Chapter IV: Part 4

I sat beside the pasture stream,
When Beauty’s self was sitting by
The fields did more than Eden seem,
Nor could I tell the reason why.
I often drank when not a-dry,
To pledge her health in draughts divine;
Smiles made it nectar from the sky,
Love turned e’en water into wine.
O Poesy is on the wane,
I cannot find her face again.

The sun those mornings used to find,
Its clouds were other-country mountains,
And heaven looked downward on the mind,
Like groves, and rocks, and mottled fountains.
Those heavens are gone, the mountains grey
Turned mist--the sun, a homeless ranger,
Pursues alone his naked way,
Unnoticed like a very stranger.
O Poesy is on the wane,
Nor love nor joy is mine again.

Love’s sun went down without a frown,
For very joy it used to grieve us;
I often think the West is gone,
Ah, cruel Time, to undeceive us.
The stream it is a common stream,
Where we on Sundays used to ramble,
The sky hangs o’er a broken dream,
The bramble’s dwindled to a bramble!
O Poesy is on the wane,
I cannot find her haunts again.

Mere withered stalks and fading trees,
And pastures spread with hills and rushes,
Are all my fading vision sees;
Gone, gone are rapture’s flooding gushes!
When mushrooms they were fairy bowers,
Their marble pillars over-swelling,
And Danger paused to pluck the flowers,
That in their swarthy rings were dwelling.
Yes, Poesy is on the wane,
Nor joy, nor fear is mine again.

Aye, Poesy hath passed away,
And Fancy’s visions undeceive us;
The night hath ta’en the place of day,
And why should passing shadows grieve us?
I thought the flowers upon the hill
Were flowers from Adam’s open gardens;
But I have had my summer thrills,
And I have had my heart’s rewardings.
So Poesy is on the wane,
I hardly know her face again.

And Friendship it hath burned away,
Like to a very ember cooling,
A make-believe on April day,
That sent the simple heart a fooling;
Mere jesting in an earnest way,
Deceiving on and still deceiving;
And Hope is but a fancy-play,
And Joy the art of true believing;
For Poesy is on the wane,
O could I feel her faith again!

PASTORAL FANCIES

Sweet pastime here my mind so entertains,
Abiding pleasaunce, and heart-feeding joys,
To meet this blithsome day these painted plains,
These singing maids, and chubby laughing boys,
Which hay-time and the summer here employs,--
My rod and line doth all neglected lie;
A higher joy my former sport destroys:
Nature this day doth bait the hook, and I
The glad fish am, that’s to be caught thereby.

This silken grass, these pleasant flowers in bloom,
Among these tasty molehills that do lie
Like summer cushions, for all guests that come;
Those little feathered folk, that sing and fly
Above these trees, in that so gentle sky,
Where not a cloud dares soil its heavenly light;
And this smooth river softly grieving bye--
All fill mine eyes with so divine a sight,
As makes me sigh that it should e’er be night.

In sooth, methinks the choice I most should prize
Were in these meadows of delight to dwell,
To share the joyaunce heaven elsewhere denies,
The calmness that doth relish passing well,
The quiet conscience, that aye bears the bell,
And happy musing Nature would supply,
Leaving no room for troubles to rebel:
Here would I think all day, at night would lie,
The hay my bed, my coverlid the sky.

So would I live, as nature might command,
Taking with Providence my wholesome meals;
Plucking the savory peascod from the land,
Where rustic lad oft dainty dinner steals.
For drink, I’d his me where the moss conceals
The little spring so chary from the sun,
Then lie, and listen to the merry peals
Of distant bells--all other noises shun;
Then court the Muses till the day be done.

Here would high joys my lowly choice requite;
For garden plot, I’d choose this flow’ry lea;
Here I in culling nosegays would delight,
The lambtoe tuft, the paler culverkey:
The cricket’s mirth were talk enough for me,
When talk I needed; and when warmed to pray,
The little birds my choristers should be,
Who wear one suit for worship and for play,
And make the whole year long one sabbath-day.

A thymy hill should be my cushioned seat;
An aged thorn, with wild hops intertwined,
My bower, where I from noontide might retreat;
A hollow oak would shield me from the wind,
Or, as might hap, I better shed might find
In gentle spot, where fewer paths intrude,
The hut of shepherd swain, with rushes lined:
There would I tenant be to Solitude,
Seeking life’s gentlest joys, to shun the rude.

Bidding a long farewell to every trouble,
The envy and the hate of evil men;
Feeling cares lessen, happiness redouble,
And all I lost as if ’twere found again.
Vain life unseen; the past alone known then:
No worldly intercourse my mind should have
To lure me backward to its crowded den;
Here would I live and die, and only crave
The home I chose might also be my grave.

THE AUTUMN ROBIN

Sweet little bird in russet coat,
The livery of the closing year!
I love thy lonely plaintive note,
And tiny whispering song to hear.
While on the stile or garden seat,
I sit to watch the falling leaves,
The song thy little joys repeat,
My loneliness relieves.

And many are the lonely minds
That hear, and welcome thee anew;
Not Taste alone, but humble hinds,
Delight to praise, and love thee too.
The veriest clown, beside his cart,
Turns from his song with many a smile,
To see thee from the hedgerow start,
To sing upon the stile.

The shepherd on the fallen tree
Drops down to listen to thy lay,
And chides his dog beside his knee,
Who barks, and frightens thee away.
The hedger pauses, ere he knocks
The stake down in the meadow-gap--
The boy, who every songster mocks,
Forbears the gate to clap.

When in the hedge that hides the post
Thy ruddy bosom he surveys,--
Pleased with thy song, in transport lost,
He pausing mutters scraps of praise.
The maiden marks, at day’s decline,
Thee in the yard, on broken plough,
And stops her song, to listen thine,
Milking the brindled cow.

Thy simple faith in man’s esteem,
From every heart hath favour won;
Dangers to thee no dangers seem--
Thou seemest to court them more than shun.
The clown in winter takes his gun,
The barn-door flocking birds to slay,
Yet should’st thou in the danger run
He turns the tube away.

The gipsy boy, who seeks in glee
Blackberries for a dainty meal,
Laughs loud on first beholding thee,
When called, so near his presence steal.
He surely thinks thou know’st the call;
And though his hunger ill can spare
The fruit, he will not pluck it all,
But leaves some to thy share.

Upon the ditcher’s spade thou’lt hop,
For grubs and wreathing worms to search;
Where woodmen in the forest chop,
Thou’lt fearless on their faggots perch;
Nay, by the gipsies’ camp I stop,
And mark thee dwell a moment there,
To prune thy wing awhile, then drop,
The littered crumbs to share.

Domestic bird! thy pleasant face
Doth well thy common suit commend;
To meet thee in a stranger-place
Is meeting with an ancient friend.
I track the thicket’s glooms around,
And there, as loth to leave, again
Thou comest, as if thou knew the sound
And loved the sight of men.

The loneliest wood that man can trace
To thee a pleasant dwelling gives;
In every town and crowded place
The sweet domestic robin lives.
Go where one will, in every spot
Thy little welcome mates appear;
And, like the daisy’s common lot,
Thou’rt met with every where.

The swallow in the chimney tier,
Or twittering martin in the eaves,
With half of love and half of fear
His mortared dwelling shily weaves;
The sparrows in the thatch will shield;
Yet they, as well as e’er they can,
Contrive with doubtful faith to build
Beyond the reach of man.

But thou’rt less timid than the wren,
Domestic and confiding bird!
And spots, the nearest haunts of men,
Are oftenest for thy home preferred.
In garden-walls thou’lt build so low,
Close where the bunch of fennel stands,
That e’en a child just taught to go
May reach with tiny hands.

Sweet favoured bird! thy under-notes
In summer’s music grow unknown,
The concert from a thousand throats
Leaves thee as if to pipe alone;
No listening ear the shepherd lends,
The simple ploughman marks thee not,
And then by all thy autumn friends
Thou’rt missing and forgot.

The far-famed nightingale, that shares
Cold public praise from every tongue,
The popular voice of music heirs,
And injures much thy under-song:
Yet then my walks thy theme salutes;
I find thee autumn’s favoured guest,
Gay piping on the hazel-roots
Above thy mossy nest.

’Tis wrong that thou shouldst be despised,
When these gay fickle birds appear;
They sing when summer flowers are prized--
Thou at the dull and dying year.
Well! let the heedless and the gay
Bepraise the voice of louder lays,
The joy thou steal’st from Sorrow’s day
Is more to thee than praise.

And could my notes win aught from thine,
My words but imitate thy lay,
Time could not then his charge resign,
Nor throw the meanest verse away,
But ever at this mellow time,
He should thy autumn praise prolong,
As they would share the happy prime
Of thy eternal song.

A SPRING MORNING

The Spring comes in with all her hues and smells,
In freshness breathing over hills and dells;
O’er woods where May her gorgeous drapery flings,
And meads washed fragrant by their laughing springs.
Fresh are new opened flowers, untouched and free
From the bold rifling of the amorous bee.
The happy time of singing birds is come,
And Love’s lone pilgrimage now finds a home;
Among the mossy oaks now coos the dove,
And the hoarse crow finds softer notes for love.
The foxes play around their dens, and bark
In joy’s excess, ’mid woodland shadows dark.
The flowers join lips below; the leaves above;
And every sound that meets the ear is Love.

THE CRAB-TREE

Spring comes anew, and brings each little pledge
That still, as wont, my childish heart deceives;
I stoop again for violets in the hedge,
Among the ivy and old withered leaves;
And often mark, amid the clumps of sedge,
The pooty-shells I gathered when a boy:
But cares have claimed me many an evil day,
And chilled the relish which I had for joy.
Yet when Crab-blossoms blush among the May,
As erst in years gone by, I scramble now
Up ’mid the bramble for my old esteems,
Filling my hands with many a blooming bough;
Till the heart-stirring past as present seems,
Save the bright sunshine of those fairy dreams.

WINTER

Old January, clad in crispy rime,
Comes limping on, and often makes a stand;
The hasty snow-storm ne’er disturbs his time,
He mends no pace, but beats his dithering hand.
And February, like a timid maid,
Smiling and sorrowing follows in his train;
Huddled in cloak, of miry roads afraid,
She hastens on to meet her home again.
Then March, the prophetess, by storms inspired,
Gazes in rapture on the troubled sky,
And now in headlong fury madly fired,
She bids the hail-storm boil and hurry by.
Yet ’neath the blackest cloud, a Sunbeam flings
Its cheering promise of returning Springs.

OLD POESY

Sweet is the poesy of the olden time,
In the unsullied infancy of rhyme,
When Nature reigned omnipotent to teach,
And Truth and Feeling owned the powers of speech.
Rich is the music of each early theme,
And sweet as sunshine in a summer dream,
Giving to stocks and stones, in rapture’s strife,
A soul of utterance and a tongue of life.
Sweet are these wild flowers in their disarray,
Which Art and Fashion fling as weeds away,
To sport with shadows of inferior kind,
Mere magic-lanthorns of the shifting mind,
Automatons of wonder-working powers,
Shadows of life, and artificial flowers.

’TIS SPRING, MY LOVE, ’TIS SPRING

’Tis Spring, my love, ’tis Spring,
And the birds begin to sing:
If ’t was Winter, left alone with you,
Your bonny form and face,
Would make a Summer place,
And be the finest flower that ever grew.

Tis Spring, my love, ’tis Spring,
And the hazel catkins hing,
While the snowdrop has its little blebs of dew;
But that’s not so white within
As your bosom’s hidden skin--
That sweetest of all flowers that ever grew.

The sun arose from bed,
All strewn with roses red,
But the brightest and the loveliest crimson place
Is not so fresh and fair,
Or so sweet beyond compare,
As thy blushing, ever smiling, happy face.

I love Spring’s early flowers,
And their bloom in its first hours,
But they never half so bright or lovely seem
As the blithe and happy grace
Of my darling’s blushing face,
And the happiness of loves young dream.

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.

HOME YEARNINGS

O for that sweet, untroubled rest,
That poets oft have sung!--
The babe upon its mother’s breast,
The bird upon its young,
The heart asleep without a pain--
When shall I know that sleep again?

When shall I be as I have been
Upon my mother’s breast--
Sweet Nature’s garb of verdant green
To woo to perfect rest--
Love in the meadow, field, and glen,
And in my native wilds again?

The sheep within the fallow field,
The herd upon the green,
The larks that in the thistle shield,
And pipe from morn to e’en--
O for the pasture, fields, and fen,
When shall I see such rest again?

I love the weeds along the fen,
More sweet than garden flowers,
For freedom haunts the humble glen
That blest my happiest hours.
Here prison injures health and me:
I love sweet freedom and the free.

The crows upon the swelling hills,
The cows upon the lea,
Sheep feeding by the pasture rills,
Are ever dear to me,
Because sweet freedom is their mate,
While I am lone and desolate.

I loved the winds when I was young,
When life was dear to me;
I loved the song which Nature sung,
Endearing liberty;
I loved the wood, the vale, the stream,
For there my boyhood used to dream.

There even toil itself was play;
’Twas pleasure e’en to weep;
’Twas joy to think of dreams by day,
The beautiful of sleep.
When shall I see the wood and plain,
And dream those happy dreams again?

LOVE LIVES BEYOND THE TOMB

Love lives beyond the tomb,
And earth, which fades like dew!
I love the fond,
The faithful, and the true.

Love lives in sleep;
’Tis happiness of healthy dreams;
Eve’s dews may weep,
But love delightful seems.

’Tis seen in flowers,
And in the morning’s pearly dew;
In earth’s green hours,
And in the heaven’s eternal blue.

’Tis heard in Spring,
When light and sunbeams, warm and kind,
On angel’s wings
Bring love and music to the mind.

And where’s the voice,
So young, so beautiful, and sweet
As Nature’s choice,
Where Spring and lovers meet?

Love lives beyond the tomb,
And earth, which fades like dew!
I love the fond,
The faithful, and the true.

MY EARLY HOME

Here sparrows build upon the trees,
And stockdove hides her nest;
The leaves are winnowed by the breeze
Into a calmer rest;
The black-cap’s song was very sweet,
That used the rose to kiss;
It made the Paradise complete:
My early home was this.

The redbreast from the sweetbriar bush
Dropt down to pick the worm;
On the horse-chesnut sang the thrush,
O’er the house where I was born;
The moonlight, like a shower of pearls,
Fell o’er this “bower of bliss,”
And on the bench sat boys and girls:
My early home was this.

The old house stooped just like a cave,
Thatched o’er with mosses green;
Winter around the walls would rave,
But all was calm within;
The trees are here all green agen,
Here bees the flowers still kiss,
But flowers and trees seemed sweeter then:
My early home was this.

THE TELL-TALE FLOWERS

And has the Spring’s all-glorious eye
No lesson to the mind?
The birds that cleave the golden sky--
Things to the earth resigned--
Wild flowers that dance to every wind--
Do they no memory leave behind?

Aye, flowers! The very name of flowers,
That bloom in wood and glen,
Brings Spring to me in Winter’s hours,
And childhood’s dreams again.
The primrose on the woodland lea
Was more than gold and lands to me.

The violets by the woodland side
Are thick as they could thrive;
I’ve talked to them with childish pride
As things that were alive:
I find them now in my distress--
They seem as sweet, yet valueless.

The cowslips on the meadow lea,
How have I run for them!
I looked with wild and childish glee
Upon each golden gem:
And when they bowed their heads so shy
I laughed, and thought they danced for joy.

And when a man, in early years,
How sweet they used to come,
And give me tales of smiles and tears,
And thoughts more dear than home:
Secrets which words would then reprove--
They told the names of early love.

The primrose turned a babbling flower
Within its sweet recess:
I blushed to see its secret bower,
And turned her name to bless.
The violets said the eyes were blue:
I loved, and did they tell me true?

The cowslips, blooming everywhere,
My heart’s own thoughts could steal:
I nip’t them that they should not hear:
They smiled, and would reveal;
And o’er each meadow, right or wrong,
They sing the name I’ve worshipped long.

The brook that mirrored clear the sky--
Full well I know the spot;
The mouse-ear looked with bright blue eye,
And said “Forget-me-not.”
And from the brook I turned away,
But heard it many an after day.

The king-cup on its slender stalk,
Within the pasture dell,
Would picture there a pleasant walk
With one I loved so well.
It said “How sweet at eventide
’Twould be, with true love at thy side.”

And on the pasture’s woody knoll
I saw the wild bluebell,
On Sundays, where I used to stroll
With her I loved so well:
She culled the flowers the year before;
These bowed, and told the story o’er.

And every flower that had a name
Would tell me who was fair;
But those without, as strangers, came
And blossomed silent there:
I stood to hear, but all alone:
They bloomed and kept their thoughts unknown.

But seasons now have nought to say,
The flowers no news to bring:
Alone I live from day to day--
Flowers deck the bier of Spring;
And birds upon the bush or tree
All sing a different tale to me.

TO JOHN MILTON

Poet of mighty power, I fain
Would court the muse that honoured thee,
And, like Elisha’s spirit, gain
A part of thy intensity;
And share the mantle which she flung
Around thee, when thy lyre was strung.

Though faction’s scorn at first did shun,
With coldness, thy inspired song,
Though clouds of malice pass’d thy sun,
They could not hide it long;
Its brightness soon exhaled away
Dark night, and gained eternal day.

The critics’ wrath did darkly frown
Upon thy muse’s mighty lay;
But blasts that break the blossom down
Do only stir the bay;
And thine shall flourish, green and long,
In the eternity of song.

Thy genius saw, in quiet mood,
Gilt fashion’s follies pass thee by,
And, like the monarch of the wood,
Tower’d o’er it to the sky;
Where thou could’st sing of other spheres,
And feel the fame of future years.

Though bitter sneers and stinging scorns
Did throng the Muse’s dangerous way,
Thy powers were past such little thorns,
They gave thee no dismay;
The scoffer’s insult pass’d thee by,
Thou smild’st and mad’st him no reply.

Envy will gnaw its heart away
To see thy genius gather root;
And as its flowers their sweets display,
Scorn’s malice shall be mute;
Hornets that summer warmed to fly,
Shall at the death of summer die.

Though friendly praise hath but its hour,
And little praise with thee hath been;
The bay may lose its summer flower,
But still its leaves are green;
And thine, whose buds are on the shoot,
Shall only fade to change to fruit.

Fame lives not in the breath of words,
In public praises’ hue and cry;
The music of these summer birds
Is silent in a winter sky,
When thine shall live and flourish on,
O’er wrecks where crowds of fames are gone.

The ivy shuns the city wall,
When busy-clamorous crowds intrude,
And climbs the desolated hall
In silent solitude;
The time-worn arch, the fallen dome,
Are roots for its eternal home.

The bard his glory ne’er receives
Where summer’s common flowers are seen,
But winter finds it when she leaves
The laurel only green;
And time, from that eternal tree,
Shall weave a wreath to honour thee.

Nought but thy ashes shall expire;
Thy genius, at thy obsequies,
Shall kindle up its living fire
And light the Muse’s skies;
Ay, it shall rise, and shine, and be
A sun in song’s posterity.

I AM! YET WHAT I AM

I am! yet what I am who cares, or knows?
My friends forsake me like a memory lost.
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish, an oblivious host,
Shadows of life, whose very soul is lost.
And yet I am--I live--though I am toss’d

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dream,
Where there is neither sense of life, nor joys,
But the huge shipwreck of my own esteem
And all that’s dear. Even those I loved the best
Are strange--nay, they are stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod,
For scenes where woman never smiled or wept;
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept
Full of high thoughts, unborn. So let me lie,
The grass below; above the vaulted sky.

* * * * *

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF JOHN CLARE

BY C. ERNEST SMITH

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS

Clare (John). Poems, Descriptive of Rural Life
and Scenery. 12mo., pp. 222. 1820

(Contains passages suppressed in later editions).

---- The Village Minstrel, and Other Poems. _Portrait and Sketch of Clare’s Cottage._ 2 vols., 12mo., pp. 216 and 211. 1821

---- The Shepherd’s Calendar, with Village Stories and Other Poems. _Front by Dewint._ 12mo., pp. 238. 1827

---- The Rural Muse. _Front, and Engraved Title._ 12mo., pp. 175. 1835

BIOGRAPHY

Cherry (J. L.) Life and Remains of John Clare. _Illustrations by Birket Foster._ Cr. 8vo. 1873

This volume was afterwards included in the _Chandos Classics,_ published by Warne & Co., London.

Martin (F.) Life of John Clare. _Engraved Title._ 8vo. 1865

[See also _Encyclopædia Britannica_; and _Dictionary of National
Biography_, vol. 10].

CRITICISM, ETC.

The Book of Gems, edited by S. C. Hall. 8vo. 1853

(References to Clare, pp. 162-166. Facsimile of Clare’s Autograph at end of volume).

Casket of Gems, edited by Chas. Gibbon. 4 vols., Royal 8vo. N. D.

(Contains a Poem of Clare’s which has been very much altered and revised by another hand).

Dack (Chas.) Catalogue of the Clare Centenary Exhibition at Peterborough. 1893

(Full reports of the Centenary Celebrations appear in _Peterboro’ Standard_, July 15, Aug. 26, Sept. 9, 1893, and _Stamford Guardian_, Sept. 1, 1893).

De Wilde (G. J.) Rambles Roundabout, and Poems. Cr. 8vo. _Northampton,_ N. D.

(Includes much interesting matter about Clare and his birthplace).

Four Letters from Rev. W. Allen to Lord Radstock on the Poems of Clare. 12mo. 1823

Heath (Richard). The English Peasant: His Past and Present. Sm. 8vo. 1899

(Exhaustive account of Clare occupies large portion of the book).

Holland (J.), and J. Everett. James Montgomery. 7 vols., 8vo. 1854-6

(References to Clare, vol. iv., pp. 96-175).

Hood (E. Paxton). The Peerage of Poverty. Cr. 8vo. N. D.

(An account of Clare occupies some fifty pages.)

Poets and the Poetry of the Century, edited by Alfred H. Miles. Keats to Lytton. 12mo. N. D.

(Clare, by Hon. Roden Noel, pp. 79-106).

Redding (Cyrus). Fifty Years’ Recollections. 3 vols., p. 8vo. 1858

(Vol. III., pp. 216, references to Clare).

Stoddard (R. H.) Under the Evening Lamp. Cr. 8vo. 1893

(Essay on Clare, pp. 120-134).

Wilson (Professor). Clare’s Rural Muse. 16 pp. _Blackwood’s Magazine_, August, 1835.

MAGAZINE ARTICLES, ETC.

Anti-Jacobin Review. June, 1820.

Baldwin’s London Magazine. March, 1820.

Blackwood’s Magazine. August, 1835.

Eclectic Review. April, 1820.

Gentleman’s Magazine. February, 1820.

Literary World. August and September, 1893.

London Magazine. I., 5-11--323-29. IV., 540-8.

New Monthly Magazine. March, 1820.

Notes and Queries. Ist S., vi., 196; IInd S., v., 186; IVth S.,
xi., 127; Vth S., ii., 302; VIIth S., x., 187.

Peterborough Standard. July 15, August 26, and September 2 and 9, 1893.

Quarterly Review. May, 1820, pp. 166-75.

Stamford and Rutland Guardian. Aug. and Sept., 1890; May and June,
1891; Sept., Oct., and December, 1893.