By A Cottage Near A Wood (excerpt)

SONG

By A Cottage Near A Wood
Where The Small Birds Build & Sing
In My Dreaming Hours I've Stood
To Review The Lovely Spring
There Once Dwelt A Lovely Maiden
Whose Name I Sought In Vain
Some Called Her Lovely Lucey
& Others Honest Jane

Bye That Cottage Near A Wood
I Have Often Stood Alone
In A Sad Or Happy Mood
& Wished She Was My Own
The Small Birds Flitted Round Me
But Nature Pleased in Vain
For The Dark & Lovely Maiden
I Never Saw Again

Bye The Cottage Near The Wood
I Wished With Peace To Be
& The Blossoms Where She Stood
They Were More Then Gems To Me
More Fair Or Sweeter Blossoms
My Rambles Sought In Vain
& The Dark & Lovely Maiden
I Never Found Again

(lines 1-24)

Poems of John Clare's Madness

ed. Geoffrey Grigson (RKP, 1949)

Thrice Welcome to thy song sweet warbling thrush

(A sonnet)

Thrice Welcome to thy song sweet warbling thrush
May you be happy as you still have been
The present sunshine warms your covert bush
The future clouds you know not what they mean
Vain foolish thought & why should ye be sad
Why be like me with ills to come oprest
To pass the present bliss that may be had
& wait on sorrow as a welcome guest
No sing thou on & let me sorrow still
I cant be happy be it as it will
In vain the sun gleams thro the prison grate
To cheer the felon thats condemnd to dye
His soul in anguish mourns impending fate
Such pains are his & such a one am I

 

The Early Poems of John Clare 1804-1822

ed. Eric Robinson, David Powell and Margaret Grainger

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

John Clare’s Journal (9^th May 1825) :

Wrote another portion of my Life & took a Walk to seek a Nightingales nest.  Found a Song thrush’s in bushy close by the side of a young oak with 4 eggs.  Never saw one of this kind in such a place before.

In Hilly Wood

How sweet to be thus nestling deep in boughs

Upon an ashen stoven pillowing me
Faintly are heard the ploughmen at their ploughs
But near an eye can find its way to see
The sun beams scarce molest me wi a smile
So thick the leafy armies gather round
& where they do the breeze blows cool the while
Their leafy shadows dancing on the ground
—Full many a flower too wishing to be seen
Perks up its head the hiding grass between—
In midwood silence thus how sweet to be
Where all the noises that on peace intrude
Comes from the chittering cricket bird & bee
Whose songs have charms to sweeten solitude

The Village Minstrel, and Other Poems

(2 volumes, 1821)

From Clare's Journal (6th May 1825) :

Could not sleep all night got up at 3 o’dock in the morning & walked about the fields.  The birds were high in their songs in Royce Wood & almost deafening.  I heard the Cricket-bird* again in full cry in Royce Wood -- it is just like a childs 'screeker'.  Saw a Hawk-like bird that made an odd noise like one of the notes of the Nightingale, as if to decoy his prey into sight.

* The high, insect-like reeling song of the grasshopper warbler is the best clue to its presence. Even when you hear one it can be difficult to locate it due to the ventriloquial effect of its singing. If seen on migration it moves like a little mouse, creeping through the foliage. (RSPB)

BBC Countryfile

WELCOME to anyone who has landed here seeking information about John Clare following BBC's 'Countryfile' on the 5th May.

This weblog has been a labour of love for the past 9 years... you will find much to interest you in its pages.  AND you can comment/ask questions on every page.

The Chiff-Chaff

My transcription of Clare's ‘The Chippichap’, published and known ever since at 'The Chiff-Chaff'.  My transcription seeks to show every change Clare made to his work, including words crossed through.

My photograph of the actual manuscript is above.  Have a go at transcribing it yourself, this is very typical of the many manuscripts within the various archives.

See at yon restless flitting bird that flies
Above the oak tree tops at play,
Uttering its restless restless melodies
Of “chipichap” throughout the day.
Its nest is built in little bush
Scarcely a foot above the ground,
Or hid in clumps of sedge or rush
In woods where they are rarely found.

−

Its nest are is like an oven made
With moss and leaves and bits of grass,
& all so nice and snugly laid
That hands may spoil but not replace.

It enters by a little hole,
Its inside like a downy bed is a feather bed
From farm yards poultry hovels stole;
Its eggs are small and spotted red.

& all the spring & all the May,
If I forbore the gate to clap,
Down that wood riding day by day
I’ve heard it singing ‘chipichap,’

or seen it ever on the wing

like a fairy thing

above the trees tops dancing high by  [overwritten with ‘by’And o'er the tree-tops saw it fly,        [ originally transposed
Dancing about, a fairy thing,               [ with the line above
But never yet could come so nigh
To tell the colour of its wing.

                                                                             [reverse of page

The bushes they are wet or we dripping wet,

would turn  her and seek its nestOr we would seek its curious nest,
Theyre often in such bushy places met,
Where sedges mingle with the rest.

Pet MS A51 pp. 53 r & v

Opening of the Morning

[Image: Mike Hobson]

A Sketch

Tis the time just as morning is breaking
& the Colour arching blue skye
Just as the black clouds of the night are forsaking
Brightning up like as Marys blue eye

Where the red morns streaks was sweetly emerging
In the easts enlarging light
Just like the red corral beads of the Virgin
When hung on her neck so white
When the fresh springs of delight is beaming
& larks waken the labourers toils
When the first smile of the summer is gleaming
As sweet as when Mary smiles
Sweet when the dappeled sky is shrouded
In its milky water hue
Like as Mary her bosom's Clouded
Skin so white & veins so blue

The Early Poems of John Clare 1804-1822

ed. Eric Robinson, David Powell and Margaret Grainger

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

This leaning tree with ivy overhung (excerpt)

That blackbirds music from the hazel bower

Turns into golden drops this summer shower

To think the rain that wets his sutty wing

Should wake the gushes of his soul to sing

Hark at the melody how rich and loud

Like daylight breaking through the morning cloud

How luscious through that sea of green it floats

Knowest thou of music breathed from sweeter notes

Than that wild minstrel of the summer shower

Breathes at this moment from that hazel bower

To me the anthem of a thousand tongues

Were poor and idle to the simple songs

To that high toned and edifying bird

That sings to nature by itself unheard.

John Clare’s Birds

ed. Eric Robinson & Richard Fitter

Oxford University Press 1982

Sonnet on the River Gash*

[The bridge over the Gwash at Great Casterton]

Where winding gash* wirls round its wildest scene
On this romantic bend I sit me down
On that side view the meads their smoothing green
Edg'd with the peeping hamlets checkering brown
Here the steep hill as dripping headlong down
While glides the stream a silver streak between
As glides the shaded clouds along the sky
Brightning & deep'ning loosing as they're seen

In light & shade—so when old willows lean
Thus their broad shadow—runs the river bye
With tree & bush repleat a wilderd scene
& mossd & Ivyd sparkling on my eye—
O thus wild musing am I doubly blest
My woes unheeding—& my heart at rest

Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820)

*Gwash, where Clare met his wife-to-be Patty, “a fair girl of eighteen, slender, with regular features, and pretty blue eyes".  They were married in March 1820 in the church of St Peter and St Paul, Great Casterton, close by where the Gwash crosses under the Great North Road.  Patty was born in Tickencote, the nearby hamlet, the river Gwash virtually joins the two villages together.  How pleasant is must have been, walking together on the riverside path on a summer’s day.  Alas now ‘enclosed’ and thus ‘private’ land. 

We are in Rutland...

[The Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, Great Casterton]

We are in Rutland, a county of huge significance for John Clare, for there in just a couple of years he would find a wife, celebrity and himself.  The Clare family fortunes were at rock bottom when he walked the nine miles from Helpston to what was then known as Bridge Casterton to find work as a lime-burner.  His parents were penniless and facing eviction and agriculture itself collapsing after the withdrawal of subsidies following Waterloo.  Clare and a friend named Stephen Gordon found work with a Mr Wilders who had two lime-kilns, one at Casterton, the other at Pickworth.  Clare slept three in a bed with fellow labourers and in a few weeks was able to send home fifty shillings.  Lime-burning would have made him white from head to toe.  He was twenty-two.

He was also creating his first, and only successful book, the wonderful Poems, Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery.  It would carry him straight from lime-burning into literary society.  His portrait would be painted and local peers would give him books and annuities.  But he was Sunday-drinking as usual at the Flower Pot Inn in Tickencote — "cote for kids" — when he saw Martha Turner pass by.  She was eighteen, the daughter of a small-farmer, and who lived in an isolated house in a beautiful valley - his Patty of the Vale.  He married her with some reluctance when she became pregnant, bringing her home to Helpston after the child was born.  He had been ‘caught’, as the boys said.

What enchanted Clare about the Rutland countryside was that it had not been enclosed.  The villages were like the Helpston of his boyhood, full of ancient paths, haphazard trees and brooks, and wild meadows, and without straight lines and destructive ploughing.  He walked nine miles to his wedding in Casterton Church, probably wearing the clothes we see in Hilton's portrait.  Mrs Emmerson, his London patron, sent Patty’s wedding-dress and his publisher Mr Hessey sent the bridegroom a Cremona violin.  And thus it began, the troubled, brilliant life — in Rutland.

© Ronald Blythe

Justice is slow, but sure as Moses' rod

[Northampton General Asylum]

On September 22, 1893, ‘An Invite to Eternity’, along with ‘Song to Spring’, “hitherto unpublished and bearing the date ‘May 1848,’” was published in Literary World along with a short narrative by Mr. Jesse Hall of Wimbledon.  “In the month of May, 1848, having seen and admired some of John Clare’s poems, I felt a strong desire to have an interview with the poet”.  During their interview, Clare left Hall “... and went to the boundary wall with paper and pencil in hand, but very soon returned bringing a manuscript which he had written.”

Hall neglected to get copies of these apparently impromptu compositions, but Clare invited him to visit again and “intimated that he would in the meantime compose (Hall) two or three pieces.”  The next day, Clare called at Hall’s hotel and on leaving … gave (Hall) copies of what he had written – viz., ‘Invite to Eternity,’ ‘Song to Spring,’ and this short piece on ‘Justice,’ an acrostic on Hall’s name.

However, because he was “much engaged at the time,” Hall did not think to “forward what (Clare) had kindly given to” him until the 1890s.

Not exactly an amazing work, but here is the short acrostic poem on 'Justice' :

Justice is slow, but sure as Moses' rod,
Engraven as the autograph of God;
Sent from on high by Him who is all wise,
Searcher of hearts, judge of the last assize;
Engraven on the hearts of honest men;

Heart-searcher in the felon's gloomy den.
Are there opposers to the laws of truth?
Learn justice well, while manhood is in youth;
Live honest lives, and that will bring the truth.

The Later Poems of John Clare 1837-1864

ed. Eric Robinson and David Powell

(Oxford, 2 volumes, I-II, 1984)

Song : On a bonny April morning'

On a bonny April morning

By the grey and green wood side
Where the blue-bells were adorning
There a pretty girl I spied
Her hair was brown and curling
Her eyes were bright and blue
Where the mossy brook was purling
O I loved the maiden true

I loved her fond and tender
Aye tenderly and true
So heavens love defend her
A rose half blown i' dew
A blue-bell in the white thorn green
A violet in the shade
The sweetest flower I'd ever seen
Was that all beauteous maid

Her face was young and pretty
And sweetly she could sing
And her bright eye drop't pity
At every cruel thing
The place was full of blue bells
Where that pretty girl I spied
A heaven in the green dells
Hid in this world so wide

The Later Poems of John Clare 1837-1864

ed. Eric Robinson and David Powell

(Oxford, 2 volumes, I-II, 1984)

(from 'The Village Funeral')

Clare, as always, has a sonnet for the current news :

Who is but grievd to see the fatherless
Stroll with their rags unnotisc'd thro the street
What eye but moistens at their sad distress
& sheds compassions tear where ere they meet
Yon Workhouse stands as their asylum now
The place where poverty demands to live
Where parish bounty scouls his scornful brow
& grudges the scant fare he's forc'd to give —
O may I dye before I'm doom'd to seek
That last resource of hope but ill suply'd
To claim the humble pittance once a week
Which justice forces from disdainful pride
Where the lost orphan lowly bending weeps
Unnotisc'd by the heedless as they pass

Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820)

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 Ive shelterd from an Aprils shower
In youths past bliss in Childhoods happy hour
Ye Woods Ive wanderd searching out the nest
Ye Meadows gay that reard me many a flower

Culling my cow slips Ive 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

Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820)

A piece of Clare prose for the election

The wigs and tories may be better classified
perhaps by the terms of outs & ins for
be they wigs or tories in those situations the
outs are always convocations of “liberty”
“cruelty of taxation” & “good of the people”
while the ins are inflexible tyrants
& determined supporters of all that is
oppressing & annoying to the people &
benefitting to themselves & their connections

Pet MS A42 p.94
(Unpublished)

Wreck of the Emelie

As the saying goes... now for something completely different -- for Clare anyway!

The land it is a dangerous strand

So is the briny Sea
When man has lost his self command
How wretched he must be
Our Ship it was the ‘Emmelie’
To Cardiff she was bound
But foundered in a dangerous sea
With dangers all around

The sky was all a ink black rock
The wild fire seaming through
The Emelie recieved the shock
All in that boisterous Sea
Like seething pots the billows boiled
& frothed that briny Sea
The sailors on the masts were coiled
When wrecked the Emelie

The night came on in black & brown
& where that chauldron boiled red hot
The foundering Emelie went down
As sudden as a shot
Some clung to spars to hencoops some
Twas but a minutes space
Loud oer them boiling billows boom
& left no resting place

Above them gloomed the angry sky
& through the pitch black rock
Of clouds the splintered lightnings flye
None could resist the shock
Down & in a moment gone
Nine men plunged in the wave
& all the seamen lost but one
There met a watery grave

One still survived that fatal wreck
By billows washed ashore
Though all had hopes that stood on deck
That now can feel no more
He through the boiling waves did beat
All in that boiling sea
& on the beach upon his feet
Viewed the shipwrecked Emelie

The Later Poems of John Clare

ed. Eric Robinson and Geoffrey Summerfield

 (Manchester University Press, 1964)

The Courtship (excerpt)

Where are you going lovely maid

The morning fine & early

“I’m going to Walkerd”, Sir she said

& made across the barley

I asked her name she blushed away

The question seemed to burn her

A neighbour came & passed the day

& called her Patty Turner

I wrote my better poems there

To beautys praise I owe it

The muses they get all the praise

But woman makes the poet

A womans is the dearest love

Theres nought on earth sincerer

The leisure upon beautys breast

Can any thing be dearer

I saw her love in beauty’s face

I saw her in the rose

I saw her in the fairest flowers

In every weed that grows

Poems of John Clare's Madness

ed. Geoffrey Grigson (RKP, 1949)

Helpstone (excerpt)

Each morning wak'd with hopes before unknown

& eve possesing made each wish their own
The day gone bye left no pursuit undone
Nor one vain wish save that they went too soon
Each sport each pastime ready at their call
As soon as wanted they posses'd em all
These joys all known in happy infancy
& all I ever knew where spent on thee

& who but loves to view where these where past

& who that views but loves em to the last

Feels his heart warm to view his native place

A fondness still those past delights to trace

The vanish'd green to mourn the spot to see

Where flourish'd many a bush & many a tree

Where once the brook (for now the brook is gone)

Oer pebbles dimpling sweet went wimpering on

Oft on whose oaken plank I've wondering stood

(That led a pathway o'er its gentle flood)

To see the beetles their wild mazes run

With getty jackets glittering in the sun

So apt & ready at their reels they seem

So true the dance is figur'd on the stream

Such justness such correctness they impart

They seem as ready as if taught by art

(lines 61 to 84)

 Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820)

I am - Video

Clare's 'I am' -- worth a look I reckon : >>>>> Click Here <<<<<

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 snowdrops 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

The Later Poems of John Clare 1837-1864

ed. Eric Robinson and David Powell

 (Oxford, 2 volumes, I-II, 1984)

The Mothers Lullaby

Tune: BBC Recording 1951 published in Folksongs of Britain and Ireland, 1975

Hush lullaby my baby nor mix thy tears with mine

I grieve to think my parents would be no friends of thine

I grieve to think thy father - O grief my words oppose

To think thy little innosence should find so many foes

Hush lullaby my baby upon thy mothers arm

My prayers shall still the storm to rest to leave my baby warm

While to thy fathers Hall we go who fast asleep doth lye

Did he know his door was lockd on thee it might unclose his eye

Hush lullaby my baby he yet thy friend may be
& bye & bye I hope to find a friend again in thee
So hush my little baby the day comes bye & bye
The storm is gone the moon is up so hush & lullaby

Hush lullaby my baby I wake thee when I sigh

To think my parents turned us out nor bade thee a goodbye

Nor sighed to see thy breath nigh gone to meet the storm so high

But god has heard & the wind is gone so hush & lullaby

Poems of the Middle Period

ed. Eric Robinson, David Powell and P.M.S. Dawson

Volumes I-II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)

Volumes III-IV (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998)

John Clare and the Folk Tradition
George Deacon, 1983

Another Manuscript

A photo I took in the archive in November 2012... and this of another unpublished Clare manuscript.  It is an honour to be able to go and study these texts -- and seek to decipher Clare's handwriting!

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.

(from "Sighing for Retirement)
(lines 9 to 16)

Unpublished John Clare poem will sell for thousands

The handwriting looks authentic.  I wonder just how many 'unpublished' Clare poems are lying in wait for discovery?  BUT... there are lots unpublished in the Peterborough Library archive.

Click here to read

Ballad : Where is the heart thou once hast won

(Image : The blackened lintel of the Joyce Farmouse where Mary Joyce burned to death in 1838)

Here is Clare writing some years before in prescient mood:

Where is the heart thou once hast won

Can cease to care about thee

Where is the eye thou'st smiled upon

Can look for joy without thee

Lorn is the lot one heart hath met

That’s lost to thy caressing

Cold is the hope that loves thee yet

Now thou art past possessing

Fare thee well

We met we loved we’ve met the last

The farewell word is spoken

O Mary canst thou feel the past

& keep thy heart unbroken

To think how warm we loved & how

Those hopes should blossom never

To think how we are parted now

& parted, oh! for ever

Fare thee well

Thou wert the first my heart to win

Thou art the last to wear it

& though another claims akin

Thou must be one to share it

Oh, had we known when hopes were sweet

That hopes would once be thwarted

That we should part no more to meet

How sadly we had parted

Fare thee well

The Rural Muse (1835)

Second edition, ed. R. K. R. Thornton (Ashington and Manchester, 1982)

(Memorably sung by Carry Akroyd in Glinton Church as part of the 2009 John Clare Festival)