And soon shall fold thy lovely limbs
In modest garb of green:
Each day shall like a lover come
Some gifts with thee to share,
And swarms of flowers shall quickly bloom
To dress thy golden hair.

All life and beauty warm and smile
Thy lovely face to see,
And many a hopeful hour beguile
In seeking joys with thee:
The sweetest hours that ever come
Are those which thou dost bring,
And sure the fairest flowers that bloom
Are partners of the Spring.

(tbc)

The Approach of Spring (II)

Through hedgerow leaves, in drifted heaps
Left by the stormy blast,
The little hopeful blossom peeps,
And tells of winter past;
A few leaves flutter from the woods,
That hung the season through,
Leaving their place for swelling buds
To spread their leaves anew.

'Mong wither'd grass upon the plain,
That lent the blast a voice,
The tender green appears again,
And creeping things rejoice;
Each warm bank shines with early flowers,
Where oft a lonely bee
Drones, venturing on in sunny hours,
Its humming song to thee.

The birds are busy on the wing,
The fish play in the stream;
And many a hasty curdled ring
Crimps round the leaping bream;
The buds unfold to leaves apace,
Along the hedgerow bowers,
And many a child with rosy face
Is seeking after flowers.

The soft wind fans the violet blue,
Its opening sweets to share,
And infant breezes, waked anew,
Play in the maidens' hair—
Maidens that freshen with thy flowers,
To charm the gentle swain,
And dally, in their milking hours,
With lovers' vows again.

(tbc)

The Approach of Spring (I)

Now once again, thou lovely Spring,
Thy sight the day beguiles;
For fresher greens the fairy ring,
The daisy brighter smiles:
The winds, that late with chiding voice
Would fain thy stay prolong,
Relent, while little birds rejoice,
And mingle into song.

Undaunted maiden, thou shalt find
Thy home in gleaming woods,
Thy mantle in the southern wind,
Thy wreath in swelling buds:
And may thy mantle wrap thee round,
And hopes still warm and thrive,
And dews with every morn be found
To keep thy wreath alive.

May coming suns, that tempt thy flowers,
Smile on as they begin;
And gentle be succeeding hours
As those that bring thee in:
Full lovely are thy dappled skies,
Pearl'd round with promised showers,
And sweet thy blossoms round thee rise
To meet the sunny hours.

The primrose bud, thy early pledge,
Sprouts 'neath each woodland tree,
And violets under every hedge
Prepare a seat for thee:
As maids just meeting woman's bloom
Feel love's delicious strife,
So Nature warms to find thee come,
And kindles into life.

(to be continued...)

from 'Address to a Lark'

I'm poor enough, there's plenty knows it ;
Obscure ; how dull, my scribbling shows it :
Then sure 'twas madness to suppose it,
What I was at,
To gain preferment ! there I'll close it :
So mum for that.

Let mine, sweet Bird, then be a warning :
Advice in season don't be scorning,
But wait till Spring's first days are dawning
To glad and cheer thee ;
And then, sweet Minstrel of the morning,
I'd wish to hear thee.

February

[Image: The Shepherd’s Calendar (February) – Carry Akroyd]

The snow is gone from cottage tops
The thatch moss glows in brighter green
And eaves in quick succession drops
Where grinning icicles hath been
Pit patting wi a pleasant noise
In tubs set by the cottage door
And ducks and geese wi happy joys
Douse in the yard pond brimming oer
The sun peeps thro the window pane
Which childern mark wi laughing eye
And in the wet street steal again
To tell each other spring is nigh

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
Nature soon sickens of her joys
And all is sad and dumb again

John Clare – The Shepherd’s Calendar (February - excerpt)

Snow has given way to rain again and everywhere is mud. In the fields the men at their ploughs, or hedging and ditching, curse the cold wet that lashes their faces and the cloying mud that clogs their boots and drags them to a standstill. The shepherds set their backs to the wind as the winter lambing begins. The enclosure teams, at their fence-setting and stone-breaking, listen for the chiming of the church clock and count the hours until dusk when spades and hammers can be dropped and forgotten. The women, hurrying from dairy to coop, from kitchen to midden, lift their gowns and scold the wet that soaks their feet and the puddles that stain and bedraggle the hems of their petticoats. They curse the splashing horses and carts that throw up their stinking mud from the street. Only the ducks and geese in the yard-ponds rejoice at the wetness of the world.

Under the trees in the skirts of Oxey Wood and Royce Wood and beneath the blackthorn bushes on the commons the nodding snowdrops are come, that with the first crying lambs signal that the winter season is beginning to slacken its hold.

Hugh Lupton – The Ballad of John Clare 
(Chapter 14 – St. Valentine’s Day)

January

[Image: The Shepherd’s Calendar (January) – Carry Akroyd]

While labour still pursues his way
And braves the tempest as he may
The thresher first thro darkness deep
Awakes the mornings winter sleep
Scaring the owlet from her prey
Long before she dreams of day
That blinks above head on the snow
Watching the mice that squeaks below
And foddering boys sojourn again
By ryhme hung hedge and frozen plain
Shuffling thro the sinking snows
Blowing his fingers as he goes
To where the stock in bellowings hoarse
Call for their meals in dreary close
And print full many a hungry track
Round circling hedge that guards the stack

John Clare – The Shepherd’s Calendar (January - excerpt)

Twelfth Night is over and Plough Monday is past. Now it is Tuesday and work resumes and hard labour wastes no time in wiping the slate clean of the sweets of holiday and all the misrule of the day before, leaving only the aching limbs, the numbed fingers and the harsh coughs of winter.

Yesterday, Plough Monday, is the day that custom dictates that all men return to work and the season of ploughing begin. But custom is long-since beggared by usage, for the ploughs have been working the fields since October. And there are few men under thirty who, on Plough Monday, have their eyes on anything but the pint pot and the pie?

All is white with snow, and has been since Christmas night when the sky opened and the snow settled like feathers on the frozen ground, so that every battered, tattered, familiar place is become strange and beautiful, softened by the white fall that has folded its cold bright coverlet over match, stack, stable, street and field.

Hugh Lupton – The Ballad of John Clare (Chapter 13 - Plough Monday)

The Ballad of John Clare

As readers of this weblog will know, in the years since its genesis in 2005 I have very rarely used texts that were not written by Clare, but with the publication of The Ballad of John Clare in late 2010 I feel I must make an exception.

Over the past couple of years there has been a number of novels about the life and work of Clare, all very much worth reading. But in this, Hugh Lupton's first novel, I feel we have something exceptional. Mark my words, this book will win prizes.

Hugh is planning to be present at our 30th Festival in Helpston (8th - 10th July 2011), speaking about and signing copies of this book. However in the months before then, and with Hugh's permission, I hope to post short extracts here... together with pertinent Clare poems.

Before this is commenced you will find below two reviews of the book, the first written by fellow John Clare Society Committee member Simon Kovesi. Published in the Independent Newspaper; the second by Kathy Stevenson in the Daily Mail. I must admit to agreeing with virtually every word:

"This novelisation of a year in the young life of the poet John Clare is a testament to a lifetime's groundbreaking commitment to folk culture. A renowned folk performer, but a first-time novelist, Hugh Lupton is neither a prose stylist, nor a formal innovator of fiction. But he is a master in two areas: storytelling and English rural folk culture. Lupton knows Clare and his village of Helpston, Northamptonshire, as well as anyone, and reconstructs Clare's times with a rare conviction. The context, landscape, language and texture of Clare's life and landscape are re-imagined in enchanting and accurate detail.

Clare has spoken to many creative people across the years: poets Arthur Symons and Edmund Blunden at the start of the twentieth century; Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott and Paul Farley more recently. Playwrights have taken different routes through Clare's life: Edward Bond's play The Fool, revived brilliantly this year in Kilburn after a 35-year hiatus, sets the poet in a world of violent class war, while Simon Rae's play Grass, places an eco-warrior Clare in the 2001 foot-and-mouth pandemic.

Prose writers have also had varying takes on Clare: Alan Moore gives us a magical, anarchic version of Clare in Voice of the Fire; Iain Sinclair psycho-maps Clare's naturally contoured mind in Edge of the Orison; Richard Mabey takes Clare as his companion on a recovery from depression in the brilliant memoir Nature Cure. Serious thinkers like E. P. Thompson, Raymond Williams, Adam Phillips, Roy Porter and Ronald Blythe have also been thrilled by the access Clare provides to a long-forgotten, largely unwritten, world of labouring-class rural life and working intimacy with nature. Even Christopher Hitchens starts his polemic God is Not Great with an account of Clare.

But Clare's reach doesn't stop there. A wide variety of musicians continue to perform and record Clare's folksongs, fiddle music and ballads. The thriving John Clare Society will be thirty years old in 2011. Clare's poetry is now included in primary and secondary school curriculums. There are plans for TV documentaries and Hollywood interest too. His cottage in Helpston is now redeveloped into a glistening multi-million-pound Clare museum. This is truly Clare's moment - he's everywhere. But why is this previously obscure peasant poet of the natural world, born in poverty in 1793, who died in an asylum in 1864, suddenly of any relevance to us now?

The Ballad of John Clare provides the answer. Clare was born into a time of agricultural and social change. We live in a time of impending environmental catastrophe. The focus of this novel is enclosure - that massive reorganisation of the use of agricultural land that took place, parish by parish, inch by mapped inch, across the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The rotating open field system of Clare's farming youth, peppered by common land, heaths, woods, scrub and wetlands, was reformed by Acts of Parliament. Rigid lines determined new ownership. Land was drained and reclaimed, hedged and fenced. Ditches were dug, rivers straightened, woodlands erased, and commons ploughed. Clare's horror at the abuses of the land around him - and the sheer ignorance of natural wonder that allowed it - led to a loss of a personal Eden from which he never recovered. There is therefore a direct relevance of Clare's poetic vision, and personal experience, to current anxieties about the ongoing impact of our industrialised, alienated distance from the earth and skies we continue to poison. Clare is now beginning to occupy the same place in relation to green environmentalism that Mary Wollstonecraft does in relation to feminism. Embedded within his proto-green politics is a celebration of common customs and common land, and an acute eye for an extraordinary rural life now all but gone."

Simon Kovesi --The Independent, 3rd December 2010

"Three novels about poet John Clare have now been published within a short space of each other - and why not? His story is, after all, the stuff of which fiction is made.

In this beautifully crafted book, Lupton has focused on one pivotal year of Clare's life; one that foretells the misery and mental problems that would beset him in later years.

But, this is not a book about just one man; it is about a society undergoing colossal upheavals from which the English countryside and its people have never recovered, when the Enclosures Act brings with it riches for some but abject poverty for many.

Lupton has brought to bear his vast understanding of English folklore and culture, and produced an exceptional evocation of an England lost."

Kathy Stevenson --The Daily Mail, November 26, 2010

Stanzas to Adelaide

Adelaide beautiful Adelaide see
The spring is returning to beauty and thee
The snowdrops are breaking the soil and appear
As white as thy neck at the spring of the year

Adelaide beautiful Adelaide here
The primroses come and tis spring of the year
The primroses come and the birds mate in pairs
O when will my life be as happy as theirs
O when shall I woo thee and sit in the shade
Mong violets and primroses my sweet Adelaide
When in those bright eyes will those baby's appear
That I saw when I kissed thee last spring of the year

O Adelaide beautiful Adelaide hear
The snow drops have brought thee the spring of the year
The aconites open like rays of the sun
And tell thee the pleasures of spring is begun

Then Adelaide beautiful Adelaide hear
Let us take lovers walks at the spring of the year

from Child Harold

Tis winter & the fields are bare & waste
The air one mass of ‘vapour clouds & storms’
The suns broad beams are buried & oercast
& chilly glooms the midday light deforms
Yet comfort now the social bosom warms
Friendship of nature which I hourly prove
Even in this winter scene of frost & storms
Bare fields the frozen lake & leafless grove
Are natures grand religion & true love
(lines 901 - 909)

SONG: The winter stays till e'en & the spring it canna cum

The winter stays till e'en & the spring it canna cum
& every cannie bud is nipt up before the bloom
The winter winna gae & it stays a day oer lang
Sae the flowers they canna blossom & the birdies get nae Sang
The young & cannie maiden canna gang by her ain gate
But brazen ruffian winter mun teaze her suin & late
Her gown to shun the dirt oft leaves her ancle bare
For her gown it is the best & her ony sabbath ware

Then brazen ruffian winter begins his bawdry sang
& calls her foul & filthy names & does her mickle wrang
But I loo to see her ancle & I loo to see her gown
Held up by her lily hand when rains are dripping doon
& if I see her bonny cauf it sets me in a bleeze
The pillars o' king Salomon are nat sae sweet as these
But winter blites wi' chilblains where love would leave a kiss
& woman lovely woman is ever used amiss

The winter stays till e'en & the spring it canna get
There's near a way for maids to gaing & neer a blossom yet
There's ne'er a wa' for womans gate luik which a wa we will
Yet still I loo a' woman kind & winna do her ill
I winna wrang a woman for the best bluid in my veins
I winna wrang a woman till the last of life remains
Though the spring it canna cum & the winter winna gang
I maun luv' aye worship woman in every tale & sang

To Hope

O Muse bestow—nor think it vain
(While praise rebounds in just excess)
To a weak clown one single strain,
Fit and becoming hopes address,
For O in every grief we find
Her ready aid to cheer the mind.
Hail soothing hope recruiting power
In penitence and haples fate;
Assistant proof in latest hour
E'en thro the prisons gloomy grate
Where Culprits almost hopless grieve
Thy form will glimmer to reprieve.
Thro life thus far—(so cloth'd in stains
Of Motley troubles as it is)
Me thou hast chear'd and still remains
To point to shores of endless bliss,
Tho doom'd perhaps another way
Sweet hope endears the wisht essay.
Thou balmy bland enlivner hail
Or false or true to the distrest
Thy form will dart in sorrows vale
A thwarting joy on troubles breast.

Mary Green

Was there ever such a hue
O Loves bonny Mary Green
On the rosey pearled in dew
As on thy cheek is seen
On choice carnation leaves
Was there e'er so rich a streak
When thy white bosom heaves
As thy lips that music speak

Shall I twine the weeping willow
Round the bloom of Mary Green
Oer her bosoms snowy pillows
& her face so like a queen
Shall the cypress glooms be wreathing
Like a lump o' coffined clay
Round that form o' beauty breathing
All the witcherys o' May

O my lovely Mary Green
The richest flower o' May
On thy bonny face is seen
Which love winna take away
Thy dress sae neat thy face sae sweet
As bonny as a queen
Thou'rt loves own sweetheart a' compleat
My bonny Mary Green

January

[Image: Carry Akroyd - The Shepherd's Calendar]

A WINTERS DAY

Withering and keen the winter comes
While confort flyes to close shut rooms
And sees the snow in feathers pass
Winnowing by the window glass

And unfelt tempests howl and beat
Above his head in corner seat
And musing oer the changing scene
Farmers behind the tavern screne

Sit—or wi elbow idly prest
On hob reclines the corners guest
Reading the news to mark again
The bankrupt lists or price of grain

Or Old Moores annual prophecys
That many a theme for talk supplys
Whose almanacks thumbd pages swarm
Wi frost and snow and many a storm

And wisdom gossipd from the stars
Of politics and bloody wars
He shakes his head and still proceeds
Ne'er doubting once of what he reads

(lines 1-20)