greatpoetry | Entries tagged with john clare

aquamarcia.livejournal.com

A few days ago Reddit user u/Rare_Entertainment92 posted Autumn by John Clare. The post was an image of a page from a book and I, preferring to get easily copyable text, searched "john clare autumn" on DuckDuckGo and Google.

An hour later I concluded that John Clare had a serious thing for Autumn, having found fourteen Autumn-related poems of his. Of those fourteen, two poems don't have the word Autumn in the title, but one of those two has the word Autumn in the body of the poem. The other twelve poems have the word Autumn in the title and of those twelve, seven poems are simply titled "Autumn".

What follows is the poem that got me started on falling into the pile of leaves that is John Clare's autumnal poetry. Thanks to u/Rare_Entertainment92 for tripping me up so thoroughly.

Autumn

The thistledown's flying, though the winds are all still,
On the green grass now lying, now mounting the hill,
The spring from the fountain now boils like a pot;
Through stones past the counting it bubbles red-hot.

The ground parched and cracked is like overbaked bread,
The greensward all wracked is, bents dried up and dead.
The fallow fields glitter like water indeed,
And gossamers twitter, flung from weed unto weed.

Hill-tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun,
And the rivers we're eying burn to gold as they run;
Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air;
Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.

by John Clare

hhimring

The sheep get up and make their many tracks
And bear a load of snow upon their backs,
And gnaw the frozen turnip to the ground
With sharp quick bite, and then go noising round
The boy that pecks the turnips all the day
And knocks his hands to keep the cold away
And laps his legs in straw to keep them warm
And hides behind the hedges from the storm.
The sheep, as tame as dogs, go where he goes
And try to shake their fleeces from the snows,
Then leave their frozen meal and wander round
The stubble stack that stands beside the ground,
And lie all night and face the drizzling storm
And shun the hovel where they might be warm.

puddleshark.livejournal.com

Summer pleasures they are gone, like to visions every one,
And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on:
I tried to call them back, but unbidden they are gone
Far away from heart and eye and for ever far away,
Dear heart, and can it be that such raptures meet decay?
I thought them all eternal when by Langley Bush I lay;
I thought them joys eternal when I used to shout and play
On its bank at 'clink and bandy' 'chock' and 'taw' and ducking-stone
Where silence sitteth now on the wild heath as her own
Like a ruin of the past all alone.

When I used to lie and sing by old Eastwell's boiling spring
When I used to tie the willow boughs together for a 'swing'
And fish with crooked pins and thread and never catch a thing,
With heart just like a feather- now as heavy as a stone.
When beneath old Lea Close Oak I the bottom branches broke
To make our harvest cart, like so many working folk,
And then to cut a straw at the brook to have a soak,
O I never dreamed of parting or that trouble had a sting
Or that pleasures like a flock of birds would ever take to wing,
Leaving nothing but a little naked spring.

( Read more... )

puddleshark.livejournal.com

When shall I see the white-thorn leaves agen,
And yellowhammers gathering the dry bents
By the dyke side, on stilly moor or fen,
Feathered with love and nature's good intents?
Rude is the tent this architect invents,
Rural the place, with cart ruts by dyke side.
Dead grass, horse hair, and downy-headed bents
Tied to dead thistles—she doth well provide,
Close to a hill of ants where cowslips bloom
And shed oer meadows far their sweet perfume.
In early spring, when winds blow chilly cold,
The yellowhammer, trailing grass, will come
To fix a place and choose an early home,
With yellow breast and head of solid gold.

duathir.livejournal.com

I Am

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

by John Clare

eullipia.livejournal.com

John Clare is famously a poet of the rural working class and the Northamptonshire countryside, but he is also a well-known inmate of an insane asylum. This poem, reflecting on the poet’s life, his forgotten achievements and abandonment, was written at the the beginning of twenty years or so in the asylum.

I am!

I am! yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death’s oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
And e’en the dearest–that I loved the best–
Are strange–nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil’d or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below–above the vaulted sky.

–John Clare, written around 1845.

And if you thought that was good, take a look at the John Clare blog.

atomise.livejournal.com

I am - yet what I am, none cares or knows:
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes -
They rise and vanish in oblivion's host
Like shadows in love-frenzied stifled throes -
And yet I am and live - like vapours tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems:
Even the dearest that I love the best
Are strange - nay, rather, stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man hath never trod,
A place where woman never smiled or wept,
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below - above, the vaulted sky.

shoism.livejournal.com

An Invite to Eternity

Wilt thou go with me, sweet maid,
Say maiden wilt thou go with me?
Through the valley depths of shade
Of night and dark obscurity
Where the path hath lost its way
Where the sun forgets the day
Where there's nor life nor light to see
Sweet maiden wilt thou come with me?

Where stones will turn to flooding streams,
Where plains will rise like ocean waves,
Where life will fade like visioned dreams
And mountains darken into caves.
Say maiden, wilt thou go with me
Through this sad nonidentity
Where parents live and are forgot
And sisters live and know us not.

Say maiden, wilt thou go with me,
In the strange death of life to be,
To live in death and be the same
Without this life or home or name
At once to be and not to be,
That was, and is not, yet to see
Things pass like shadows and the sky,
Above, belows, around us lie.

The land of shadows wilt thou trace
And look nor know each other's face.
The present mixed with reasons gone,
And past and present all as one.
Say maiden, can thy life be led
To join the living to the dead?
Then trace thy footsteps on with me,
We're wed to one eternity.

-- John Clare

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I Eat Poetry

Entries tagged with john clare

John Clare, Autumn, and Writing Without Fear of Repetition

Sheep in Winter, by John Clare

Remembrances

The Yellowhammer

John Clare, 'I Am'

I AM

John Clare - "I Am"

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