John Clare

Selected Poems

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Table of Contents

Nb. To return to the contents list at any time, click the ↑ symbol above each poem.

Introduction

Spring

February – a thaw

First Sight of Spring

From March

Wood Pictures in Spring

From the Days of April

Home Pictures in May

From May

Summer

From June

From July

Noon

Beans in Blossom

From Summer Evening (1820)

Summer Evening (MS poems)

The Wheat Ripening

From August

A Gloomy Day in Summer

Autumn

Autumn Morning

Autumn (I love the fitful gust)

From September

Nutting

Autumn (The thistledown’s flying)

Autumn Change

From October

From November

Martinmass

Winter

Signs of Winter

From: Address to Plenty in Winter

Emmonsails Heath in Winter

Wood Pictures in Winter

The Winter’s Spring

Snow Storm

The Old Year

From January

Birds and Animals

Autumn Birds

The Thrush’s Nest

The Fern Owl’s Nest

The Firetail’s Nest

The Raven’s Nest

The Sandmartin

Crows in Spring

From Badger

From The Hedgehog

The Marten

Clock a Clay

Trees and plants

From May

Water-lilies

From Spear-thistle

Wood Rides

The Crab Tree

The Shepherd’s Tree

From The Fallen Elm

Firwood

Scenes

From Rural Morning

The Morning Wind

Heavy Dew

The Flood

From A Rhapsody

Mist in the Meadows

Nightwind

From A Sunday with Shepherds and Herdboys

The Harvest Morning

From The Fens

From Rural Evening

People

Farm Breakfast

From The Cottager

The Shepherd’s Fire

Happiness of Evening

From The Woodman

The Village Boy

From Rustic Fishing

From Angling

Song (She tied up her few things)

Country Letter

From The Cellar Door

Memories and Feelings

My Early Home

Where She Told Her Love

Ballad (A faithless shepherd courted me)

To Mary

Song (I wish I was where I would be)

From Effusion

I Am

Remembrances

From Shadows of Taste

From I’ll Dream upon the Days to Come

The Flitting

Endings

Decay

Approaching Night

A Vision

The Poet’s Death

Invitation to Eternity

Note on sources and copyright

Introduction

John Clare was born in 1793, the son of a farm labourer in the rural county of Northamptonshire in England. He attended evening school and began to read and write poetry while employed as a ploughman, a gardener and then a lime-kiln worker.

A meeting with a bookseller led to the publication of his first book, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenes, in 1820. The book gained good reviews and sold well; despite this, it earned him no money, and Clare returned to farm work. His second volume, The Village Minstrel, and Other Poems, was published in 1821, but sold less well than the first.

Becoming anxious about money (for by this time he was married with children), Clare started to suffer from mental illness. As his condition improved, he began to write The Shepherd’s Calendar, which came out in 1827 but sold very few copies. Constantly struggling to earn a living by a combination of writing and farming, Clare prepared a volume of poems to be called The Midsummer Cushion. Whilst trying to arrange its publication, he again fell ill with what was described as an attack of insanity, during which he did not recognise his family. On his recovery, his new publishers, Whittaker, brought out a volume of poetry, The Rural Muse (1835), which finally brought him a small income.

However, his mental health remained unsteady, and after a delusional period he was admitted to an asylum at Epping Forest. He was allowed to roam the forest and fields (though not to write) but his delusions continued.

Missing his family, in 1841 he left the asylum and walked the ninety miles home in the belief that he was married to his first love there. Despite the efforts of his wife Patty to care for him, later that year he was again committed to an asylum, this time in Northampton.

Here Clare was treated as a “gentleman patient” and was able to write, giving away many of his manuscript poems to visitors. He was allowed to visit the town of Northampton until, after some years, his increasing illness meant he was confined to the asylum grounds. He seems to have been well-treated, and not unhappy. He died at the asylum in 1864.

John Clare wrote about 3,000 poems as well as a substantial body of prose, mainly essays and journals. Although he was briefly famous as “the Peasant Poet” during his lifetime, his work then fell into obscurity until the latter part of the 20th century, when new editions of his work were published. He is nowadays highly regarded as a poet of nature and rural life.

The predominant subject of his poems is the countryside, with its wildlife, workers and daily round of labour. Although this was a very familiar scene to Clare, his best poems see it with a continually fresh and curious eye. Like a painter, he revisited the same landscape many times in different moods and seasons. While his early verse was sometimes mannered, after the fashion of the day, his later style became freer and simpler, giving his poems an appealing immediacy and naturalness. Many of his asylum poems are entwined with haunting memories of love and longing.

There are ninety poems and excerpts in this selection. They are arranged thematically, grouping together poems about seasons, birds and animals, people, etc. Clare used a number of dialect words, which are explained in occasional notes after each poem.

A note on punctuation and spelling

In both his poetry and prose, Clare preferred not to use punctuation. This was not through lack of education, but rather because of a dislike of formal rules. He wrote:

“I do not use that awkward squad of pointings called commas colons semicolons etc… they even set gramarians at loggerheads and no one can assign them the proper places…” (quoted in Clare, Selected Poems and Prose, ed. E. Robinson and G. Summerfield).

Nonetheless, editors throughout his life and beyond saw fit to add their own punctuation to his works. Older editions of his poetry came fully punctuated until Edmund Blunden’s 1920 collection, which was more sparing. The definitive edition of Clare’s work by Prof. Eric Robinson contains practically no punctuation in the poems. I have not used Prof. Robinson’s versions for copyright reasons (see the note on sources and copyright at the end of this book.) However, in accordance with current thinking about Clare’s intentions, I have kept little or no punctuation even where my sources did so.

Clare’s spelling was also ‘corrected’ to different degrees by various editors. As I have not attempted to restore the original spellings, in this collection the spelling therefore varies from poem to poem.

Emma Laybourn MA PGCE

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Spring

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February - A Thaw

The snow is gone from cottage tops

The thatch moss glows in brighter green

And eves in quick succession drops

Where grinning icles once 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 o’er

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

And as young hope the past recalls

In playing groups will often draw

Building beside the sunny walls

Their spring-play-huts of sticks or straw

And oft in pleasure’s dreams they hie

Round homesteads by the village side

Scratting the hedgrow mosses bye

Where painted pooty shells abide

Mistaking oft the ivy spray

For leaves that come wi budding spring

And wondering in their search for play

Why birds delay to build and sing

The milkmaid singing leaves her bed

As glad as happy thoughts can be

While magpies chatter o’er her head

As jocund in the change as she

Her cows around the closes stray

Nor lingering wait the foddering boy

Tossing the molehills in their play

And staring round in frolic joy

Ploughmen go whistling to their toils

And yoke again the rested plough

And mingling o’er the mellow soils

Boys’ shouts and whips are noising now

The shepherd now is often seen

By warm banks o’er his work to bend

Or o’er a gate or stile to lean

Chattering to a passing friend

Odd hive bees fancying winter o’er

And dreaming in their combs of spring

Creeps on the slab beside their door

And strokes its legs upon its wing

While wild ones half asleep are humming

Round snowdrop bells a feeble note

And pigeons coo of summer coming

Picking their feathers on the cote

The barking dogs by lane and wood

Drive sheep afield from foddering ground

And echo in her summer mood

Briskly mocks the cheery sound

The flocks as from a prison broke

Shake their wet fleeces in the sun

While following fast a misty smoke

Reeks from the moist grass as they run

Nor more behind his master’s heels

The dog creeps o’er his winter pace

But cocks his tail and o’er the fields

Runs many a wild and random chase

Following in spite of chiding calls

The startled cat wi harmless glee

Scaring her up the weed green walls

Or mossy mottled apple tree

As crows from morning perches flye

He barks and follows them in vain

Een larks will catch his nimble eye

And off he starts and barks again

Wi breathless haste and blinded guess

Oft following where the hare hath gone

Forgetting in his joy’s excess

His frolic puppy days are done

The gossips saunter in the sun

As at the spring from door to door

Of matters in the village done

And secret newsings muttered o’er

Young girls when they each other meet

Will stand their tales of love to tell

While going on errands down the street

Or fetching water from the well

A calm of pleasure listens round

And almost whispers winter bye

While fancy dreams of summer sounds

And quiet rapture fills the eye

The sun beams on the hedges lye

The south wind murmurs summer soft

And maids hang out white cloaths to dry

Around the eldern skirted croft

Each barn’s green thatch reeks in the sun

Its mate the happy sparrow calls

And as nest building spring begun

Peeps in the holes about the walls

The wren a sunny side the stack

Wi short tail ever on the strunt

Cocked gadding up above his back

Again for dancing gnats will hunt

The gladdened swine bolt from the sty

And round the yard in freedom run

Or stretching in their slumbers lye

Beside the cottage in the sun

The young horse whinneys to its mate

And sickens from the thresher’s door

Rubbing the straw yard’s banded gate

Longing for freedom on the moor

Hens leave their roosts wi cackling calls

To see the barn door free from snow

And cocks flye up the mossy walls

To clap their spangled wings and crow

About the steeple’s sunny top

The jackdaw flocks resemble spring

And in the stone arched windows pop

Wi summer noise and wanton wing

The small birds think their wants are o’er

To see the snow hills fret again

And from the barn’s chaff littered door

Betake them to the greening plain

The woodman’s robin startles coy

Nor longer at his elbow comes

To peck wi hunger’s eager joy

’Mong mossy stulps the littered crumbs

Neath hedge and walls that screen the wind

The gnats for play will flock together

And een poor flyes odd hopes will find

To venture in the mocking weather

From out their hiding holes again

Wi feeble pace they often creep

Along the sun warmed window pane

Like dreaming things that walk in sleep

The mavis thrush wi wild delight

Upon the orchard’s dripping tree

Mutters to see the day so bright

Spring scraps of young hope’s poesy

And oft dame stops her burring wheel

To hear the robin’s note once more

That tutles while he pecks his meal

From sweet briar hips beside the door

The hedgehog from its hollow root

Sees the wood moss clear of snow

And hunts each hedge for fallen fruit

Crab hip and winter bitten sloe

And oft when checked by sudden fears

As shepherd dog his haunt espies

He rolls up in a ball of spears

And all his barking rage defies

Thus nature of the spring will dream

While south winds thaw but soon again

Frost breaths upon the stiffening stream

And numbs it into ice – the plain

Soon wears its merry garb of white

And icicles that fret at noon

Will eke their icy tails at night

Beneath the chilly stars and moon

Nature soon sickens of her joys

And all is sad and dumb again

Save merry shouts of sliding boys

About the frozen furrowed plain

The foddering boy forgets his song

And silent goes wi folded arms

And croodling shepherds bend along

Crouching to the whizzing storms

Notes

pooty = snail

foddering boy = boy who feeds the livestock

strunt = strut

stulps = stumps

crabs = crab-apples

croodling = huddling

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First Sight of Spring

The hazel-blooms in threads of crimson hue

Peep through the swelling buds foretelling Spring

Ere yet a white-thorn leaf appears in view

Or March finds throstles pleased enough to sing

To the old touchwood tree woodpeckers cling

A moment and their harsh-toned notes renew

In happier mood the stockdove claps his wing

The squirrel sputters up the powdered oak

With tail cocked o’er his head and ears erect

Startled to hear the woodman’s understroke

And with the courage which his fears collect

He hisses fierce half malice and half glee–

Leaping from branch to branch about the tree

In winter’s foliage moss and lichens drest

Note

touchwood = old, dry wood

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From March

The stooping ditcher in the water stands

Letting the furrowd lakes from off the lands

Or splashing cleans the pasture brooks of mud

Where many a wild weed freshens into bud

And sprouting from the bottom purply green

The water cresses neath the wave is seen

Which the old woman gladly drags to land

Wi reaching long rake in her tottering hand

The ploughman mawls along the doughy sloughs

And often stop their songs to clean their ploughs

From teazing twitch that in the spongy soil

Clings round the colter terryfying toil

The sower striding oer his dirty way

Sinks anckle deep in pudgy sloughs and clay

And oer his heavy hopper stoutly leans

Strewing wi swinging arms the pattering beans

Which soon as aprils milder weather gleams

Will shoot up green between the furroed seams...

...While ground larks on a sweeing clump of rushes

Or on the top twigs of the oddling bushes

Chirp their ‘cree creeing’ note that sounds of spring

And sky larks meet the sun wi flittering wing

Soon as the morning opes its brightning eye

Large clouds of sturnels blacken thro the sky

From oizer holts about the rushy fen

And reedshaw borders by the river Nen

And wild geese regiments now agen repair

To the wet bosom of broad marshes there

In marching coloms and attention all

Listning and following their ringleaders call

Notes

colter = blade of a ploughshare

sweeing = swaying

oddling = occasional, scattered

sturnels = starlings

oizer holts = willow beds

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Wood Pictures in Spring

The rich brown-umber hue the oaks unfold

When spring’s young sunshine bathes their trunks in gold

So rich so beautiful so past the power

Of words to paint my heart aches for the dower

The pencil gives to soften and infuse

This brown luxuriance of unfolding hues

This living luscious tinting woodlands give

Into a landscape that might breathe and live

And this old gate that claps against the tree

The entrance of spring’s paradise should be

Yet paint itself with living nature fails

The sunshine threading through these broken rails

In mellow shades no pencil e’er conveys

And mind alone feels fancies and portrays

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From The Days of April

Daisies burn April grass with silver fires

And pilewort in the green lane blazes out

Enough to burn the fingers ’neath the briers

Where village boys will scrat dead leaves about

To look for pooties – every eye admires

The lovely picture that the spring brings out

Meadows of burning cowslips – what mind tires

To see them dancing in the emerald grass

And brawling crystal brook as clear as glass

Laughing groaning guggling on for miles

That waves the silver blades of swimming grass

Upon the surface while the glad sun smiles

Such are the sights the showers and sunshine bring

To three or four bright days the first of spring

Notes

pilewort = a medicinal herb (fireweed or lesser celandine)

pooties = snails

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Home Pictures in May

The sunshine bathes in clouds of many hues

And morning’s feet are gemmed with early dews

Warm daffodils about the garden beds

Peep through their pale slim leaves their golden heads

Sweet earthly nuns of Spring – the gosling broods

In coats of sunny green about the road

Waddle in extasy and in rich moods

The old hen leads her flickering chicks abroad

Oft scuttling ’neath her wings to see the kite

Hang wavering o’er them in the spring’s blue light

The sparrows round their new nests chirp with glee

And sweet the robin Spring’s young luxury shares

Tootling its song in feathery gooseberry tree

While watching worms the gardener’s spade unbares

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From May

Each hedge is loaded thick wi green

And where the hedger late hath been

Tender shoots begin to grow

From the mossy stumps below

While sheep and cow that teaze the grain

Will nip them to the root again

They lay their bill and mittens bye

And on to other labours hie

While wood men still on spring intrudes

And thins the shadow solitudes

Wi sharpend axes felling down

The oak trees budding into brown

Where as they crash upon the ground

A crowd of labourers gather round

And mix among the shadows dark

To rip the crackling staining bark

From off the tree and lay when done

The rolls in lares to meet the sun

Depriving yearly where they come

The green wood pecker of its home

That early in the spring began

Far from the sight of troubling man

And bord their round holes in each tree

In fancy’s sweet security

Till startld wi the woodman’s noise

It wakes from all its dreaming joys

The blue bells too that thickly bloom

Where man was never feared to come

And smell smocks that from view retires

Mong rustling leaves and bowing briars

And stooping lilys of the valley

That comes wi shades and dews to dally

White beady drops on slender threads

Wi broad hood leaves above their heads

Like white robd maids in summer hours

Neath umberellas shunning showers

These neath the barkmens’ crushing treads

Oft perish in their blooming beds

Thus stript of boughs and bark in white

Their trunks shine in the mellow light

Beneath the green surviving trees

That wave above them in the breeze

And waking whispers slowly bends

As if they mournd their fallen friends…

…The thresher dull as winter days

And lost to all that spring displays

Still mid his barn dust forcd to stand

Swings his frail round wi weary hand

While oer his head shades thickly creep

And hides the blinking owl asleep

And bats in cobweb corners bred

Sharing till night their murky bed

The sunshine trickles on the floor

Thro every crevice of the door

And makes his barn where shadows dwell

As irksome as a prisoner’s cell…

…The yellow hammer builds its nest

By banks where sun beams earliest rest

That drys the dews from off the grass

Shading it from all that pass

Save the rude boy wi ferret gaze

That hunts thro evry secret maze

He finds its pencild eggs agen

All streakd wi lines as if a pen

By nature’s freakish hand was took

To scrawl them over like a book

And from these many mozzling marks

The school boy names them ‘writing larks’

Bum-barrels twit on bush and tree

Scarse bigger then a bumble bee

And in a white thorn’s leafy rest

It builds its curious pudding-nest

Wi hole beside as if a mouse

Had built the little barrel house

Toiling full many a lining feather

And bits of grey tree moss together

Amid the noisey rooky park

Beneath the firdale’s branches dark

The little golden crested wren

Hangs up his glowing nest agen

And sticks it to the furry leaves

As martins theirs beneath the eaves

The old hens leave the roost betimes

And o’er the garden pailing climbs

To scrat the garden’s fresh turnd soil

And if unwatchd his crops to spoil…

Notes

lares = beds (?)

smell stocks = either wood anemone or cuckoo flower (aka lady-smock)

frail = flail

bum-barrels = long-tailed tits

Summer

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From June

Now Summer is in flower and Nature’s hum

Is never silent round her bounteous bloom

Insects as small as dust have never done

With glittring dance and reeling in the sun

And green wood-fly and blossom-haunting bee

Are never weary of their melody…

…The ploughman sweats along the fallow vales

And down the sun-cracked furrow slowly trails

Oft seeking when athirst the brook’s supply

Where brushing eagerly the bushes by

For coolest water he disturbs the rest

Of ring-dove brooding o’er its idle nest

The shepherd’s leisure hours are over now

No more he loiters ’neath the hedge-row bough

On shadow-pillowed banks and lolling stile

The wilds must lose their summer friend awhile.

With whistle, barking dogs and chiding scold

He drives the bleating sheep from fallow fold

To wash-pools where the willow shadows lean

Dashing them in their stained coats to clean

Then on the sunny sward when dry again

He brings them homeward to the clipping pen

Of hurdles formed where elm or sycamore

Shut out the sun – or to some threshing-floor

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From July

Noon gathers wi its blistering breath

Around and day dyes still as death

The breeze is stopt the lazy bough

Hath not a leaf that dances now

The totter grass upon the hill

And spiders’ threads is hanging still

The feathers dropt from morehens’ wings

Upon the water’s surface clings

As stedfast and as heavy seem

As stones beneath them in the stream

Hawkweed and groundsel’s fairey downs

Unruffld keep their seeding crowns

And in the oven heated air

Not one light thing is floating there

Save that to the earnest eye

The restless heat swims twittering bye

The swine run restless down the street

Anxious some pond or ditch to meet

From day’s hot swoonings to retire

Wallowing in the weeds and mire…

…When the sun is sinking down

And dyes more deep the shadows brown

And gradual into slumber glooms

How sweet the village evening comes

To weary hinds from toil releasd

And panting sheep and torturd beast

The shepherd long wi heat opprest

Betakes him to his cottage rest

And his tird dog that plods along

Wi panting breath and lolling tongue

Runs eager as the brook appears

And dashes in head over ears

Note

totter grass = quaking grass

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Noon

All how silent and how still

Nothing heard but yonder mill

While the dazzled eye surveys

All around a liquid blaze

And amid the scorching gleams

If we earnest look it seems

As if crooked bits of glass

Seemed repeatedly to pass

Oh for a puffing breeze to blow

But breezes are all strangers now

Not a twig is seen to shake

Nor the smallest bent to quake

From the river’s muddy side

Not a curve is seen to glide

And no longer on the stream

Watching lies the silver bream

Forcing from repeated springs

Verges in successive rings

Bees are faint and cease to hum

Birds are overpowerd and dumb

Rural voices all are mute

Tuneless lie the pipe and flute

Shepherds with their panting sheep

In the swaliest corner creep

And from the tormenting heat

All are wishing to retreat

Huddled up in grass and flowers

Mowers wait for cooler hours

And the cow-boy seeks the sedge

Ramping in the woodland hedge

While his cattle o’er the vales

Scamper with uplifted tails

Others not so wild and mad

That can better bear the gad

Underneath the hedge-row lunge

Or if nigh in waters plunge

Oh to see how flowers are took

How it grieves me when I look

Ragged-robins once so pink

Now are turnd as black as ink

And the leaves being scorched so much

Even crumble at the touch

Drowking lies the meadow-sweet

Flopping down beneath one’s feet

While to all the flowers that blow

If in open air they grow

Th’ injurious deed alike is done

By the hot relentless sun

E’en the dew is parched up

From the teasel’s jointed cup

O poor birds where must ye fly

Now your water-pots are dry?

If ye stay upon the heath

Ye’ll be choakd and clammd to death

Therefore leave the shadeless goss

Seek the spring-head lined with moss

There your little feet may stand

Safely printing on the sand

While in full possession where

Purling eddies ripple clear

You with ease and plenty blest

Sip the coolest and the best

Then away and wet your throats

Cheer me with your warbling notes

T’will hot noon the more revive

While I wander to contrive

For myself a place as good

In the middle of a wood

There aside some mossy bank

Where the grass in bunches rank

Lifts its down on spindles high

Shall be where I’ll choose to lie

Fearless of the things that creep

There I’ll think and there I’ll sleep

Caring not to stir at all

Till the dew begins to fall

Notes

bent = grass stalk

swaliest = shadiest

drowking = drooping

clammd = parched

goss = gorse

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Beans in Blossom

The south-west wind – how pleasant in the face

It breathes while sauntering in a musing pace

I roam these new ploughed fields or by the side

Of this old wood where happy birds abide

And the rich blackbird through his golden bill

Utters wild music when the rest are still

Luscious the scent comes of the blossomed bean

As o’er the path in rich disorder lean

Its stalks when bees in busy rows and toils

Load home luxuriantly their yellow spoils

The herd-cows toss the molehills in their play

And often stand the stranger’s steps at bay

Mid clover blossoms red and tawny white

Strong scented with the summer’s warm delight

↑

From Summer Evening (1820)

Bats flit by in hood and cowl

Through the barn-hole pops the owl

From the hedge in drowsy hum

Heedless buzzing beetles bum

Haunting every bushy place

Flopping in the labourer’s face

Now the snail hath made his ring

And the moth with snowy wing

Circles round in winding whirls

Through sweet evening’s sprinkled pearls

On each nodding rush besprent

Dancing on from bent to bent

Now to downy grasses clung

Resting for a while he’s hung

Strong to ferry o’er the stream

Vanishing as flies a dream

Playful still his hours to keep

Till his time has come to sleep

Note

bent = grass stalk

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Summer Evening (from Manuscript Poems)

The frog half fearful jumps across the path

And little mouse that leaves its hole at eve

Nimbles with timid dread beneath the swath

My rustling steps awhile their joys deceive

Till past and then the cricket sings more strong

And grasshoppers in merry moods still wear

The short night weary with their fretting song

Up from behind the molehill jumps the hare

Cheat of his chosen bed and from the bank

The yellowhammer flutters in short fears

From off its nest hid in the grasses rank

And drops again when no more noise it hears

Thus nature’s human link and endless thrall

Proud man still seems the enemy of all

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The Wheat Ripening

What time the wheat-field tinges rusty brown

And barley bleaches in its mellow grey

Tis sweet some smooth mown baulk to wander down

Or cross the fields on footpath’s narrow way

Just in the mealy light of waking day

As glittering dewdrops moist the maiden’s gown

And sparkling bounces from her nimble feet

Journeying to milking from the neighbouring town

Making life light with song – and it is sweet

To mark the grazing herds and list the clown

Urge on his ploughing team with cheering calls

And merry shepherd’s whistling toils begun

And hoarse tongued bird-boy whose unceasing calls

Join the lark’s ditty to the rising sun

Notes

baulk = a strip of grass between ploughed fields

clown = rustic, farm labourer

bird boy = boy who frightens birds away from crops

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From August

The barley’s beard is grey and wheat is brown

And wakens toil betimes to leave the town

The reapers leave their beds before the sun

And gleaners follow when home toils are done

To pick the littered ear the reaper leaves

And glean in open fields among the sheaves

The ruddy child nursed in the lap of care

In toils rude ways to do its little share

Beside its mother poddles oer the land

Sun burnt and stooping with a weary hand

Picking its tiney glean of corn or wheat

While crackling stubbles wound its legs and feet

Full glad it often is to sit awhile

Upon a smooth green baulk to ease its toil

And feign would spend an idle hour to play

With insects, strangers to the moiling day

Creeping about each rush and grassy stem

And often wishes it was one of them…

…When day declines and labour meets repose

The bawling boy his evening journey goes

At toil’s unwearied call the first and last

He drives his horses to their night’s repast

In dewey close or meadow to sojourn

And often ventures on his still return

O’er garden pales or orchard walls to hie

When sleep’s safe key hath locked up danger’s eye

All but the mastiff watching in the dark

Who snufts and knows him and forbears to bark

With fearful haste he climbs each loaded tree

And picks for prizes which the ripest be

Pears plumbs or filberts covered o’er in leams

While the pale moon creeps high in peaceful dreams

And o’er his harvest theft in jealous light

Fills empty shadows with the power to fright

And owlet screaming as it bounces nigh

That from some barn hole pops and hurries bye

Scard at the cat upon her nightly watch

For rats that come for dew upon the thatch

He hears the noise and trembling to escape

While every object grows a dismal shape

Drops from the tree in fancy’s swiftest dread

By ghosts pursued and scampers home to bed

Quick tumbling oer the mossy mouldering wall

And looses half his booty in the fall

Where soon as ere the morning opes its eyes

The restless hogs will happen on the prize

And crump adown the mellow and the green

And makes all seem as nothing ne’er had been

Notes

moiling = full of toil, wearisome

leam = husk (of a nut)

↑

A Gloomy Day in Summer

A dull gloom hangs above the peaceful fields

And in the moody mist the houses sleep

Still as if tenantless – the vapour shields

The heavens like a secret that would keep

The doom sealed over our dull hours of sleep

The evening comes as something not forgiven

The clouds hang lowly but forbear to weep

Noontide and evening hold the balance even

And gloom shuts Hope’s eyes from the sight of Heaven

Autumn

↑

Autumn Morning

The autumn morning waked by many a gun

Throws o’er the fields her many-coloured light

Wood wildly touched close-tanned and stubbles dun

A motley paradise for earth’s delight

Clouds ripple as the darkness breaks to light

And clover fields are hid with silver mist

One shower of cobwebs o’er the surface spread

And threads of silk in strange disorder twist

Round every leaf and blossom’s bottly head

Hares in the drowning herbage scarcely steal

But on the battered pathway squat abed

And by the cart-rut nip their morning meal

Look where we may the scene is strange and new

And every object wears a changing hue

Note

bottly = close-packed

↑

Autumn

I love the fitful gust that shakes

The casement all the day

And from the glossy elm tree takes

The faded leaves away

Twirling them by the window pane

With thousand others down the lane

I love to see the shaking twig

Dance till the shut of eve

The sparrow on the cottage rig

Whose chirp would make believe

That Spring was just now flirting by

In Summer's lap with flowers to lie

I love to see the cottage smoke

Curl upwards through the trees

The pigeons nestled round the cote

On November days like these

The cock upon the dunghill crowing

The mill sails on the heath a-going

The feather from the raven’s breast

Falls on the stubble lea

The acorns near the old crow’s nest

Drop pattering down the tree

The grunting pigs that wait for all

Scramble and hurry where they fall

Note

cottage rig = ridge of roof

↑

From September

From night’s dull prison comes the duck

Waddling eager thro the muck

Squeezing thro the orchard pales

Where morning’s bounty rarely fails

Eager gobbling as they pass

Dew worms thro the padded grass

Where blushing apples round and red

Load down the boughs and pat the head

Of longing maid that hither goes

To hang on lines the drying cloaths

Who views them oft with tempted eye

And steals one as she passes bye...

...A few whom waning toil reprieves

Thread the forest’s sea of leaves

Where the pheasant loves to hide

And the darkest glooms abide

Beneath the old oaks mossd and grey

Whose shadows seem as old as they

Where time hath many seasons won

Since aught beneath them saw the sun.

Within these brambly solitudes

The ragged noisy boy intrudes

To gather nuts that ripe and brown

As soon as shook will patter down

Thus harvest ends its busy reign

And leaves the fields their peace again

↑

Nutting

The Sun had stooped his westward clouds to win

Like weary traveler seeking for an inn

When from the hazelly wood we glad descried

The ivied gateway by the pasture side

Long had we sought for nuts amid the shade

Where Silence fled the rustle that we made

When torn by briars and brushed by sedges rank

We left the wood and on the velvet bank

Of short sward pasture-ground we sat us down

To shell our nuts before we reached the town

The near-hand stubble-field with mellow glower

Showed the dimmed blaze of poppies still in flower

And sweet the mole-hills were we sat upon

Again the thyme’s in bloom but where is Pleasure gone?

↑

Autumn

The thistle-down’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

Notes

bents = grass stalks

gossamers twitter = spiders’ webs glitter

↑

Autumn Change

The leaves of autumn drop by twos and threes

And the black cloud hung o’er the old low church

Is fixed as is a rock that never stirs

But look again and you may well perceive

The weathercock is in another sky

And the cloud passing leaves the blue behind

Crimson and yellow blotched with iron-brown

The autumn tans and variegates the leaves

The nuts are ripe in woods about the town

Russet the cleared fields where the bindweed weaves

Round stubbles and still flowers – the trefoil seeds

And troubles all the lands from rig to furrow

There’s nothing left but rubbish and foul weeds

I love to see the rabbit’s snug-made burrow

Under the old hedge-bank or huge mossed oak

Claspt fast with ivy – there the rabbit breeds

Where the kite peelews and the ravens croak

And hares and rabbits at their leisure feed

As varying autumn through her changes runs

Season of sudden storms and brilliant suns

↑

From October

Oft dames in faded cloak of red or grey

Loiters along the morning’s dripping way

Wi wicker basket on their witherd arms

Searching the hedges of home close or farms

Where brashy elder trees to autum fade

Each cotter’s mossy hut and garden shade

Whose glossy berrys picturesquly weaves

Their swathy bunches mid the yellow leaves

Where the pert sparrow stains his little bill

And tutling robin picks his meals at will

Black ripening to the wan sun’s misty ray

Here the industrious huswives wend their way

Pulling the brittle branches carefull down

And hawking loads of berrys to the town

Wi unpretending skill yet half divine

To press and make their eldern berry wine

That bottld up becomes a rousing charm

To kindle winters icy bosom warm

Note

swathy = swarthy, dark(?)

↑

From November

The landscape sleeps in mist from morn till noon

And if the sun looks through ’tis with a face

Beamless and pale and round as if the moon

When done the journey of her nightly race

Had found him sleeping and supplied his place

For days the shepherds in the fields may be

Nor mark a patch of sky – blindfold they trace

The plains that seem without a bush or tree

Whistling aloud by guess to flocks they cannot see

The timid hare seems half its fears to lose

Crouching and sleeping ’neath its grassy lair

And scarcely startles tho’ the shepherd goes

Close by its home and dogs are barking there

The wild colt only turns around to stare

At passer by then knaps his hide again

And moody crows beside the road forbear

To fly tho’ pelted by the passing swain

Thus day seems turned to night and tries to wake in vain

The owlet leaves her hiding-place at noon

And flaps her grey wings in the doubling light

The hoarse jay screams to see her out so soon

And small birds chirp and startle with affright

Much doth it scare the superstitious wight

Who dreams of sorry luck and sore dismay

While cow-boys think the day a dream of night

And oft grow fearful on their lonely way

Fancying that ghosts may wake and leave their graves by day

Yet but awhile the slumbering weather flings

Its murky prison round – then winds wake loud

With sudden stir the startled forest sings

Winter’s returning song – cloud races cloud

And the horizon throws away its shroud

Sweeping a stretching circle from the eye

Storms upon storms in quick succession crowd

And o’er the sameness of the purple sky

Heaven paints with hurried hand wild hues of every dye

At length it comes along the forest oaks

With sobbing ebbs and uproar gathering high

The scared hoarse raven on its cradle croaks

And stockdove-flocks in hurried terrors fly

While the blue hawk hangs o’er them in the sky

The hedger hastens from the storm begun

To seek a shelter that may keep him dry

And foresters low bent the wind to shun

Scarce hear amid the strife the poacher’s muttering gun

The ploughman hears its humming rage begin

And hies for shelter from his naked toil

Buttoning his doublet closer to his chin

He bends and scampers o’er the elting soil

While clouds above him in wild fury boil

And winds drive heavily the beating rain

He turns his back to catch his breath awhile

Then ekes his speed and faces it again

To seek the shepherd’s hut beside the rushy plain

Notes

knaps = bites, gnaws(?)

wight = person

elting = muddy, damp

↑

Martinmass

Tis Martinmass from rig to rig

Ploughed fields and meadow lands are blea

In hedge and field each restless twig

Is dancing on the naked tree

Flags in the dykes are bleached and brown

Docks by its sides are dry and dead

All but the ivy boughs are brown

Upon each leaning dotterels head

Crimsoned with hawes the hawthorns bend

O’er meadow dykes and rising floods

The wild geese seek the reedy fen

And dark the storm comes o’er the woods

The crowds of lapwings load the air

With buzzes of a thousand wings

There flocks of starnels too repair

When morning o’er the valley springs

Notes

rig = ridge, space between ploughed furrows

blea = bleak

dotterels = pollarded trees

starnels = starlings

Winter

↑

Signs of Winter

’Tis winter plain the images around

Protentious tell us of the closing year

Short grows the stupid day – the moping fowl

Go roost at noon. Upon the mossy barn

The thatcher hangs and lays the frequent yaum

Nudged close to stop the rain that drizzling falls

With scarce one interval of sunny sky

For weeks still leeking on that sulky gloom

Muggy and close a doubt twixt night and day

The sparrow rarely chirps – the thresher pale

Twanks with sharp measured raps the weary flail

Thump after thump right tiresome to the ear

The hedger lonesome bustles at his toil

And shepherds trudge the fields without a song

The cat runs races with her tail – the dog

Leaps over the orchard hedge and knarls the grass

The swine run round and grunt and play with straw

Snatching out hasty mouthfuls from the stack

Sudden upon the elm tree tops the crows

Unceremonious visit pays and croaks

Then swoops away. From mossy barn the owl

Bobs hasty out – wheels round and scared as soon

As hastily retires – the ducks grow wild

And from the muddy pond fly up and wheel

A circle round the village and soon tired

Plunge in the pond again. The maids in haste

Snatch from the orchard hedge the mizled cloaths

And laughing hurry in to keep them dry

Notes

yaum = layer of straw for thatch

knarls = gnaws

mizled = damp from drizzle

↑

From: Address to Plenty in Winter

Toiling in the naked fields

Where no bush a shelter yields

Needy Labour dithering stands

Beats and blows his numbing hands

And upon the crumping snows

Stamps in vain to warm his toes

Leaves are fled that once had power

To resist a summer shower

And the wind so piercing blows

Winnowing small the drifting snows

The summer shade of loaded bough

Would vainly boast a shelter now

Piercing snows so searching fall

They sift a passage through them all

Though all’s vain to keep him warm

Poverty must brave the storm

Friendship none its aid to lend

Health alone his only friend

Granting leave to live in pain

Giving strength to toil in vain

To be while winter’s horrors last

The sport of every pelting blast

Oh sad sons of Poverty!

Victims doom’d to misery

Who can paint what pain prevails

O’er that heart which Want assails?

Modest Shame the pain conceals

No one knows but he who feels

O thou charm which Plenty crowns

Fortune smile now Winter frowns

Cast around a pitying eye

Feed the hungry ere they die

Think oh think upon the poor

Nor against them shut thy door

Freely let thy bounty flow

On the sons of Want and Woe

↑

Emmonsail’s Heath in Winter

I love to see the old heath’s withered brake

Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling

While the old heron from the lonely lake

Starts slow and flaps his melancholy wing

And oddling crow in idle motions swing

On the half rotten ash-tree’s topmost twig

Beside whose trunk the gypsy makes his bed

Up flies the bouncing woodcock from the brig

Where a black quagmire quakes beneath the tread

The fieldfares chatter in the whistling thorn

And for the haw round fields and closen rove

And coy bumbarrels twenty in a drove

Flit down the hedgerows in the frozen plain

And hang on little twigs and start again

Notes

oddling = single, occasional

closen = pastures

bumbarrels = long-tailed tits

↑

Wood Pictures in Winter

The woodland swamps with mosses varified

And bullrush forests bowing by the side

Of shagroot sallows that snug shelter make

For the coy more-hen in her bushy lake

Into whose tide a little runnel weaves

Such charms for silence through the choking leaves

And whimpling melodies that but intrude

As lullabies to ancient solitude

–The wood-grass plats which last year left behind

Weaving their feathery lightness to the wind

Look now as picturesque amid the scene

As when the summer glossed their stems in green

While hasty hare brunts through the creepy gap

Seeks their soft beds and squats in safety’s lap

Notes

sallows = willows

plats = plots

brunts through = pushes or barges through

↑

The Winter’s Spring

The winter comes I walk alone

I want no bird to sing

To those who keep their hearts their own

The winter is the spring

No flowers to please – no bees to hum

The coming spring’s already come

I never want the Christmas rose

To come before its time

The seasons each as God bestows

Are simple and sublime

I love to see the snowstorm hing

’Tis but the winter garb of spring

I never want the grass to bloom

The snowstorm’s best in white

I love to see the tempest come

And love its piercing light

The dazzled eyes that love to cling

O’er snow-white meadows sees the spring

I love the snow the crumpling snow

That hangs on everything

It covers everything below

Like white dove’s brooding wing

A landscape to the aching sight

A vast expanse of dazzling light

It is the foliage of the woods

That winters bring the dress

White Easter of the year in bud

That makes the winter Spring

The frost and snow his posies bring

Nature’s white spurts of the spring

Note

hing = hang; threaten or portend

↑

Snow Storm

What a night! The wind howls hisses and but stops

To howl more loud while the snow volley keeps

Incessant batter at the window pane

Making our comfort feel as sweet again

And in the morning when the tempest drops

At every cottage door mountainous heaps

Of snow lie drifted that all entrance stops

Untill the beesom and the shovel gain

The path and leave a wall on either side

The shepherd rambling valleys white and wide

With new sensations his old memory fills

When hedges left at night no more descried

Are turned to one white sweep of curving hills

And trees turned bushes half their bodies hide

The boy that goes to fodder with surprise

Walks oer the gate he opened yesternight

The hedges all have vanished from his eyes

Een some tree tops the sheep could reach to bite

The novel scene emboldens new delight

And though with cautious steps his sports begin

He bolder shuffles the huge hills of snow

Till down he drops and plunges to the chin

And struggles much and oft escape to win

Then turns and laughs but dare not further go

For deep the grass and bushes lie below

Where little birds that soon at eve went in

With heads tucked in their wings now pine for day

And little feel boys oer their heads can stray

Note

beesom = broom

↑

The Old Year

The Old Year’s gone away

To nothingness and night

We cannot find him all the day

Nor hear him in the night

He left no footstep mark or place

In either shade or sun

The last year he’d a neighbour’s face

In this he’s known by none

All nothing everywhere

Mists we on mornings see

Have more of substance when they’re here

And more of form than he

He was a friend by every fire

In every cot and hall

A guest to every heart’s desire

And now he’s nought at all

Old papers thrown away

Old garments cast aside

The talk of yesterday

Are things identified

But time once torn away

No voices can recall

The eve of New Year’s Day

Left the Old Year lost to all

Note

cot = cottage

↑

From January

The thresher first thro darkness deep

Awakes the morning’s 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 rime 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

Wi higgling tug he cuts the hay

And bears the forkful loads away

And morn and evening daily throws

The little heaps upon the snows...

...(Schoolboys) hurrying rambles eager take

To skait upon the meadow lake

Scaring the snipe from her retreat

From shelving banks’ unfrozen seat

Or running brook where icy spars

Which the pale sunlight specks wi stars

Shoots crizzling oer the restless tide

To many a likness petrified

Were fancy often stoops to pore

And turns again to wonder more

The more-hen too wi fear opprest

Starts from her reedy sheltered rest

Bustling to get from foes away

And scarcly flies more fast then they

Skaiting along wi curving springs

Wi arms spread out like herons’ wings

They race away for pleasure’s sake

A hunter’s speed along the lake

And oft neath trees where ice is thin

Meet narrow scapes from breaking in

Notes

foddering boys = boys who feed the livestock

higgling = slow and laborious; working to and fro (?)

crizzling = freezing, crystallizing

Birds and Animals

↑

Autumn Birds

The wild duck startles like a sudden thought

And heron slow as if it might be caught

The flopping crows on weary wings go by

And grey beard jackdaws noising as they fly

The crowds of starnels whizz and hurry by

And darken like a clod the evening sky

The larks like thunder rise and suthy round

Then drop and nestle in the stubble ground

The wild swan hurries hight and noises loud

With white neck peering to the evening cloud

The weary rooks to distant woods are gone

With lengths of tail the magpie winnows on

To neighbouring tree and leaves the distant crow

While small birds nestle in the edge below

Notes

starnels = starlings

suthy = sigh, rustle

↑

The Thrush’s Nest

Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush

That overhung a molehill large and round

I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush

Sing hymns to sunrise and I drank the sound

With joy and often an intruding guest

I watched her secret toils from day to day

How true she warped the moss to form a nest

And modelled it within with wood and clay

And by and by like heath-bells gilt with dew

There lay her shining eggs as bright as flowers

Ink-spotted-over shells of greeny blue

And there I witnessed in the sunny hours

A brood of nature’s minstrels chirp and fly

Glad as that sunshine and the laughing sky

↑

The Fern Owl’s Nest (i.e. Nightjar)

The weary woodman rocking home beneath

His tightly banded faggot wonders oft

While crossing over the furze-crowded heath

To hear the fern owl’s cry that whews aloft

In circling whirls and often by his head

Whizzes as quick as thought and ill and rest

As through the rustling ling with heavy tread

He goes nor heeds he tramples near its nest

That underneath the furze or squatting thorn

Lies hidden on the ground and teasing round

That lonely spot she wakes her jarring noise

To the unheeding waste till mottled morn

Fills the red East with daylight’s coming sounds

And the heath’s echoes mock the herding boys

Note

ling = heather

↑

The Firetail’s Nest (i.e. Redstart)

‘Tweet’ pipes the robin as the cat creeps by

Her nestling young that in the elderns lie

And then the bluecap tootles in its glee

Picking the flies from orchard apple tree

And ‘pink’ the chaffinch cries its well-known strain

Urging its kind to utter ‘pink’ again

While in a quiet mood hedgesparrows try

An inward stir of shadowed melody

Around the rotten tree the firetail mourns

As the old hedger to his toil returns

Chopping the grain to stop the gap close by

The hole where her blue eggs in safety lie

Of everything that stirs she dreameth wrong

And pipes her ‘tweet tut’ fears the whole day long

Note

bluecap = blue tit

↑

The Raven’s Nest

Upon the collar of a hugh old oak

Year after year boys mark a curious nest

Of twigs made up a faggot near in size

And boys to reach it try all sorts of schemes

But not a twig to reach with hand or foot

Sprouts from the pillared trunk and as to try

To swarm the massy bulk tis all in vain

They scarce one effort make to hitch them up

But down they sluther soon as ere they try

So long hath been their dwelling there – old men

When passing bye will laugh and tell the ways

They had when boys to climb that very tree

And as it so would seem that very nest

That ne’er was missing from that selfsame spot

A single year in all their memorys

And they will say that the two birds are now

The very birds that owned the dwelling then

Some think it strange yet certainty’s at loss

And cannot contradict it so they pass

As old birds living the wood’s patriarchs

Old as the oldest men so famed and known

That even men will thirst onto the fame

Of boys and get at schemes that now and then

May captivate a young one from the tree

With iron clamms and bands adventuring up

The mealy trunk or else by waggon ropes

Slung over the hugh grains and so drawn up

By those at bottom one ascends secure

With foot rope stirruped – still a perillous way

So perillous that one and only one

In memorys of the oldest men was known

To wear his boldness to intention’s end

And reach the raven’s nest – and thence acchieved

A theme that wonder treasured for supprise

By every cottage hearth the village through

Not yet forgot though other darers come

With daring times that scale the steeple’s top

And tye their kerchiefs to the weather cock

As trophys that the dangerous deed was done

Yet even now in these adventurous days

No one is bold enough to dare the way

Up the old monstrous oak where every spring

Finds the two ancient birds at their old task

Repairing the hugh nest – where still they live

Through changes winds and storms and are secure

And like a landmark in the chronicles

Of village memorys treasured up yet lives

The hugh old oak that wears the ravens nest

Notes

hugh = huge

clamms = clamps(?)

grains = forks of a tree

↑

The Sand Martin

Thou hermit haunter of the lonely glen

And common wild and heath the desolate face

Of rude waste landscapes far away from men

Where frequent quarries give thee dwelling place

With strangest taste and labour undeterred

Drilling small holes along the quarry’s side

More like the haunts of vermin than a bird

And seldom by the nesting boy descried

I’ve seen thee far away from all thy tribe

Flirting about the unfrequented sky

And felt a feeling that I can’t describe

Of lone seclusion and a hermit joy

To see thee circle round nor go beyond

That lone heath and its melancholy pond

↑

Crows in Spring

The crow will tumble up and down

At the first sight of spring

And in old trees around the town

Brush winter from its wing

No longer flapping far away

To naked fen they fly

Chill fare as on a winter’s day

But field and valley nigh

Where swains are stirring out to plough

And woods are just at hand

They seek the upland’s sunny brow

And strut from land to land

And often flap their sooty wing

And sturt to neighbouring tree

And seem to try all ways to sing

And almost speak in glee

The ploughman hears and turns his head

Above to wonder why

And there a new nest nearly made

Proclaims the winter by

Notes

swain = country youth

sturt = move suddenly

↑

From Badger

When midnight comes a host of dogs and men

Go out and track the badger to his den

And put a sack within the hole and lie

Till the old grunting badger passes bye

He comes and hears – they let the strongest loose

The old fox hears the noise and drops the goose

The poacher shoots and hurries from the cry

And the old hare half wounded buzzes bye

They get a forked stick to bear him down

And clap the dogs and take him to the town

And bait him all the day with many dogs

And laugh and shout and fright the scampering hogs

He runs along and bites at all he meets

They shout and hollo down the noisy streets

He turns about to face the loud uproar

And drives the rebels to their very door

The frequent stone is hurled where eer they go

When badgers fight then every one’s a foe

The dogs are clapt and urged to join the fray

The badger turns and drives them all away

Though scarcely half as big, demure and small

He fights with dogs for bones and beats them all

The heavy mastiff savage in the fray

Lies down and licks his feet and turns away

The bulldog knows his match and waxes cold

The badger grins and never leaves his hold

He drives the crowd and follows at their heels

And bites them through – the drunkard swears and reels

↑

From The Hedgehog

The hedgehog hides beneath the rotten hedge

And makes a great round nest of grass and sedge

Or in a bush or in a hollow tree

And many often stoop and say they see

Him roll and fill his prickles full of crabs

And creep away and where the magpie dabs

His wing at muddy dyke in aged root

He makes a nest and fills it full of fruit

On the hedge bottom hunts for crabs and sloes

And whistles like a cricket as he goes

It rolls up like a ball or shapeless hog

When gipsies hunt it with their noisy dog

I’ve seen it in their camps – they call it sweet

Though black and bitter and unsavoury meat

Note

crabs = crab-apples

↑

The Marten

The marten cat long shagged of courage good

Of weasel shape a dweller in the wood

With badger hair long shagged and darting eyes

And lower than the common cat in size

Small head and running on the stoop

Snuffing the ground and hind parts shouldered up

He keeps one track and hides in lonely shade

Where print of human foot is never made

Save when the woods are cut – the beaten track

The woodman’s dog will snuff cock-tailed and black

Red legged and spotted over either eye

Snuffs barks and scrats the lice and passes by

The great brown hornèd owl looks down below

And sees the shaggy marten come and go

The marten hurries through the woodland gaps

And poachers shoot and make his skin for caps

When any woodmen come and pass the place

He looks at dogs and scarcely mends his pace

And gipsies often and birdnesting boys

Look in the hole and hear a hissing noise

They climb the tree such noise they never heard

And think the great owl is a foreign bird

When the grey owl her young ones cloaked in down

Seizes the boldest boy and drives him down

They try agen and pelt to start the fray

The grey owl comes and drives them all away

And leaves the marten twisting round his den

Left free from boys and dogs and noisy men

Notes

lice = woodlice

pelt = throw (stones etc)

↑

Clock a Clay (i.e. ladybird)

In the cowslip pips I lie

Hidden from the buzzing fly

While green grass beneath me lies

Pearled with dew like fishes’ eyes

Here I lie a clock-a-clay

Waiting for the time o’day

While the forest quakes surprise

And the wild wind sobs and sighs

My home rocks as like to fall

On its pillar green and tall

When the pattering rain drives by

Clock-a-clay keeps warm and dry

Day by day and night by night

All the week I hide from sight

In the cowslip pips I lie

In the rain still warm and dry

Day and night and night and day

Red black-spotted clock-a-clay

My home shakes in wind and showers

Pale green pillar topped with flowers

Bending at the wild wind’s breath

Till I touch the grass beneath

Here I live lone clock-a-clay

Watching for the time of day

Note

pips (or peeps) = corolla, petals

Trees and plants

↑

From May

My wild field catalogue of flowers

Grows in my rhymes as thick as showers

Tedious and long as they may be

To some, they never weary me

The wood and mead and field of grain

I could hunt oer and oer again

And talk to every blossom wild

Fond as a parent to a child

And cull them in my childish joy

By swarms and swarms and never cloy

↑

Water-lilies

The water-lilies on the meadow stream

Again spread out their leaves of glossy green

And some yet young of a rich copper gleam

Scarce open in the sunny stream are seen

Throwing a richness upon leisure’s eye

That thither wanders in a vacant joy

While on the sloping banks luxuriantly

Tending of horse and cow the chubby boy

In self-delighted whims will often throw

Pebbles to hit and splash their sunny leaves

Yet quickly dry again they shine and glow

Like some rich vision that his eye deceives

Spreading above the water day by day

In dangerous deeps yet out of danger’s way

↑

From Spear Thistle

Where the broad sheepwalk bare and brown

[Yields] scant grass pining after showers

And winds go fanning up and down

The little strawy bents and nodding flowers

There the huge thistle spurred with many thorns

The suncrackt upland’s russet swells adorns

Not undevoid of beauty there they come

Armed warriors waiting neither suns nor showers

Guarding the little clover plots to bloom

While sheep nor oxen dare not crop their flowers

Unsheathing their own knobs of tawny flowers

When summer cometh in her hottest hours

The pewit swopping up and down

And screaming round the passer bye

Or running o’er the herbage brown

With copple crown uplifted high

Loves in its clumps to make a home

Where danger seldom cares to come

The yellowhammer often prest

For spot to build and be unseen

Will in its shelter trust her nest

When fields and meadows glow with green

And larks though paths go closely bye

Will in its shade securely lie

The partridge too that scarce can trust

The open downs to be at rest

Will in its clumps lie down and dust

And prune its horseshoe-circled breast

And oft in shining fields of green

Will lay and raise its brood unseen

Notes

bents = grass stems

swopping = swooping

copple = tufted

↑

Wood Rides

Who hath not felt the influence that so calms

The weary mind in summer’s sultry hours

When wandering thickest woods beneath the arms

Of ancient oaks and brushing nameless flowers

That verge the little ride – who hath not made

A minute’s waste of time and sat him down

Upon a pleasant swell to gaze awhile

On crowding ferns bluebells and hazel leaves

And showers of ladysmocks so called by toil

When boys sprote gathering sit on stulps and weave

Garlands while barkmen pill the fallen tree

–Then mid the green variety to start

Who hath [not] met that mood from turmoil free

And felt a placid joy refreshed at heart

Notes

sprote = twig

stulps = stumps

pill = peel

↑

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 wont 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

Note

pooty = snail

↑

The Shepherd’s Tree

Hugh Elm thy rifted trunk all notched and scarred

Like to a warrior’s destiny – I love

To stretch me often on thy shadowed sward

And hear the laugh of summer leaves above

Or on thy buttressed roots to sit and lean

In careless attitude and there reflect

On times and deeds and darings that have been–

Old cast aways now swallowed in neglect

While thou art towering in thy strength of heart

Stirring the soul to vain imaginings

In which life’s sordid being hath no part

The wind in that eternal ditty sings

Humming of future things that burns the mind

To leave some fragment of itself behind

↑

From The Fallen Elm

Old elm that murmured in our chimney top

The sweetest anthem autumn ever made

And into mellow whispering calms would drop

When showers fell on thy many coloured shade

And when dark tempests mimic thunder made

While darkness came as it would strangle light

With the black tempest of a winter night

That rocked thee like a cradle in thy root

How did I love to hear the winds upbraid

Thy strength without while all within was mute

It seasoned comfort to our hearts’ desire

We felt thy kind protection like a friend

And edged our chairs up closer to the fire

Enjoying comfort that was never penned

↑

Firwood

The fir trees taper into twigs and wear

The rich blue green of summer all the year

Softening the roughest tempest almost calm

And offering shelter ever still and warm

To the small path that towels underneath

Where loudest winds – almost as summer’s breath–

Scarce fan the weed that lingers green below

When others out of doors are lost in frost and snow

And sweet the music trembles on the ear

As the wind suthers through each tiny spear

Makeshifts for leaves and yet so rich they show

Winter is almost summer where they grow

Notes

towels  = trails, winds(?)

suthers = rustles

Scenes

↑

From Rural Morning

Industry’s bustling din once more devours

The soothing peace of morning’s early hours

The grunt of hogs freed from their nightly dens

And constant cacklings of new-laying hens

And ducks and geese that clamorous joys repeat

The splashing comforts of the pond to meet

And chirping sparrows dropping from the eaves

For offal kernels that the poultry leaves

Oft signal-calls of danger chittering high

At skulking cats and dogs approaching nigh

And lowing steers that hollow echoes wake

Around the yard their nightly fast to break

As from each barn the lumping flail rebounds

In mingling concert with the rural sounds

While oer the distant fields more faintly creep

The murmuring bleatings of unfolding sheep

And ploughman’s callings that more hoarse proceed

Where industry still urges labour's speed

The bellowing of cows with udders full

That wait the welcome halloo of ‘come mull’

And rumbling waggons deafening again

Rousing the dust along the narrow lane

And cracking whips and shepherd’s hooting cries

From woodland echoes urging sharp replies.

Note

unfolding sheep = sheep leaving the fold

↑

The Morning Wind

There’s more than music in this early wind

Awaking like a bird refreshed from sleep

And joy what Adam might in Eden find

When he with angels did communion keep

It breathes all balm and incense from the sky

Blessing the husbandman with freshening powers

Joy’s manna from its wings doth fall and lie

Harvests for early wakers with the flowers

The very grass in joy’s devotion moves

Cowslips in adoration and delight

This way and that bow to the breath they love

Of the young winds that with the dew pearls play

Till smoking chimneys sicken the young light

And feeling’s fairy visions fade away

↑

Heavy Dew

The night hath hung the morning smile in showers

The kingcups burnished all so rich within

Hang down their slender branches on the grass

The bumble-bees on the huge thistle flowers

Cling as half sleeping yet and motion lack

Not even stirring as I closely pass

Save that they lift their legs above their backs

In trembling dread when touched – yet still they lye

Fearful of danger without power to fly

The shepherd makes a mort of crooked tracks

His dog half-drowned and dripping to the skin

Stops oft and shakes his shaggy hide in vain

Wading through grass like rivers to the chin

Then snorts and barks and rushes on again

Note

mort = large number

↑

The Flood

1.

On Lolham Brigs in wild and lonely mood

I’ve seen the winter floods their gambols play

Through each old arch that trembled while I stood

Bent o’er its wall to watch the dashing spray

As their old stations would be washed away

Crash came the ice against the joints and then

A shudder jarred the arches – yet once more

It breasted raving waves and stood again

To wait the shock as stubborn as before

White foam brown crested with the russet soil

As washed from new ploughed lands would dart beneath

Then round and round a thousand eddies boil

On t’other side – then pause as if for breath

One minute – and engulfed like life in death

2.

Whose wrecky stains dart on the floods away

More swift than shadows in a stormy day

Straws trail and turn and steady – all in vain

The engulfing arches shoot them quickly through

The feather dances flutters and again

Darts through the deepest dangers still afloat

Seeming as fairies whisked it from the view

And danced it o’er the waves as pleasures boat

Light hearted as a merry thought in May

Trays uptorn bushes fence-demolished rails

Loaded with weeds in sluggish motions stray

Like water monsters lost, each winds and trails

Till near the arches – then as in affright

It plunges reels and shudders out of sight

3.

Waves trough rebound and fury boil again

Like plunging monsters rising underneath

Who at the top curl up a shaggy main

A moment catching at a surer breath

Then plunging headlong down and down and on

Each following boil the shadow of the last

And other monsters rise when those are gone

Crest their fringed waves plunge onward and are past

The chill air comes around me ocean-blea

From bank to bank the water-strife is spread

Strange birds like snow-spots o’er the huzzing sea

Hang where the wild duck hurried past and fled

On roars the flood all restless to be free

Like trouble wandering to eternity

Notes

trays = hurdles, fence posts

ocean-blea = bleak or cold as the ocean

huzzing = hissing, noisy

↑

From A Rhapsody

The wind seems calling though not understood

A voice is speaking – hark it louder calls

It echoes in the far-outstretching wood

First twas a hum but now it loudly squalls

And then the pattering rain begins to fall

And it is hushed – the fern leaves scarcely shake

The tottergrass it scarcely stirs at all

And then the rolling thunder gets awake

And from black clouds the lightning flashes break

The sunshine’s gone and now an April evening

Commences with a dim and mackerel sky

Gold light and woolpacks in the west are leaving

And leaden streaks their splendid place supply

Sheep ointment seems to daub the dead-hued sky

And night shuts up the lightsomeness of day

All dark and absent as a corpse’s eye

Flower tree and bush like all the shadows grey

In leaden hue of desolation fade away

Note

tottergrass = quaking grass

↑

Mist in the Meadows

The evening o’er the meadow seems to stoop

More distant lessens the diminished spire

Mist in the hollows reaks and curdles up

Like fallen clouds that spread – and things retire

Less seen and less – the shepherd passes near

And little distant most grotesquely shades

As walking without legs – lost to his knees

As through the rawky creeping smoke he wades

Now half-way up the arches disappear

And small the bits of sky that glimmer through

Then trees loose all but tops – I meet the fields

And now the indistinctness passes by

The shepherd all his length is seen again

And further on the village meets the eye

Notes

reaks = steams

rawky = foggy, damp and cold

↑

Nightwind

Darkness like midnight from the sobbing woods

Clamours with dismal tidings of the rain

Roaring as rivers breaking loose in floods

To spread and foam and deluge all the plain

The cotter listens at his door again

Half doubting whether it be floods or wind

And through the thickening darkness looks afraid

Thinking of roads that travel has to find

Through night’s black depths in danger’s garb arrayed

And the loud glabber round the flaze soon stops

When hushed to silence by the lifted hand

Of fearing dame who hears the noise in dread

And thinks a deluge comes to drown the land

Nor dares she go to bed until the tempest drops

Notes

glabber = chatter

flaze = smoky flame

↑

From A Sunday with Shepherds and Herdboys

The shepherds and the herding swains

Keep their sabbaths on the plains

For them the church bells vainly call

Fields are their church and house and all

They’ll lie and catch the passing sound

That comes from steeples shining round

Enjoying in the service time

The happy bells’ delightful chime

And if they sit on rising ground

To view the landscape spreading round

Swimming from the following eye

In greens and stems of every dye

O’er wood and vale and fen’s smooth lap

Like a richly coloured map

Square plots of clover red and white

Scented with summer’s warm delight

And cinquefoil of a fresher stain

And different greens of warmèd grain

Wheat spindles bursting into ear

And browning gently – grasses sere

In swathy seed-pods dried by heat

Rustling when brushed by passing feet

And beans and peas of deadening green

And cornland’s ribbon strips between

And stretching villages that lie

Like light spots in a deeper sky

And from the fields they’ll often steal

The green peas for a Sunday meal

And in snug nooks their huts beside

The gipsy blazes they provide

Shaking the rotten from the trees

While some sit round to shell the peas

Or pick from hedges pilfered wood

To boil on props their stolen food

Sitting on stones or heaps of brakes

Each of the wild repast partakes

Telling to pass the hours along

Tales that to fitter days belong

While one within his scrip contains

A shattered Bible’s thumbed remains

O’er whose blank leaf with pious care

A host of names is scribbled there

↑

The Harvest Morning

Cocks wake the early morn with many a crow

Loud-striking village clock has counted four

The labouring rustic hears his restless foe

And weary of his pains complaining sore

Hobbles to fetch his horses from the moor

Some busy ’gin to teem the loaded corn

Which night throng’d round the barn’s becrowded door

Such plenteous scenes the farmer’s yard adorn

Such noisy busy toils now mark the Harvest Morn

The bird-boy’s pealing horn is loudly blow’d

The waggons jostle on with rattling sound

And hogs and geese now throng the dusty road

Grunting and gabbling in contention round

The barley ears that litter on the ground

What printing traces mark the waggon’s way

What busy bustling wakens echo round

How drive the sun’s warm beams the mist away

How labour sweats and toils and dreads the sultry day

His scythe the mower o’er his shoulder leans

And whetting jars with sharp and tinkling sound

Then sweeps again ’mong corn and crackling beans

And swath by swath flops lengthening o’er the ground

While ’neath some friendly heap, snug sheltered round

From spoiling sun lies hid the heart’s delight

And hearty soaks oft hand the bottle round

Their toils pursuing with redoubled might

Great praise to him is due that brought its birth to light

Upon the waggon now with eager bound

The lusty picker whirls the rustling sheaves

Or resting ponderous creaking fork aground

Boastful at once whole shocks of barley heaves

The loading boy revengeful inly grieves

To find his unmatch’d strength and power decay

The barley-horn his garments interweaves

Smarting and sweating ’neath the sultry day

With muttering curses stung, he mauls the heaps away

A motley group the clearing field surround

Sons of Humanity oh ne’er deny

The humble gleaner entrance in your ground

Winter’s sad cold and Poverty are nigh

Grudge not from Providence the scant supply

You’ll never miss it from your ample store

Who gives denial – hardened hungry hound

May never blessings crowd his hated door

But he shall never lack, that giveth to the poor

Ah lovely Emma mingling with the rest

Thy beauties blooming in low life unseen

Thy rosy cheeks thy sweetly swelling breast

But ill it suits thee in the stubs to glean

O Poverty how basely you demean

The imprison’d worth your rigid fates confine

Not fancied charms of an Arcadian queen

So sweet as Emma’s real beauties shine

Had Fortune blest sweet girl this lot had ne’er been thine

The sun’s increasing heat now mounted high

Refreshment must recruit exhausted power

The waggon stops, the busy tool’s thrown by

And ’neath a shock’s enjoy’d the bevering hour

The bashful maid, sweet health’s engaging flower

Lingering behind o’er rake still blushing bends

And when to take the horn fond swains implore

With feign’d excuses its dislike pretends

So pass the bevering hours, so Harvest Morning ends

O Rural Life! what charms thy meanness hide

What sweet descriptions bards disdain to sing

What loves, what graces on thy plains abide

Oh could I soar me on the Muse’s wing

What rifled charms should my researches bring!

Pleas’d would I wander where these charms reside

Of rural sports and beauties would I sing

Those beauties, Wealth, which you in vain deride

Beauties of richest bloom superior to your pride

Notes

teem = pour out

barley-horn = barleycorn

bevering = drinking

horn = drinking-vessel

↑

From The Fens

The geese in troops come droving up

Nibble the weeds and take a sup

And closely puzzled to agree

Chatter like gossips over tea

The gander with his scarlet nose

When strife’s at height will interpose

And stretching neck to that and this

With now a mutter now a hiss

A nibble at the feathers too

A sort of ‘pray be quiet do’

And turning as the matter mends

He stills them into mutual friends

Then in a sort of triumph sings

And throws the water o’er his wings

…Here’s little save the river scene

And grounds of oats in rustling green

And crowded growth of wheat and beans

That with the hope of plenty leans

And cheers the farmer’s gazing brow

Who lives and triumphs in the plough

One sometimes meets a pleasant sward

Of swarthy grass and quickly marred

The plough soon turns it into brown

And when again one rambles down

The path, small hillocks burning lie

And smoke beneath a burning sky

Green paddocks have but little charms

With gain the merchandise of farms

And muse and marvel where we may

Gain mars the landscape every day

The meadow grass turned up and copt

The trees to stumpy dotterels lopt

The hearth with fuel to supply

For rest to smoke and chatter bye

Giving the joy of home delights

The warmest mirth on coldest nights

And so for gain that joy’s repay

Change cheats the landscape every day

Nor trees nor bush about it grows

That from the hatchet can repose

And the horizon stooping smiles

O’er treeless fens of many miles

Spring comes and goes and comes again

And all is nakedness and fen

Notes

copt = heaped

dotterels = pollarded trees

↑

From Rural Evening

The sun now sinks behind the woodland green

And twittering spangles glow the leaves between

So bright and dazzling on the eye it plays

As if noon’s heat had kindled to a blaze

But soon it dims in red and heavier hues

And shows wild fancy cheated in her views

A mist-like moisture rises from the ground

And deeper blueness stains the distant round

The eye each moment as it gazes o’er

Still loses objects which it mark’d before

The woods at distance changing like to clouds

And spire-points croodling under evening’s shrouds

Till forms of things and hues of leaf and flower

In deeper shadows as by magic power

With light and all in scarce-perceiv’d decay

Put on mild evening’s sober garb of grey

Now in the sleepy gloom that blackens round

Dies many a lulling hum of rural sound

From cottage door, farm-yard and dusty lane

Where home the cart-house tolters with the swain

Or padded holm where village boys resort

Bawling enraptur’d o’er their evening sport

Till night awakens superstition’s dread

And drives them prisoners to a restless bed…

Notes

twittering = glittering

croodling = huddling

tolters = struggles, moves with difficulty

padded = marked with paths

holm = river island, land once covered with water

People

↑

Farm Breakfast

Maids shout to breakfast in a merry strife

And the cat runs to hear the whetted knife

And dogs are ever in the way to watch

The mouldy crust and falling bone to catch

The wooden dishes round in haste are set

And round the table all the boys are met

All know their own save Hodge who would be first

But every one his master leaves the worst

On every wooden dish a humble claim

Two rude cut letters mark the owner’s name

From every nook the smile of plenty calls

And rusty flitches decorate the walls

Moore’s Almanack where wonders never cease

All smeared with candle snuff and bacon grease

Notes

rusty = discoloured; rancid

flitches = sides of bacon

↑

From The Cottager

True as the church clock hand the hour pursues

He plods about his toils and reads the news

And at the blacksmith’s shop his hour will stand

To talk of ‘Lunun’ as a foreign land

For from his cottage door in peace or strife

He ne’er went fifty miles in all his life

His knowledge with old notions still combined

Is twenty years behind the march of mind

He views new knowledge with suspicious eyes

And thinks it blasphemy to be so wise

On steam’s almighty tales he wondering looks

As witchcraft gleaned from old blackletter books

Life gave him comfort but denied him wealth

He toils in quiet and enjoys his health

He smokes a pipe at night and drinks his beer

And runs no scores on tavern screens to clear

Notes

blackletter books = books in old Gothic script

runs no scores = has no debts

↑

The Shepherd’s Fire

On the rude heath yclad in furze and ling

And oddling thorn that thick and prickly grows

Shielding the shepherd when the rude wind blows

And boys that sit right merry in a ring

Round fires upon a molehill toasting sloes

And crabs that froth and frizzle on the coals

Loud is the gabble and the laughter loud

The rabbits scarce dare peep from out their holes

Unwont to mix with such a noisey crowd

Some run to eke the fire – while many a cloud

Of smoke curls up, some on their haunches squat

With mouth for bellows puffing till it flares

Or if that fail one fans his napless hat

And when the feast is done they squabble for their shares

Notes

ling = heather

oddling = single, solitary

crabs = crab-apples

↑

Happiness of Evening

The winter wind with strange and fearful gust

Stirs the dark wood and in the lengthy night

Howls in the chimney top while fear’s mistrust

Listens the noise by the small glimmering light

Of cottage hearth where warm a circle sits

Of happy dwellers telling morts of tales

Where some long memory wakens up by fits

Laughter and fear and over all prevails

Wonder predominant – they sit and hear

The very hours to minutes and the song

Or story be the subject what it may

Is ever found too short and never long

While the uprising tempest loudly roars

And boldest hearts fear stirring out of doors

Note

morts = large numbers

↑

From The Woodman

The beating snow-clad bell with sounding dead

Hath clanked four – the woodman’s wak’d again

And as he leaves his comfortable bed

Dithers to view the rimy feather’d pane

And shrugs and wishes but ’tis all in vain

The bed’s warm comforts he most now forego

His family that oft till eight hath lain

Without his labour’s wage could not do so

And glad to make them blest he shuffles through the snow

The early winter’s morn is dark as pitch

The wary wife from tinder brought at night

With flint and steel and many a sturdy twitch

Sits up in bed to strike her man a light

And as the candle shows the rapturous sight

Aside his wife his rosy sleeping boy

He smacks his lips with exquisite delight

With all a father’s feelings, father’s joy

Then bids his wife good-bye and hies to his employ

His breakfast water-porridge – humble food

A barley-crust he in his wallet flings

On this he toils and labours in the wood

And chops his faggot, twists his band and sings

As happily as princes and as kings

With all their luxury and blest is he

Can but the little which his labour brings

Make both ends meet and from long debts keep free

And neat and clean preserve his numerous family

Far o’er the dreary fields the woodland lies

Rough is the journey which he daily goes

The woolly clouds that hang the frowning skies

Keep winnowing down their drifting sleet and snows

And thro’ his doublet keen the north wind blows

While hard as iron the cemented ground

And smooth as glass the glibbed pool is froze

His nailed boots with clenching tread rebound

And dithering echo starts and mocks the clamping sound

The woods how gloomy in a winter’s morn

The crows and ravens even cease to croak

The little birds sit chittering on the thorn

The pies scarce chatter when they leave the oak

Startled from slumber by the woodman’s stroke

The milk-maid’s song is drown’d in gloomy care

And while the village chimneys curl their smoke

She milks and blows and hastens to be there

And nature all seems sad and dying in despair

The quirking rabbit scarcely leaves her hole

But rolls in torpid slumbers all the day

The fox is loth to ’gin a long patrol

And scouts the woods content with meaner prey

The hare so frisking, timid once and gay

’Hind the dead thistle hurkles from the view

Nor scarce is scar’d though in the traveller’s way

Though waffling curs and shepherd-dogs pursue

So winter’s ragged power affects all nature through

What different changes winter’s frowns supply

The clown no more a loitering hour beguiles

Nor gaping tracks the clouds along the sky

As when buds blossom and the warm sun smiles

And ‘Lawrence wages bids’ on hills and stiles

Banks stiles and flowers and skies no longer charm

Deep drifting snow each summer-seat defiles

With hasty blundering step and folded arm

He glad the stable seeks his frost-nip nose to warm

The shepherd haunts no more his spreading oak

Nor on the sloping pond-head lies at lair

The arbour he once wattled up is broke

And left unworthy of his future care

The ragged plundering stickers have been there

And pilfer’d it away – he passes by

His summer dwelling desolate and bare

And ne’er so much as turns a conscious eye

But gladly seeks his fire and shuns th’ inclement sky

The scene is cloth’d in snow from morn till night

The woodman’s loth his chilly tools to seize

The crows unroosting as he comes in sight

Shake down the feathery burden from the trees

To look at things around he’s fit to freeze

Scar’d from her perch the fluttering pheasant flies

His hat and doublet whiten by degrees

He quakes looks round and pats his hands and sighs

And wishes to himself that the warm sun would rise

Notes

twitch = couch-grass (presumably used as a fire-lighter)

glibbed = polished

chittering = shivering

pies = magpies

quirking = grumbling

hurkles = crouches

waffling = woofing, barking

clown =  a rustic

‘Lawrence wages bids’ = is idle (St Lawrence was supposed to be the patron saint of the lazy)

wattled up = made of interlaced branches

stickers = gatherers of sticks

↑

The Village Boy

Free from the cottage corner see how wild

The village boy along the pasture hies

With every smell and sound and sight beguiled

That round the prospect meets his wondering eye

Now stooping eager for the cowslip-pips

As though he’d get them all – now tired of these

Across the flaggy brook he eager leaps

For some new flower his happy rapture sees

Now tearing ’mid the bushes on his knees

On woodland banks for bluebell-flowers he creeps

And now while looking up among the trees

He spies a nest and down he throws his flowers

And up he climbs with new-fed extacies

The happiest object in the summer hours

Notes

cowslip pips = petals

flaggy = reedy, rushy

↑

From Rustic Fishing

On Sunday mornings freed from hard employ

How oft I mark the mischievous young boy

With anxious haste his pole and lines provide

For make-shifts oft crook’d pins to thread were tied

And delve his knife with wishes ever warm

In rotten dunghills for the grub and worm

The harmless treachery of his hooks to bait

Tracking the dewy grass with many a mate

To seek the brook that down the meadows glides

Where the grey willow shadows by its sides

Where flag and reed in wild disorder spread

And bending bulrush bows its taper head

And just above the surface of the floods

Where water-lilies mount their snowy buds

On whose broad swimming leaves of glossy green

The shining dragon-fly is often seen

Where hanging thorns with roots wash’d bare appear

That shield the moor-hen’s nest from year to year

While crowding osiers mingling wild among

Prove snug asylums to her brood when young

Who when surpris’d by foes approaching near

Plunge ’neath the weeping boughs and disappear

There far from terrors that the parson brings

Or church bell hearing when its summons rings

Half hid in meadow-sweet and keck’s high flowers

In lonely sport they spend the Sunday hours

Though ill supplied for fishing seem the brook

That breaks the mead in many a stinted crook

Oft choak’d in weeds and foil’d to find a road

The choice retirement of the snake and toad

Then lost in shallows dimpling restlessly

In fluttering struggles murmuring to be free

O’er gravel stones its depth can scarcely hide

It runs remnant of its broken tide

Till seemly weary of each choak’d control

It rests collected in some gulled hole

Scoop’d by the sudden floods when winter’s snow

Melts in confusion by a hasty thaw

There bent in hopeful musings on the brink

They watch their floating corks that seldom sink

Save when a wary roach or silver bream

Nibbles the worm as passing up the stream

Just urging expectation’s hopes to stay

To view the dodging cork then slink away

Still hopes keep burning with untir’d delight

Still wobbling curves keep wavering like a bite…

Notes

flag = reed, rush

keck = cow parsley

stinted = kept in check by boundaries

breaks the mead = cuts through the meadow

gulled = with gullies

↑

From Angling

The morn is still and balmy – all that moves

The trees are south gales which the angler loves

That stirs the waveing grass in idle whirls

And flush the cheeks and fan the jetty curls

Of milking maidens at their morn’s employ

Who sing and wake the dewy fields to joy

The sun just rising large and round and dim

Keeps creeping up oer the flat meadow’s brim

As rising from the ground to run its race

Till up it mounts and shows a ruddy face

Now is the time the angler leaves his dreams

In anxious movements for the silent streams

Frighting the heron from its morning toil

First at the river watching after coil

Now with the river’s bank he winds his way

For a choice place to spend the quiet day

Marking its banks how varied things appear

Now cloathed in trees and bushes and now clear

While steep the bank climbs from the water’s edge

Then almost choaked with rushes flags and sedge

Then flat and level to the very brink

Tracked deep by cattle running there to drink

At length he finds a spot half shade half sun

That scarcely curves to show the waters run

Still clear and smooth quick he his line unlaps

While fish leap up and loud the water claps

Which fills his mind with pleasures of surprise

That in the deep hole some old monster lies

Notes

coil = movement

flags = reeds

↑

Song

She tied up her few things

And laced up her shoe strings

And put on her bonnet worn through at the crown

Her apron tied tighter

Than snow her caps whiter

She lapt up her earnings and left our old town

The Dog barked again

All the length o’ his chain

And licked her hand kindly and huffed her good bye

Old hens prated loudly

The Cock strutted proudly

And the horse at the gate turned to let her go bye

The Thrasher man stopping

The old barn floor wopping

Wished oer the door cloth her luck and no harm

Bees hummed round the thistle

While the red Robins whistle

And she just one look on the old mossy farm

’Twas Michaelmas season

They’d got corn and pears in

And all the Fields cleared save some ruckings and tythes

Cote pigeon flocks muster

Round beans shelling cluster

And done are the whettings o’ reap hooks and scythes

Next year’s flowers a springing

Will miss Jinney’s singing

She opened her Bible and turned a leaf down

In her bosom’s forewarnings

She lapt up her earnings

And ere the suns set ’ll be in her own town

Notes

wopping = thrashing, sweeping vigorously

ruckings = stacks of hay

tythes = corn-stooks (every tenth stook set aside for tax)

↑

Country Letter

Dear brother robin this comes from us all

With our kind love and could Gip write and all

Though but a dog he’d have his love to spare

For still he knows and by your corner chair

The moment he comes in he lyes him down

and seems to fancy you are in the town

This leaves us well in health thank God for that

For old acquaintance Sue has kept your hat

Which mother brushes ere she lays it bye

and every sunday goes upstairs to cry

Jane still is yours till you come back agen

and ne’er so much as dances with the men

and Ned the woodman every week comes in

and asks about you kindly as our kin

and he with this and goody Thompson sends

Remembrances with those of all our friends

Father with us sends love untill he hears

and mother she has nothing but her tears

Yet wishes you like us in health the same

and longs to see a letter with your name

So loving brother don’t forget to write

Old Gip lies on the hearth stone every night

Mother can’t bear to turn him out of doors

and never noises now of dirty floors

Father will laugh but lets her have her way

and Gip for kindness get a double pay

So Robin write and let us quickly see

You don’t forget old friends no more than we

Nor let my mother have so much to blame

To go three journeys ere your letter came

↑

From The Cellar Door

By the old tavern door on the causey there lay

A hogshead of stingo just rolled from a dray

And there stood the blacksmith awaiting a drop

As dry as the cinders that lay in his shop

And there stood the cobbler as dry as a bun

Almost crackt like a bucket when left in the sun

He’d whetted his knife upon pendil and hone

Till he’d not got a spittle to moisten the stone

So ere he could work though he’d lost the whole day

He must wait the new broach and bemoisten his clay

The cellar was empty each barrel was drained

To its dregs and Sir John like a rebel remained

In the street for removal too powerful and large

For two or three topers to take into charge

Odd zooks said a gipsey, with bellows to mend

Had I strength I would just be for helping a friend

To walk on his legs but a child in the street

Had as much power as he to put John on his feet

Then up came the blacksmith – Sir Barley said he

I should just like to storm your old tower for a spree

And my strength for your strength and bar your renown

I’d soon try your spirit by cracking your crown.

And the cobbler he tuckt up his apron and spit

In his hands for a burster – but devil a bit

Would he move so as yet they made nothing of land

For there lay the knight like a whale in the sand

Said the tinker, If I could but drink of his vein

I should just be as strong and as stubborn again

Push along said the toper, the cellar’s adry

There’s nothing to moisten the mouth of a fly

Says the host, We shall burn out with thirst, he’s so big

There’s a cag of small swipes half as sour as a wig

In such like extremes why, extremes will come pat

So let’s go and wet all our whistles with that

Says the gipsey, May I never bottom a chair

If I drink of small swipes while Sir John’s lying there

And the blacksmith he threw off his apron and swore

Small swipes should bemoisten his gullet no more

Let it out on the floor for the dry cock-a-roach

And he held up his hammer with threatens to broach

Sir John in his castle without leave or law

And suck out his blood with a reed or a straw

Ere he’d soak at the swipes – and he turned him to start

Till the host for high treason came down a full quart

Just then passed the dandy and turned up his nose

They’d fain have him shove but he looked at his clothes

And nipt his nose closer and twirled his stick round

And simpered, Tis nuisance to lie on the ground

But Bacchus he laughed from the old tavern sign

Saying, Go on thou shadow and let the sun shine…

Notes

hogshead of stingo = barrel of strong ale

pendil = a short, thick stone

Sir John/Sir Barley = “John Barleycorn”, meaning ale

cag = keg

small swipes = small beer, weak ale

Memories and Feelings

↑

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

↑

Where She Told Her Love

I saw her crop a rose

Right early in the day

And I went to kiss the place

Where she broke the rose away

And I saw the patten rings

Where she oer the stile had gone

And I love all other things

Her bright eyes look upon

If she looks upon the hedge or up the leafing tree

The whitethorn or the brown oak are made dearer things to me

I have a pleasant hill

Which I sit upon for hours

Where she cropt some sprigs of thyme

And other little flowers

And she muttered as she did it

As does beauty in a dream

And I loved her when she hid it

On her breast so like to cream

Near the brown mole on her neck that to me a diamond shone

Then my eye was like to fire and my heart was like to stone

There is a small green place

Where cowslips early curled

Which on Sabbath day I trace

The dearest in the world

A little oak spreads oer it

And throws a shadow round

A green sward close before it

The greenest ever found

There is not a woodland nigh nor is there a green grove

Yet stood the fair maid nigh me and told me all her love

Note

patten rings = the prints of clogs

↑

Ballad (A Faithless Shepherd Courted Me)

A faithless shepherd courted me

He stole away my liberty

When my poor heart was strange to men

He came and smiled and stole it then

When my apron would hang low

Me he sought through frost and snow

When it puckered up with shame

And I sought him he never came

When summer brought no fears to fright

He came to guard me every night

When winter nights did darkly prove

None came to guard me or to love

I wish I wish but all in vain

I wish I was a maid again

A maid again I cannot be

O when will green grass cover me?

Note

This is very similar to an old English folk song, which comes in a number of variations and almost certainly predates Clare’s version.

↑

To Mary

I sleep with thee and wake with thee

And yet thou art not there

I fill my arms with thoughts of thee

And press the common air

Thy eyes are gazing upon mine

When thou art out of sight

My lips are always touching thine

At morning noon and night

I think and speak of other things

To keep my mind at rest

But still to thee my memory clings

Like love in woman’s breast

I hide it from the world’s wide eye

And think and speak contrary

But soft the wind comes from the sky

And whispers tales of Mary

The night wind whispers in my ear

The moon shines in my face

A burden still of chilling fear

I find in every place

The breeze is whispering in the bush

And the dews fall from the tree

All sighing on and will not hush

Some pleasant tales of thee

↑

Song

I wish I was where I would be

With love alone to dwell

Was I but her or she but me

Then love would all be well

I wish to send my thoughts to her

As quick as thoughts can fly

But as the winds the waters stir

The mirrors change and fly

↑

From Effusion

Ah little did I think in time that’s past

By summer burnt or numb’d by winter’s blast

Delving the ditch a livelihood to earn

Or lumping corn out in a dusty barn

With aching bones returning home at night

And sitting down with weary hand to write

Ah little did I think as then unknown

Those artless rhymes I even blush’d to own

Would be one day applauded and approv’d

By learning notic’d and by genius lov’d

God knows my hopes were many but my pain

Damp’d all the prospects which I hop’d to gain

I hardly dar’d to hope – Thou corner-chair

In which I’ve oft slung back in deep despair

Hadst thou expression thou couldst easy tell

The pains and all that I have known too well…

↑

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

↑

Remembrances

Summer’s 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 forever 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

When jumping time away on old Crossberry Way

And eating awes like sugarplums ere they had lost the may

And skipping like a leveret before the peep of day

On the roly poly up and downs of pleasant Swordy Well

When in Round Oak’s narrow lane as the south got black again

We sought the hollow ash that was shelter from the rain

With our pockets full of peas we had stolen from the grain

How delicious was the dinner time on such a showery day

O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away

The ancient pulpit trees and the play

When for school o’er Little Field with its brook and wooden brig

Where I swaggered like a man though I was not half so big

While I held my little plough though twas but a willow twig

And drove my team along made of nothing but a name

‘Gee hep’ and ‘hoit’ and ‘woi’ – O I never call to mind

These pleasant names of places but I leave a sigh behind

While I see little mouldiwarps hang sweeing to the wind

On the only aged willow that in all the field remains

And nature hides her face while they’re sweeing in their chains

And in a silent murmuring complains

Here was commons for their hills where they seek for freedom still

Though every common’s gone and though traps are set to kill

The little homeless miners – O it turns my bosom chill

When I think of old Sneap Green, Puddock’s Nook and Hilly Snow

Where bramble bushes grew and the daisy gemmed in dew

And the hills of silken grass like to cushions to the view

Where we threw the pismire crumbs when we’d nothing else to do

All levelled like a desert by the never weary plough

All banished like the sun where that cloud is passing now

And settled here for ever on its brow

O I never thought that joys would run away from boys

Or that boys would change their minds and forsake such summer joys

But alack I never dreamed that the world had other toys

To petrify first feelings like the fable into stone

Till I found the pleasure past and a winter come at last

Then the fields were sudden bare and the sky got overcast

And boyhood’s pleasing haunt like a blossom in the blast

Was shrivelled to a withered weed and trampled down and done

Till vanished was the morning spring and set the summer sun

And winter fought her battle strife and won

By Langley Bush I roam but the bush hath left its hill

On Cowper Green I stray – tis a desert strange and chill

And the spreading Lea Close oak ere decay had penned its will

To the axe of the spoiler and self-interest fell a prey

And Crossberry Way and old Round Oak’s narrow lane

With its hollow trees like pulpits I shall never see again

Enclosure like a Buonaparte let not a thing remain

It levelled every bush and tree and levelled every hill

And hung the moles for traitors – though the brook is running still

It runs a sicker brook cold and chill

O had I known as then joy had left the paths of men

I had watched her night and day be sure and never slept agen

And when she turned to go O I’d caught her mantle then

And wooed her like a lover by my lonely side to stay

Ay knelt and worshipped on as love in beauty’s bower

And clung upon her smiles as a bee upon a flower

And gave her heart my posies all cropt in a sunny hour

As keepsakes and pledges all to never fade away

But love never heeded to treasure up the may

So it went the common road to decay

Notes

awes = haws

mouldiwarps = moles

sweeing = swaying, swinging

pismires = ants

↑

From Shadows of Taste

Taste with as many hues doth hearts engage

As leaves and flowers do upon nature’s page

Not mind alone the instinctive mood declares

But buds and flowers and insects are its heir

Taste is their joyous heritage and they

All choose for joy in a peculiar way

Buds own it in the various spots they chuse

Some live content in low grass gemmed with dews

The yellowhammer like a tasteful guest

’Neath picturesque green molehills makes a nest

Where oft the shepherd with unlearned ken

Finds strange eggs scribbled as with ink and pen

He looks with wonder on the learned marks

And calls them in his memory writing larks

Birds bolder winged on bushes love to be

While some choose cradles on the highest tree

There rocked by winds they feel no moods of fear

But joy their birthright lives forever near

And the bold eagle which man’s fear enshrouds

Would could he lodge it house upon the clouds

While little wrens mistrusting none that come

In each low hovel meet a sheltered home

Flowers in the wisdom of creative choice

Seem blest with feeling and a silent voice

Some on the barren roads delight to bloom

And others haunt the melancholy tomb

Where Death the blight of all finds summer’s hours

Too kind to miss him with her host of flowers

Some flourish in the sun and some the shade

Who almost in his morning smiles would fade

These in leaf-darkened woods right timid stray

And in its green night smile their lives away

Others in water live and scarcely seem

To peep their little flowers above the stream

While water lilies in their glories come

And spread green isles of beauty round their home

All share the summer’s glory and its good

And taste of joy in each peculiar mood

Insects of varied taste in rapture share

The heyday luxuries which she comes to heir

In wild disorder various routs they run

In water, earth, still shade and busy sun

And in the crowd of green earth’s busy claims

They e’en grow nameless mid so many names

And man – that noble insect restless man

Whose thoughts scale heaven in its mighty span

Pours forth his living soul in many a shade

And taste runs riot in her every grade…

…The man of science in discovery’s moods

Roams oer the furze-clad heath’s leaf-buried woods

And by the simple brook in rapture finds

Treasures that wake the laugh of vulgar hinds

Who see no further in his dark employs

Than village childern seeking after toys

Then clownish hearts and ever heedless eyes

Find nought in nature they as wealth can prize

With them self-interest and the thoughts of gain

Are nature’s beauties – all beside are vain

But he the man of science and of taste

Sees wealth far richer in the worthless waste

Where bits of lichen and a sprig of moss

Will all the raptures of his mind engross

And bright-winged insects on the flowers of May

Shine pearls too wealthy to be cast away

His joys run riot ’mid each juicy blade

Of grass where insects revel in the shade

And minds of different moods will oft condemn

His taste as cruel such the deeds to them

While he unconscious gibbets butterflies

And strangles beetles all to make us wise

Tastes rainbow vision’s own unnumbered hues

And every shade its sense of taste pursues

The heedless mind may laugh the clown may stare

They own no soul to look for pleasure there

Their grosser feelings in a coarser dress

Mock at the wisdom which they can’t possess

Some in recordless rapture love to breathe

Nature’s wild Eden wood and field and heath

In common blades of grass his thoughts will raise

A world of beauty to admire and praise

Until his heart oerflows with swarms of thought

To that great Being who raised life from nought

The common weed adds graces to his mind

And gleams in beauty few beside may find

Associations sweet each object breeds

And fine ideas upon fancy feeds

He loves not flowers because they shed perfumes

Or butterflies alone for painted plumes

Or birds for singing although sweet it be

But he doth love the wild and meadow lea

There hath the flower its dwelling place and there

The butterfly goes dancing through the air

He loves each desolate neglected spot

That seems in labour’s hurry left forgot

The warped and punished trunk of stunted oak

Freed from its bonds but by the thunder stroke

As crampt by straggling ribs of ivy sere

There the glad bird makes home for half the year

But take these several beings from their homes

Each beauteous thing a withered thought becomes

Association fades and like a dream

They are but shadows of the things they seem

Torn from their homes and happiness they stand

The poor dull captives of a foreign land

Some spruce and delicate ideas feed

With them disorder is an ugly weed

And wood and heath a wilderness of thorns

No gardener sheers nor fashions nor adorns

No spots give pleasure so forlorn and bare

But gravel walks would work rich wonders there

With such wild natures beauty’s run to waste

And art’s strong impulse mars the truth of taste

Such are the various moods that taste displays

Surrounding wisdom in concentring rays

Where threads of light from one bright focus run

As day’s proud halo circles round the sun

↑

From I’ll Dream Upon the Days to Come

I’ll lay me down on the greensward

Mid yellow cups and speedwell blue

And pay the world no more regard

But be to nature loyal and true

Who breaks the peace of hapless man

But they who truth and nature wrong?

I’ll hear not more of evil’s plan

But live with nature and her song

Where nature’s lights and shades are green

Where nature’s place is strewn with flowers

Where strife and care are never seen

There I’ll retire to happy hours

And stretch my body on the green

And sleep among the flowers in bloom

By eyes of malice seldom seen

And dream upon the days to come

↑

The Flitting

I’ve left my own old home of homes

Green fields and every pleasant place

The summer like a stranger comes

I pause and hardly know her face

I miss the hazel’s happy green

The blue bell’s quiet hanging blooms

Where envy’s sneer was never seen

Where staring malice never comes

I miss the heath its yellow furze

Molehills and rabbit tracks that lead

Through beesom ling and teazel burrs

That spread a wilderness indeed

The woodland oaks and all below

That their white powdered branches shield

The mossy paths – the very crow

Croaks music in my native field

I sit me in my corner chair

That seems to feel itself from home

And hear bird music here and there

From hawthorn hedge and orchard come

I hear but all is strange and new

I sat on my old bench in June

The sailing puddock’s shrill ‘peelew’

On Royce Wood seemed a sweeter tune

I walk adown the narrow lane

The nightingale is singing now

But like to me she seems at loss

For Royce Wood and its shielding bough

I lean upon the window sill

The trees and summer happy seem

Green sunny green they shine but still

My heart goes far away to dream

Of happiness, and thoughts arise

With home-bred pictures many a one

Green lanes that shut out burning skies

And old crooked stiles to rest upon

Above them hangs the maple tree

Below grass swells a velvet hill

And little footpaths sweet to see

Go seeking sweeter places still

With bye and bye a brook to cross

Oer which a little arch is thrown

No brook is here – I feel the loss

From home and friends and all alone

The stone pit with its shelvy sides

Seemed hanging rocks in my esteem

I miss the prospect far and wide

From Langley Bush and so I seem

Alone and in a stranger scene

Far far from spots my heart esteems

The closen with their ancient green

Heaths woods and pastures, sunny streams

The hawthorns here were hung with may

But still they seem in deader green

The sun e’en seems to lose its way

Nor knows the quarter it is in

I dwell in trifles like a child

I feel as ill becomes a man

And still my thoughts like weedlings wild

Grow up to blossom where they can

They turn to places known so long

I feel that joy was dwelling there

So home-fed pleasure fills the song

That has no present joys to hear

I read in books for happiness

But books are like the sea to joy

They change – as well give age the glass

To hunt its visage when a boy

For books they follow fashions new

And throw all old esteems away

In crowded streets flowers never grew

But many there hath died away

Some sing the pomps of chivalry

As legends of the ancient time

Where gold and pearls and mystery

Are shadows painted for sublime

But passions of sublimity

Belong to plain and simpler things

And David underneath a tree

Sought when a shepherd Salem’s springs

Where moss did into cushions spring

Forming a seat of velvet hue

A small unnoticed trifling thing

To all but heaven’s hailing dew

And David’s crown hath passed away

Yet poesy breathes his shepherd-skill

His palace lost – and to this day

The little moss is blossoming still

Strange scenes mere shadows are to me

Vague impersonifying things

I love with my old haunts to be

By quiet woods and gravel springs

Where little pebbles wear as smooth

As hermits’ beads by gentle floods

Whose noises do my spirits soothe

And warm them into singing moods

Here every tree is strange to me

All foreign things where eer I go

There’s none where boyhood made a swee

Or clambered up to rob a crow

No hollow tree or woodland bower

Well known when joy was beating high

Where beauty ran to shun a shower

And love took pains to keep her dry

And laid the sheaf upon the ground

To keep her from the dripping grass

And ran for stocks and set them round

Till scarce a drop of rain could pass

Through where the maidens they reclined

And sung sweet ballads now forgot

Which brought sweet memories to the mind

But here no memory knows them not

There have I sat by many a tree

And leaned oer many a rural stile

And conned my thoughts as joys to me

Nought heeding who might frown or smile

Twas nature’s beauty that inspired

My heart with rapture not its own

And she’s a fame that never tires

How could I feel myself alone?

No – pasture molehills used to lie

And talk to me of sunny days

And then the glad sheep resting bye

All still in ruminating praise

Of summer and the pleasant place

And every weed and blossom too

Was looking upward in my face

With friendship's welcome ‘how do ye do’

All tenants of an ancient place

And heirs of noble heritage

Coeval they with Adam’s race

And blest with more substantial age

For when the world first saw the sun

These little flowers beheld him too

And when his love for earth begun

They were the first his smiles to woo

There little lambtoe bunches springs

In red tinged and begolden dye

For ever and like China kings

They come but never seem to die

There may-bloom with its little threads

Still comes upon the thorny bowers

And ne’er forgets those prickly heads

Like fairy pins amid the flowers

And still they bloom as on the day

They first crowned wilderness and rock

When Abel haply wreathed with may

The firstlings of his little flock

And Eve might from the matted thorn

To deck her lone and lovely brow

Reach that same rose that heedless scorn

Misnames as the dog rosey now

Give me no high-flown fangled things

No haughty pomp in marching chime

Where muses play on golden strings

And splendour passes for sublime

Where cities stretch as far as fame

And fancy’s straining eye can go

And piled until the sky for shame

Is stooping far away below

I love the verse that mild and bland

Breathes of green fields and open sky

I love the muse that in her hand

Bears flowers of native poesy

Who walks nor skips the pasture brook

In scorn but by the drinking horse

Leans oer its little brig to look

How far the sallows lean across

And feels a rapture in her breast

Upon their root-fringed grains to mark

A hermit morehen’s sedgy nest

Just like a naiad’s summer bark

She counts the eggs she cannot reach

Admires the spot and loves it well

And yearns so nature’s lessons teach

Amid such neighbourhoods to dwell

I love the muse who sits her down

Upon the molehill’s little lap

Who feels no fear to stain her gown

And pauses by the hedgerow gap

Not with that affectation praise

Of song to sing and never see

A field flower grown in all her days

Or e’en a forest’s aged tree

E’en here my simple feelings nurse

A love for every simple weed

And e’en this little shepherd’s purse

Grieves me to cut it up indeed

I feel at times a love and joy

For every weed and every thing

A feeling kindred from a boy

A feeling brought with every Spring

And why? this shepherd’s purse that grows

In this strange spot in days gone bye

Grew in the little garden rows

Of my old home now left and I

Feel what I never felt before

This weed an ancient neighbour here

And though I own the spot no more

Its every trifle makes it dear

The ivy at the parlour end

The woodbine at the garden gate

Are all and each affection’s friend

That render parting desolate

But times will change and friends must part

And nature still can make amends

Their memory lingers round the heart

Like life whose essence is its friends

Time looks on pomp with vengeful mood

Or killing apathy’s disdain

So where old marble cities stood

Poor persecuted weeds remain

She feels a love for little things

That very few can feel beside

And still the grass eternal springs

Where castles stood and grandeur died

Notes

beesom = broom (shrub)

ling = heather

puddock = kite or fork-tailed buzzard

closen = pastures

lambtoe = bird’s-foot trefoil or kidney vetch

Endings

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Decay

O Poesy is on the wane

For Fancy’s visions all unfitting

I hardly know her face again

Nature herself seems on the flitting

The fields grow old and common things

The grass the sky the winds a-blowing

And spots where still a beauty clings

Are sighing ‘going! all a-going!’

O Poesy is on the wane

I hardly know her face again

The bank with brambles overspread

And little molehills round about it

Was more to me than laurel shades

With paths of gravel finely clouted

And streaking here and streaking there

Through shaven grass and many a border

With rutty lanes had no compare

And heaths were in a richer order

But Poesy is on the wane

I hardly know her face again

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 adry

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 oer 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 overswelling

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 hills

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

Note

clouted = clothed

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Approaching Night

O take this world away from me

Its strife I cannot bear to see

Its very praises hurt me more

Than e’en its coldness did before

Its hollow ways torment me now

And start a cold sweat on my brow

Its noise I cannot bear to hear

Its joy is trouble to my ear

Its ways I cannot bear to see

Its crowds are solitudes to me

O how I long to be agen

That poor and independent man

With labour’s lot from morn to night

And books to read at candle light

That followed labour in the field

From light to dark when toil could yield

Real happiness with little gain

Rich thoughtless health unknown to pain

Though leaning on my spade to rest

I’ve thought how richer folks were blest

And knew not quiet was the best

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A Vision

I lost the love of heaven above

I spurned the lust of earth below

I felt the sweets of fancied love

And hell itself my only foe

I lost earth’s joys but felt the glow

Of heaven’s flame abound in me

Till loveliness and I did grow

The bard of immortality

I loved but woman fell away

I hid me from her faded flame

I snatched the sun’s eternal ray

And wrote till earth was but a name

In every language upon earth

On every shore o’er every sea

I gave my name immortal birth

And kept my spirit with the free

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The Poet's Death

The world is taking little heed

And plods from day to day

The vulgar flourish like a weed

The learned pass away

We miss him on the summer path

The lonely summer day

Where mowers cut the pleasant swath

And maidens make the hay

The vulgar take but little heed

The garden wants his care

There lies the book he used to read

There stands the empty chair

The boat laid up, the voyage oer

And passed the stormy wave

The world is going as before

The poet in his grave

↑

Invitation 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 has lost its way

Where the sun forgets the day

Where there’s nor life nor light to see

Sweet maiden wilt thou go 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 non-identity

Where parents live and are forgot

And sisters live and know us not

Say maiden wilt thou go with me

In this 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 below around us lie

*

↑

Sources and Copyright

Poems published in Clare’s lifetime:

Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery. London, 1820

The Village Minstrel, and Other Poems. London, 1821

The Shepherd's Calendar with Village Stories and Other Poems. London, 1827

The Rural Muse. London, 1835

Other sources used for this volume:

Poems by John Clare, ed. Norman Gale (Rugby Press, 1901)

Poems by John Clare, ed. Arthur Symons (H. Frowde, 1908)

John Clare, Poems: Chiefly from Manuscript, ed. Edmund Blunden and Alan Porter (Cobden-Sanderson, 1920)

Madrigals and Chronicles: being newly found Poems written by John Clare, ed. Edmund Blunden  (Beaumont Press, 1924)

Poems of John Clare, ed. J. W. Tibble (Dent 1935)

John Clare: The Midsummer Cushion, ed. Anne Tibble (Carcenet Press 1979)

The copyright of some of John Clare’s poems has been claimed by Professor Eric Robinson, editor of John Clare: Poems of the Middle Period, 1822-1837, published in 5 volumes up to 2003 by the Clarendon Press. Prof Robinson has claimed a 25 year copyright over the unpublished and some previously published poems, although this has been disputed and the current copyright position is not clear.

The poems in this collection have been taken not from Prof. Robinson’s work but from the other published sources listed above. While they are therefore in the public domain, they are not authoritative versions. For more definitive editions of Clare’s poetry, the selections published by Penguin and Oxford University Press and edited by Prof. Robinson are recommended.

The notes were compiled with the aid of Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary (1903) and a useful glossary at:  https://dawnpiper.wordpress.com/land-words/

Other books in this series:

English Poetry of Landscape: an Anthology 1370 – 1928

The Poetry of Sleep: an Anthology 1370 – 1930

Tennyson: Selected Poems

John Keats: Selected Poems

John Donne: Selected Poems

W.B. Yeats: Selected Poems

All these are available to download as free ebooks from www.englishliteratureebooks.com.

They have been compiled as labours of love; you are welcome to copy or share them for any non-commercial purpose.

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