selected poems by john clare

An A level English Workbook

by

Julia Geddes, Kitty Graham and Helen Ince

~ Wessex Publications ~

Selected Poemsby

John Clare

Other workbooks in this series include:

A level GCSEThe Miller's Tale I'm the King of the CastleThe Franklin's Tale The Lord of the FliesThe Wife of Bath's Tale and Prologue War PoetryThe Merchant's Tale MacbethThe Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale An Inspector CallsThe Prologue to the Canterbury Tales To Kill a MockingbirdMuch Ado About Nothing Of Mice and MenHamlet Romeo and JulietMeasure for Measure Twelfth NightKing LearThe Merchant of VeniceThe Winter’s TaleThe Poems of John DonneThe Poetry of Edward ThomasPoems of Seamus HeaneyMean TimeThe Whitsun WeddingsHigh WindowsDead Sea PoemsSongs of Innocence and Songs of ExperienceChoice of Christina Rossetti’s VerseThree Victorian PoetsSelected Poems by John KeatsWordsworth - PreludeWomen Romantic PoetsHigh WindowsThe World’s WifeGreat ExpectationsJane EyreMansfield ParkThe Handmaid’s TaleGulliver’s TravelsDublinersReturn of the NativeHard TimesA Passage to IndiaTess of the d’UrbervillesCaptain Corelli’s MandolinEnduring LoveSnow Falling on CedarsThe Great GatsbySpiesCold MountainWise ChildrenEdward IIA Doll’s HouseThe RivalsThe Glass MenagerieMurmuring JudgesThe Country WifeDr FaustusThe Duchess of MalfiA Street Car Named DesireVolponeA Woman of No ImportanceAll My SonsDeath of a SalesmanThe School for ScandalEnglish Language TopicsEnglish Critical AppreciationCommunications - Semiotics and the MediaEnglish Language Change

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

The contents of this publication remain the copyright property of the publishers. They may be copiedonly within the purchasing institution. Any copying beyond these limits is illegal.

©Wessex Publications

About the authors of this workbook

Julia Geddes, Kitty Graham and Helen Ince are very experienced teachers and examiners of ALevel English Literature. They work together in the English Department of a successful Sixth FormCollege in Leeds.

All materials available from:

Wessex PublicationsElwell House

StocklinchIlminster

Somerset TA19 9JFTel/Fax: 01460 55660

or by [email protected]

The material in this package is fully photocopiable for use within the purchasinginstitution. In addition, you will, of course, need a copy of John Clare,Everyman's Poetry.

We recommend that students read the poems first, at least once, on their own or asa group, in order to get a sound grasp of the text. The workbook examines variousaspects of a variety of poems in the collection and presents the students with ideas,questions, and activities to help them develop their own understanding andinterpretation. The workbook also contains a brief section on how to study poetryand a collection of revision questions, which will help students prepare for theexamination.

It will be necessary to photocopy the workbook for each student. You could giveeach student a guide to keep, but we suggest that you spiral bind or staple them andretain them for future use. The answer boxes may be used but you will probablyprefer students to answer in their notebooks for reasons of cost. However, the sizeof each box will enable students to gauge how much to write and will make iteasier to discuss answers with individuals and groups.

The workbook is written and presented in a similar way to Open University/OpenCollege materials and is intended to be interactive and student-centred. Thepackage is far more than a revision aid or potted guide. Its purpose is both tosupport the students and to enable them to work at their own pace. The StudyWorkbook is written for the student. It can be used in a variety of ways including:

• alongside class work and group work led by the lecturer/teacher/tutor• individual supported-self study (flexible learning) work in class• individual work carried out at home• paired or small group work.

Teacher Guide

Selected Poems

by John Clare

About the workbook

Using the materials

The CD provides you with three versions of the workbook:

• the complete workbook with questions, answer boxes and author's responses• the workbook with tasks and answer boxes only• the author's responses only.

Each of the above may be loaded onto your school/college Intranet or printed offseparately. This will give you complete flexibility to use the materials as you seefit.

The pack is not intended as a substitute for the teacher/lecturer. In our view it isessential that she/he supports the student throughout by providing:

• an introduction to the poems• explanation when needed• guidance and support, individually and within small groups• regular checks of the student’s work.

Note

Tasks are written using Times New Roman font, and the author's suggestedcomments/answers/responses to them are given in a different font (Arial) to enablestudents to pick them out more easily.

The lecturer’s/teacher’s role

Using the CD version of the workbook

An A level English Student Guide

by

Julia Geddes, Kitty Graham and Helen Ince

~ Wessex Publications ~

Selected Poemsby

John Clare

CONTENTS

Page

Using the Workbook ......................................................................................1

How to Study Poetry ......................................................................................2

John Clare 1793 - 1864 ..................................................................................3

The PoemsA Country Village Year.................................................................................6

December from ‘The Shepherd’s Calendar’: Christmas ...............................6Sonnet: ‘The barn door is open’ ...................................................................11The Wheat Ripening......................................................................................13The Beans in Blossom ...................................................................................16Sonnet: ‘The landscape laughs in Spring’ .....................................................19Sonnet: ‘I dreaded walking where there was no path’...................................21Sonnet: ‘The passing traveller’......................................................................23Sport in the Meadows....................................................................................25Emmonsales Heath ........................................................................................27Summer Tints ................................................................................................31The Summer Shower .....................................................................................33Summer Moods..............................................................................................36Sonnet: ‘The maiden ran away’.....................................................................39Song: ‘She tied up her few things’ ................................................................42The Foddering Boy........................................................................................46The Gipsy Camp............................................................................................48Winter Fields .................................................................................................50The Cottager ..................................................................................................53The Crow Sat on the Willow .........................................................................55from ‘The Parish’...........................................................................................58St Martin’s Eve..............................................................................................62

Birds and Beasts .............................................................................................65The Wren .......................................................................................................65Sonnet: The Crow..........................................................................................66Sonnet: ‘I love to hear the evening crows go by’ ..........................................68The Skylark ...................................................................................................69Sonnet: ‘Among the orchard weeds’ .............................................................71The Landrail ..................................................................................................72Sonnet: The Nightingale................................................................................73The Nightingale’s Nest..................................................................................74The Yellowhammer’s Nest............................................................................76The Pettichap’s Nest......................................................................................78Sonnets: The Hedgehog.................................................................................79Sonnet: ‘One day when all the woods were bare’ .........................................81Sonnet: ‘I found a ball of grass among the hay’............................................82The Ants ........................................................................................................83Little Trotty Wagtail......................................................................................84

CONTENTS (continued)

Page

Love..................................................................................................................86Song: ‘The morning mist is changing blue’ ..................................................86First Love’s Recollections .............................................................................88Ballad: ‘I dreamt not what it was to woo’ .....................................................90Song: ‘Say what is love’................................................................................91Song: ‘Love lies beyond’...............................................................................92Ballad: ‘The Spring returns, the pewit screams’ ...........................................94An Invite to Eternity ......................................................................................96Love and Memory .........................................................................................98

Loss and the Politics of Nature ......................................................................101Remembrances...............................................................................................101The Flitting ....................................................................................................103Decay, a Ballad..............................................................................................107Song: Last Day ..............................................................................................110The Fallen Elm ..............................................................................................111The Lament of Swordy Well ........................................................................113The Moors .....................................................................................................115

John Clare, Poet .............................................................................................118‘I Am’ ............................................................................................................118A Vision.........................................................................................................119To John Clare ................................................................................................120Song: ‘A seaboy on the giddy mast’..............................................................121The Peasant Poet............................................................................................122Sighing for Retirement ..................................................................................123Song’s Eternity ..............................................................................................125Glinton Spire .................................................................................................127The Eternity of Nature...................................................................................128Shadows of Taste...........................................................................................130To be Placed at the Back of his Portrait ........................................................133Memory .........................................................................................................135

Essay Questions ..............................................................................................137

Selected Poems by John Clare Using the Workbook

www.wessexpublications.co.uk - 1 -

Before you begin your study of John Clare’s poems, it is important thatyou have read each one carefully and that you are familiar with whateach poem is saying. The workbook examines a variety of poems andincludes all of those set for study by AQA (specification A). Thisworkbook will, however, offer you enough variety to be able to answerquestions set by any examination board as all areas of Clare’s style,attitudes and themes have been explored.

You will be asked to complete tasks as you progress through theprescribed selection of poetry. All the tasks are designed to help youto look carefully at the poems and to come to an understanding of themain themes and ideas that are being raised in each one.

In addition to writing in the workbook, it is advisable to keep your ownfuller notes in a notebook or ring binder. These will be an importantrevision aid if you are going to answer questions on these poems in anexamination.

At the end of the workbook you will find a number of specimenquestions of the kind that you might find in a GCE Literatureexamination. If you are going to answer questions on these poems inan examination, it would be very useful to you to practise writinganswers to several of these.

Good luck and happy studying.

USING THE WORKBOOK

The text:

Selected Poems – John Clare (Everyman’s Poetry)

Selected Poems by John Clare How to Study Poetry


In this book we shall be looking at a selection of poems written byClare. This selection covers differing styles of his writing and all itsimportant themes. The aim of this workbook is to lead you through thepoems, guide your thinking and enable you to respond in an informedand confident way to the variety of material prescribed for GCE Alevel study. However, before we embark on this process, it is importantto consider how we study poetry.

As in the study of prose, two key words are important, HOW andWHY: how is a poet using language and why has he chosen to use aparticular image or symbol. It is always useful to remind yourself ofthe technical terms used to describe figurative language. The mainthing to remember is that, if you are going to use these terms, you mustunderstand how and why the poet has chosen to employ them. It is notuseful just to make reference to a technical term and then to move onwith no discussion about the writer’s craft.

HOW TO STUDY POETRY

Selected Poems by John Clare John Clare 1793-1864


John Clare is usually considered to be one of the Romantic poets andthis is an identification which he probably would have welcomed. Hewas an admirer of Byron and a particular fan of Wordsworth, whosework he found “so natural and beautiful” even after, he confessed,expecting to dislike it. Though Clare never really got to know themajor Romantics, he moved on the edges of their circle. On his rarevisits to London, he met Coleridge on one trip and, in fact, sharedKeats’s publisher, John Taylor. Clare’s poems reflect some of thevalues and explore many of the themes associated with the Romanticpoets though his own preoccupations and beliefs are occasionally atodds with theirs.

The Romantic poets were passionate about the natural world, seeing init reflections of the eternal. (They did tend to differ from each otherabout what they imagined the eternal to be.) Clare’s preoccupationwith nature was considerable but it had a different source from otherRomantics: he was of the country in a way that none of the otherswere. Born in the village of Helpstone (now Helpston) inNorthamptonshire in 1793 and raised there, he was the son of anillegitimate thresher and the grandson of a shepherd (though hispaternal grandfather had been a schoolteacher) and lived in this area(in the same house until he was thirty-eight) throughout his life. Hehad little formal education after the age of twelve but was an avid andeclectic reader, borrowing books and saving money to pay for his owngrowing collection. Though he claimed that, above all, he would haveliked to write the popular tale, Cock Robin, he was a discerning critic.Until his poetry attracted the attention of patrons who were able tosubsidise him, he held down a variety of short-lived menial jobsranging from ploughboy, under gardener, lime burner, potboy togeneral bar person and even, briefly, private soldier. He had alsoeducated himself to a high enough standard to give private lessons tothe children of his neighbours. However, in his final long confinementin Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, which lasted from 1841 tohis death in 1864, his occupation was given as “gardening”.

Clare began writing poetry secretly as a boy. He would read outexamples to his parents which he pretended were others’ works whichhe had copied to help him practise his handwriting. Local booksellers,clergy and gentry took him under their wings and, eventually, he beganto be published as “the Northamptonshire Peasant” by John Taylor,who happened to be the cousin of a Stamford grocer. Clare embarkedon the life of a minor celebrity, at least locally, and the tag of “PeasantPoet” outlived him. He seems always to have been slightly ambivalentabout it. He wrote that he had become “the stranger’s poppet show”and that his wife and mother complained of the stream of visitors to thehouse. However, he courted his celebrity to some extent, was verywatchful of other local poets whose fame might eclipse his own and

JOHN CLARE 1793 - 1864

John Clare aged 26



always presented his work to the publisher with idiosyncratic spelling,a minimum of punctuation and numerous dialect expressions andgrammar. He also claimed that he wrote “in great haste” and neverrevised his work. He declared himself, with some pride, “untutored”and insisted that “I will not use low origin as an excuse for what I havewritten”, remarking dryly that “the Fens are not a literary part ofEngland”.

Clare’s obsession with nature had another spur: in 1809, Parliamentagreed on legislation which enclosed a great deal of England’scommon land. Ordinary people, such as Clare, were now forbidden toroam over vast areas where they had previously been allowed to go.This was a particular blow to Clare. He had been rather private as aboy – he described himself as “timid and superstitious” - and he lovedto skip school or church (preferring, as he said, “the religion of thefields”) to embark on long walks in the country where he would thinkor write. Though he became more sociable – and his autobiographicalwritings reveal the sort of scrapes, usually involving women or drink,typical of a young man of his background – this fervent enthusiasm forsolitary rambles was a habit which he maintained until he wasincarcerated (and even after – early in 1841, he escaped from anasylum in Epping Forest and walked the eighty miles home).

Unlike some of the Romantics, whose origins were less humble andwhose rural leanings are sometimes sentimental, Clare’s countryside isknown and known in detail. It is the recognisable country of his ownexperiences, as Wordsworth’s was the Lakes. So his poems are full ofthe Fens with their characteristic sweeps of flat land, large skies,woods, specific animals, plants and their habitats and habits and,crucially too, the relationships and personalities of the people wholived there. These were the subjects not only of Clare’s poetry but ofall his writings and he is a complete authority on them, examiningthem with minute precision. He wrote a natural history of his area andhis autobiographical sketches are a fascinating record of all the peoplehe knew, very sharply and amusingly recollected. He believed in them,trusted their instincts, respected their loyalties and traditions. And hebelieved in the power of nature to inspire, to protect, to nurture and todelight. Some critics have stressed that Clare identifies poetry andnature – not just allowing that poetry can record nature but also thatthey are the same creative, imaginative impulse.

The outlook of the child was privileged in Clare as it was in others ofthe Romantics. His poems frequently feature “noising children” whoseenthusiasm for life is portrayed as exemplary – and though his villageyouths will often rob a nest, they will also put in a hard day’s work andtake pleasure in it. He wrote in his autobiographical sketches that hehad found “nothing but poetry about childhood, nothing of poetryabout manhood” - a classic Romantic sentiment.



Like many of the Romantics, Clare had a fairly conventional set ofreligious beliefs; unlike many of them, he did not bring nameless neo-Grecian deities into his work although his personification of nature andthe seasons sometimes suggest that he saw them as real entities and hecould be vague – in his autobiography, he wrote, “I feel a beautifulprovidence ever about me.” He tended to stick to a simple belief inGod, was a fan of John Wesley and had a particular aversion forreligious cant or hypocrisy. “Act justly, speak truth, love mercy” wasthe basis of his creed; in matters of religion, he said, “With the old dishthat was served to my forefathers I am content. I never did like therunnings and racings after novelty in any thing.” (His poetry notablyreveres the ancient and the traditional, whether this be people, customs,old buildings, even long-standing stretches of wood.) He wassuperstitious but a little ashamed of being so.

Clare’s was an unexpectedly complex personality. To an extent he ledsomething of a fantasy life, visualising himself as a Dick Whittington,the poor boy who rose to fame, not quite sure where he fitted in. Hehad a strong sense of his vocation as a poet and of the mission ofpoetry itself. His autobiographical writings reveal him as refreshinglyhonest, sensible, self-deprecating, intelligent and funny, capable ofsome very sophisticated writing which was characterised by long,finely turned sentences. He was, by his own admission, scruffy andawkward, often diffident in the presence of strangers, absent-mindedand disposed to be easily led and sometimes, he felt, duped. “My wholelife has been a first of April,” he wrote gloomily in his journal. Heconfessed that he had a “heated spirit” which inclined him to bursts oftemper. Weak health, physical and later mental, overshadowed his lifefrom birth. His love life could be complicated: though he seems tohave worked hard at his marriage to Martha (Patty) Turner (he said thathe “esteemed her by choice”) and was clearly devoted to their children,he might not have married her but for her pregnancy and he neverforgot his first love, Mary Joyce. It is thought that Mary’s familyconsidered him a poor match for her and he met Patty soon after thebreak-up of his relationship with Mary. However, in his asylum years,he frequently referred to Mary as his wife and several of his lovepoems mention her by name. She died unmarried shortly after hismental health began to break down irretrievably.

The poems themselves differ quite markedly in quality from eachother. Clare has often been compared with Thomas Hardy, and likehim, he has composed some verses which seem little more thanchildish ditties; whereas some of his poems not only deal withprofound subject matter but feature majestic lines, precise diction,evocative imagery and elevated and sustained argument. Most have thering of truth about them if only in the accurately observed detail of hissurroundings. Clare’s preference was for “the verse that mild andbland / Breathes of green fields and open sky”; and this, in general, heachieves in his own work.

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: December


The Shepherd’s Calendar was Clare’s third collection of poems. Itwas started in August 1823 and published four years later. This was avery eventful period of Clare’s life. On his third visit to London, fromMay to August 1924, he met Coleridge and De Quincey and witnessedByron’s funeral procession passing through the streets. This was aspectacle which moved him deeply especially as he saw how thecommon people were touched – “they felt by a natural impulse that themighty was fallen and they mournd in saddend silence” – andcompared it with the hypocritical responses which appeared in thenewspapers (Byron’s personal life and some of his political views hadmade him a target for “the Reverend the moral and fastidious”). Whenhe came home, he resolved to keep a journal and wrote it diligently forabout a year, recording a prodigious amount of reading and letter-writing, details of his often problematical relations with his publishers,visits to and from friends and neighbours, family anniversaries, “Newspaper Odditys”, the occasional slightly pessimistic observation, forinstance on the fickleness of friendship, and, particularly noticeably,the obsessive minutiae of his natural surroundings. In addition topoems, he busied himself with writing a Natural History of Helpstone.The generally rather poor health which had plagued him all his life (hewas the sicklier of twins but his more robust sister died soon afterbirth) was becoming more of a problem although the mental illnesswhich led to his being incarcerated in asylums for the last twenty-seven years of his life was some way off.

December: Christmas is a curious extract for twenty-first centuryreaders revealing, as it does, a world familiar only from old-fashionedChristmas cards. Though Clare’s religious beliefs incorporated anacceptance of the gospel narrative, there is no mention of thetraditional story here. Instead, Christmas is personified as a visitor forwhom ‘every hearth / Makes room to give … welcome’, who is ‘E’en’greeted fulsomely by want itself who will ‘dry its tears in mirth / Andcrown him wi’ a holly bough.’

If Clare is not exploring the religious aspect of Christmas how does hecharacterise the season and what seem to be his purposes here? Writeyour thoughts in the box below:

TASK 1

THE POEMS: A COUNTRY VILLAGE YEAR

December from ‘The Shepherd’s Calendar’: Christmas

continue over



Here are some of our ideas to add to your own:

• He stresses the importance of the season to the village as acommunity. Feuds and indifference are forgotten as ‘Neighboursresume their annual cheer’ as though this was the one time whenthe villagers remembered to emphasise their interdependence andpleasure in each other. ‘Every morning passer by’ is included.Friends pass the time together ‘in a harmless way’, implying thatvillage life was often not very harmonious.

• Clare develops his characterisation of the village community bydepicting individual villagers through their own preoccupations.Milkmaids pick a ‘favoured swain’ to accompany them on‘Christmas journeys’, children are anxious to sample ‘granny’scake’ and ‘pleased as ’neath the warmth of May’ to skate on the‘water froze to glass’ and endear themselves by shyly ‘ ‘tween theirparents’ knees’ trying out their ‘scraps of carols’. The shepherd isauthorised by the season to ‘kiss the giggling maid’ under themistletoe. Singers more merry than tuneful can ‘throng’ to sing ‘atearly morn’. The Morris dancers, ‘Bedecked in masks and ribbonsgay … strut’ like real actors. The wassail singer gives her annualturn. The apprentice boy, his face reddened by the cold and withice in his hair demands ‘his ‘Christmas box’.’ Even the cats maycatch the ‘falling crumbs’.

• Christmas is described as a well earned holiday but one whichneeds to be worked for too. ‘The huswife sets her spinning by’ butsomeone still has to make sure that ‘Each house is swept the daybefore’ and ‘The snow is besomed from the door’. Clare gives us adetailed list of all the Christmas decorations and tells us exactlywhere they are to go, warning of the ‘thorny pricks’ which the hollybears, describing all the processes by which ‘the cotter’ trims ivy‘To decorate his chimney nook.’

• As is characteristic of most of Clare’s poetry, the natural featuresare described in vivid and intricate detail. Perhaps most interestingfor the modern reader is the portrayal of a winter where snow is along-term fixture. ‘Icles’ are everywhere. The snow is so deep thatit necessitates ‘tramping’ and routinely settles thickly in doorwaysand encrusts window panes. Especially vivid is the extendedmetaphor towards the end of the poem where ‘fancy’s infantecstasy’, the ‘love o’er visions’ that characterises the youngpeople, has them ‘Climb up the window seat wi’ glee’ to see thesnow, imagining that it is ‘falling feathers’ and that ‘people pullinggeese above’ are ‘keeping Christmas in the skies.’ Clare knowsthat ivy has a ‘veining bough’ and mistletoe ‘pear-like-berries’. Theweather is nasty – the storm ‘dies and swells / By fits’ though it isseasonably overtaken by the ‘hummings’ of the church bells.

• Clare sets up an opposition between personified ‘Old Winter’ andmirth whose joy is as animated as ‘Summer bees’. The warmth ofthe ‘blazing’ hearths means that winter soon ‘wipes his icles by’and ‘smiles’. Fires are so hot that winter is eventually actually



repulsed as the ‘warmth of May’ means that he ‘rubs his shins anddraws away.’

• Tastes and smells enhance the vivid aural visual and tactiledetails. Ale is described as ‘creaming … flowering’, the ‘yule cake’is ‘dotted thick wi’ plums’, the ‘long hung’ joint is ‘sage-stuffed’.

• As he paints a vibrant picture for the readers, Clare does not losea chance to underline two of his perennial themes.

• Whatever ‘customs’ have lasted, however ‘simple’ they may be,deserve respect – they have ‘sanction found’. Only ‘the haughtymind’ considers itself above such things. Other poems in thiscollection attack the fate of individuals, whose pride has been theirdownfall, quite savagely; here Clare touches on a favourite topicmore obliquely. Traditions such as those of Christmas empowerindividuals, Clare argues – the shepherd is ‘no more afraid’, rusticchoirs can ‘imitate the angels’ song’, the clowns can turn kings forthe Morris play, people can give in to harmless superstitions andflights of fancy. Imagination is allowed to run free as snowbecomes ‘dancing leaves’ and ‘April grass’.

• Clare’s belief in the power, the necessity of poetry is nowheremore strongly urged. Soon poetry will be the ‘only refuge’ these oldrituals will have in a more cynical world which is already, as thepale mistletoe implies, ‘a shadow … of what hath been’. Oldcustoms ‘fade’ as people slavishly follow ‘fashion’.

This poem does not just celebrate tradition but explores the power andvalue of memory in our lives. How does Clare use his personalreminiscences to drive home his message?

TASK 2



Here are a few of our thoughts:

• Using personification, he examines his own relationship with theseason, hailing Christmas as ‘thou day of happy sound and mirth’.

• He focuses again on the child’s perspective with details ofchildren’s toys and sweets, not forgetting to tell us what the sweetstasted like or how the toys were played with – or even smashed.Authenticity is added with the glimpse of parent-child dynamic asgifts are begged with promises that ‘tomorrow’s lesson’ will belearned well.

• There is poignancy in the reflection that adults are not supposed tolong for such simple joys (‘manhood bids such raptures die’) – yetmemory, personified as a perhaps beguiling female, coaxes him to‘talk such pleasure o’er again.’

• The poem ends wistfully. Friends part, pleased with each other, alittle drunk, while the cotter remembers the religious element to theday – but his ‘zeal’ is ‘quiet’. Meanwhile stolen kisses and maybemore are exchanged, under cover of screens, by the village’syoung people. More wine is brought out - but only with which todrink ‘Goodbye’.

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Sonnet: ‘The barn door is open’


This simple sonnet does little more than list typical country images andits jaunty tetrameter robs it of the gravity usually associated with thesonnet form. However, though it is not one of Clare’s more profoundworks, it would be a mistake to disregard this poem. The details withwhich he characterises his villagers and scenes are so meticulouslychosen that the scenes almost have the force of vignettes and the linesare carefully crafted.

What elements of style and form lift the poem above the trite?


• The form of this poem is reminiscent of nursery rhymes whichattempt the same thing – that is, to characterise a community.Clare uses the nursery rhyme device of repetition (nearly all thelines begin in exactly the same way) to link the village characterssecurely together and thus emphasise this sense of community.

Sonnet: ‘The barn door is open’

TASK 3

Tithe barn

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Sonnet: ‘The barn door is open’


The correlation of the people, animals and implements is alsohighlighted by the poet’s use of caesura in every line. Theindustriousness of the village is underlined by the repetition of‘ready to’, qualifying the barn door and the wagon. This suggests agroup of people which is always effective and on the go, so muchso that even the buildings and the vehicles themselves are on thealert, eager to be filled. The poem concludes with a couplet whichsums up the variety of animal life and ends on the word ‘together’which seems to incorporate not just the cows but the whole villagesociety.

• The visual details which Clare selects provide very vivid picturesfor the readers. Particularly striking are the precise differencesbetween the hen’s habitat (‘the dust’) and the hog’s (‘the dirt’) andthe way that Clare stresses the mower’s “busy” attitude by tellingus that he is ‘stripped in his shirt’.

• As he does so well, Clare is also keen to differentiate between hissubjects, suggesting a range of personalities and relationships.The maiden has ‘little to say’ and ‘hurries away’ – has thewoodman who has called her embarrassed her? The hardworkingmower is contrasted with the ploughman who seems unwilling toleave his ale (perhaps the source of his ‘merry’ mood). The adultsare juxtaposed with the schoolboy – that only one is mentionedhere could imply that the lad is skipping school. Even the animalsare shown to have different preoccupations, some happy to beeating or ‘running about’, some less happy with their lot as ‘thehogs … a-noising’ who ‘try to get out’ and the ass ‘at his tether’.

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: The Wheat Ripening


This is an altogether more sophisticated poem, not just because of theprecision and originality of Clare’s descriptions but because of the wayin which he accurately captures a series of moods. The poem is writtenin iambic pentameter, which is the metre traditionally used in Britishpoetry when the subject matter is profoundly meaningful. Thus, usingthis rhythm automatically signals to the ear that the poem haspretensions to gravity.

Does the poem live up to these expectations? How does Clare conveythese moods to the readers in a convincing way?

Here are some ideas to add to your own:

• The poem begins with an evocative account of the colours in thelandscape. The colours are very specific: ‘rusty brown’, ‘barley’

The Wheat Ripening

TASK 4



which ‘bleaches’ and ‘mellow grey’ give an impression of a rich butmuted palette. Other striking visual images occur further on in thepoem where the ‘light of waking day’ is described, again veryprecisely, as ‘mealy’ which skilfully captures the pale and mottledappearance of the dawn and where the youthful appeal of themilkmaid is enhanced by the ‘glittering dewdrops’ which ‘moise’her gown ‘And sparkling bounces from her nimble feet’.

• The reflective character of the poem is emphasised by a ratherdiffuse rhyme scheme which forces the reader to concentrate.Even the last two lines seem a little inconclusive – sonnetsgenerally end in rhymed couplets.

• A number of sophisticated poetic devices are employed withconfidence, indicating a writer at ease with his craft. Clare useselision (for instance ‘What time’) without losing clarity, alliteration(for example ‘barley bleaches’, ‘sweet … smooth’, ‘glittering …gown’) to emphasise his most vivid images and to draw attentionto his most attractive idea, that of the girl transforming themundane workday with her singing. He also uses a combination ofalliteration and assonance in ‘Making life light with song’.Enjambment joins with repetition in ‘’Tis sweet … and it is sweet /To mark the grazing herds’ to express the poet’s growing pleasurein the enthusiasm the various villagers show for their jobs; andClare continues to use enjambment (‘list the clown / Urge’,‘unceasing calls / Join’) till the end of the poem to consolidate thissense that everyone is united in enjoying life, health and honesttoil.

• As in the previous poem, all the villagers are distinguished by theiroccupations but here Clare gives us more than visual pictures andthe characters’ personalities and approaches are more developed:the carefree, ‘nimble’, life-enhancing milkmaid; the village youthwho gees up his cows ‘with cheering calls’; the ‘merry shepherd’whose enjoyment of life is portrayed in his ‘whistling’ and thebirdboy whose ‘unceasing’ devotion to his job (and the likelihoodthat his voice is breaking) has made him ‘hoarse-tongued’.

• As in many of his poems Clare makes judicious use of thevocabulary and the grammar of his vernacular (for instance ‘balk’,‘moise’ or the lack of agreement between ‘dewdrops’ and‘bounces’) to earth his images firmly in a particular locality.

• Clare invites us to share his own fervour by encouraging us to‘mark’ and ‘list’ with him.

How does this poem echo Clare’s usual sentiments about rural life?TASK 5

continue over




• Clare emphasises the oneness of the villagers, their beasts andtheir surroundings. ‘Glittering dewdrops’ serve to make themilkmaid even more ‘sparkling’, the clown and ‘his ploughing team’work in unison and the birdboy can aspire to ‘Join the lark’s ditty tothe rising sun.’

• A sense of huge enjoyment pervades the poem, from the ‘sweet’walks outlined in the first few lines to the vocal efforts of milkmaid,clown, shepherd and birdboy.

• All is right with the world as the villagers enjoy their work, theanimals co-operate or graze contentedly and the natural featuresthemselves take pains to paint the scene as beautifully as possibleas the ‘wheat field tinges’ and ‘the barley bleaches’ while the sunpresides over all.

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: The Beans in Blossom


This is another paean to nature, again beginning with a walk in thecountry but this time concentrating more on the natural elements ratherthan the various people who enjoy them.

How does Clare bring out the sheer pleasure of the day in this poem?


• He explores nature via the senses, inviting the readers to feel ‘Thesouthwest wind, how pleasant in the face / It breathes’, listen tothe ‘wild music’ of the blackbird which breaks out in the silence(‘when the rest are still’) and the ‘busy songs’ of the bees, smellthe ‘luscious … scent of blossomed beans’ and the fragrance ofthe clover blossoms as well as feasting our visual senses withvibrant colours: golden, yellow, red, tawny white.

• He describes the walk in a tempting way using words whichemphasise how leisurely and beneficial it is: ‘sauntering … roam’,giving opportunities for ‘musing’. Enjambment, especially in thefirst half of the poem, conveys the sense of the poet’s wandering

TASK 6

The Beans in Blossom



from spot to spot. For Clare, part of the enjoyment seems to be incoming across places to which he is a ‘stranger’ – and here, evenwhen surprised by ‘herd cows’ that often block his path, he is ableto take pleasure in their ‘play’.

What sort of character does Clare give nature here? Is he specific orsimply fulsome?


• There is a typically Romantic, almost Keatsian, lushness about thispoem. Not only do his descriptions appeal to the range of thesenses in an extravagant way but there is a feeling of abandonabout much of what is happening. The blackbird’s music is ‘wild’and he sings when others ‘are still’. The beans spill over the path‘in rich disorder’. The herd cows negligently ‘toss the mole hills intheir play’. Intriguingly, these images contrast with the moreordered picture of the ‘new-ploughed fields’ and the industry of thebees, stressed by the words ‘busy … toils … Load’ and theimplication in ‘spoils’ that they have battled the plants to gain theirnectar – though, even here, there is a suggestion that the beeshave stolen what they should not have and, in ‘luxuriantly’,perhaps decadently taken too much.

TASK 7



• The walk takes the poet through an ‘old wood’: here is hisdistinctive respect for what has stood for a long time. Predictably,the birds who ‘abide’ there are ‘happy’ ones.

• Once more, Clare personifies nature, implying that she isfundamentally generous. Not only does the southwest windbreathe pleasantly on the walker but the summer itself is keen toshare its ‘warm delight’.

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Sonnet: ‘The landscape laughs in Spring’


Once again Clare presents us with very vivid pictures of natural scenesbut he does not seem quite so sure of his focus here: the conclusionthat it is possible to ‘drink a Winter memory of May / When all theseason’s joys have ceased to be’ is a little lame. The fact that this poemis not titled suggests that Clare was perhaps not sure of what it wasabout (though this is only true of some of his untitled poems). Hisusual iambic pentameter is accompanied by a less tight rhyme schemewhich emphasises the poem’s reflective character and fails to concludethe poem on a summative couplet. However, the poem has somepleasing lines and the images of the Fenland landscape in the firstseven lines are particularly evocative.

How does Clare convey his territory so effectively?


• There is a strong sense of the wide spaces of the Fens as Clarepersonifies his landscape, telling us how it ‘stretches on / Its

Sonnet: ‘The landscape laughs in Spring’

TASK 8

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Sonnet: ‘The landscape laughs in Spring’


growing distance’, filling the ‘pewit-haunted (suggesting a lonely,ghostly place dominated by the curlew’s poignant cry) flats’ with ahuge variety of colours now that ‘the floods are gone’.

• The landscape itself ‘laughs’ and its colours are described as‘refreshing’ and ‘merry’ as though they were not only delighting theeye of the onlooker but they too were rejoicing at the arrival ofwarmer weather: the green ‘carpet’ of the meadow is ‘edged wi’yellow flowers’ and the action of the brook gives it ‘veins sparkling’which are as vivid as the bright mayflies catching the sun on theirwings.

• Not only are the colours attractive and the new growth of the grasscomforting (‘like a carpet’) but the sheer uncountable numbers ofthe cowslips are evoked by the word ‘swarming’ and by the‘noising’ excitement of the children as they gather the flowers inthe midst of their play.

• The transience of the season is built into the countryside features:the word ‘haunt’ implies that the pewits will come and go, thefloods recedes but temporarily, the mayflies dance ‘wi’ the hours’because they will only live so long and all too soon ‘flowers …have passed away’ and the ‘sunny hours’ with them.

What other typical themes does Clare explore here?

• Through his constant use of personification, Clare again presentsnature as nurturing and affirmative even in her provision of a‘Winter memory of May’.

• Though this poem is more about the countryside than itsinhabitants, Clare takes the opportunity to show the villagersworking together, the generations alongside each other, and thecountry tasks as light work (‘commingling play’) with a tasty andinvigorating pay off.

TASK 9

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Sonnet: ‘I dreaded walking where there was no path’


This is a more autobiographical poem perhaps giving us a sense ofClare’s habits when young and, to an extent, all his life. He was proneto truanting from church and going off on his own; on at least oneoccasion, he was taken for a poacher and this might account for thesense of slight paranoia which this poem exudes: he can realisticallywrite about “dread”. Of course, the acts of enclosure meant that landwhich had formerly been common was now judged to belong tospecific individuals and this legislation affected people dramatically interms of their livelihoods as well as their leisure activities so this poemwould have resonated with many.

How does Clare build up this sense of unease throughout the poem?


• Clare uses repetition, the echoing ‘And’ at the beginning of manyof the lines serving to make a list of his fearful responses and thedoubled ‘always’ impressing on the reader that all walks were nowaccompanied by a sense of foreboding. Rhyming couplets add tothe tension as the reader almost obsessively waits for the nextrhyme. Discourse markers such as ‘Yet’ and ‘And when’ structurethe narrative and heighten the suspense for the reader.

Sonnet: ‘I dreaded walking where there was no path’

TASK 10

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Sonnet: ‘I dreaded walking where there was no path’


• Words such as ‘dreaded’ (and its rhymed link with the surreptitious‘tread’), ‘cautious’, ‘wary’, ‘feared’ emphasise his worries. Even‘ventured’ suggests that the poet realises that he is embarking ona risky enterprise. ‘Gained the road’ implies relief.

• Clare names his fears specifically: he ‘always feared the ownercoming by’ and confesses that he is lured by the beauty of theplace. So the admission ‘I fancied every stranger frowned at me’seems less unreasonable than it might – we can even credit hisdifferentiating of the looks of each passer-by where the ‘kinder’ ofthem are more accepting (perhaps understandably, he is moreinclined to think strangers judgmental).

How does Clare express his ideas on enclosure?

• He is vaguer here than later in this collection. There is somebitterness in ‘the road where all are free’ but in the tenth line healmost seems to accept the accusation of ’trespass’. Theconcluding lines seem by turns wistful (‘I’ve often thought … / Howbeautiful if such a place were mine’) and truculent (‘having noughtI never feel alone’), implying that poverty does not stop him fromusing ‘another’s as my own.’

• The strength of Clare’s feeling can perhaps be gauged from theevidence that the structure of this sonnet is slightly more overtthan in the previous examples of this form. The argument isdivided into clear sections of four, then six, then four lines and thecouplets confine each point to one or two lines.

TASK 11

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Sonnet: ‘The passing traveller’


Clare was fond of what he termed “odditys” and here he explores hissense of the strangeness of the depth of an old quarry. The tops of thetrees growing in the quarry reach the level of the ground above it andClare is terribly intrigued by this. It makes for a rather thin premiseand he perhaps stretches it somewhat, though the poem has somemerit.

How does he communicate his fascination to the reader?


• Repetition is employed effectively a number of times in the poem.‘Passing’, used twice, emphasises the random quality of the sight– how easily it could be missed, for instance or how out ofcharacter it is with the rest of the landscape. It is a ‘traveller’ or a

Sonnet: ‘The passing traveller’

TASK 12

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Sonnet: ‘The passing traveller’


‘stranger’ or, towards the end of the poem, a curious boy whoreacts with ‘wonder’ – as though the long-time residents take thespectacle for granted while visitors are ‘oft’ struck by it. ‘Deep’ isalso used three times, the last intensified by ‘very’, implying notjust a place which is physically a long way down but which hasdeep secrets too. The repetitive ‘And’ at the beginning of linesconvey a sense of breathlessness as in a child’s story. Theadjective ‘ancient’ and the tense of ‘has been’ add to this sensethat the place conceals age-old mysteries.

• Clare conceives of a church which ‘might stand within’, this beingthe biggest building most of his readers could imagine.

• The central six lines of the poem explore the actions andresponses of the “passing stranger” in some detail. The manenvisages how the impossible (‘he e’en could walk upon theirtops’) seems almost within his grasp and Clare makes good use ofjuxtaposition, for instance, to stress how what is ‘above’ – himselfstanding there – should be ‘below’ – where the ‘busy’ crow, goingabout its life as if nothing were out of the ordinary, and its eggs are- and vice versa. The ‘wild horse gives his head a toss’ becausehe is put out that the squirrel ‘dances’ (a word which highlights theanimal’s pleasure) across the treetops below him.

• The poem ends on a humorous note. The boy, revealing a typicalyouthful disregard for natural life, killing ‘the black-nosed bee’ andenthusiastically seeking out magpies’ nests, is amazed to find thatafter all his efforts scaling ‘the highest tree’, he has reached‘scarce above the ground.’

• The rhyming couplets are used to underline the reliability of Clare’saccount but the poem concludes with a more extended rhymescheme, which serves to accentuate the boy’s incredulity.

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Sport in the Meadows


This is a poem set unmistakably in the month of May. Clarecharacterises the season not simply by the flora and fauna which henotes with his customary attention to detail but by the effect it has onthe village children.

Make notes on the ways in which he brings this season, its countrysideand the antics of the children to life.

Sport in the Meadows

TASK 13

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Sport in the Meadows



• Clare conjures up a specific sense of place by his use ofvernacular terms for the flowers, animals and even people andretains the regional inflections (for instance ‘maken’, ‘folken’,‘helpen’) and other dialect expressions such as ‘abouten’ andrepresentations of the local accent, such as ‘e’er’, ‘childern’‘wa’n’t’. Other echoes of speech (for instance ‘Good gracious me’)give the piece a friendly yet dramatic feel.

• He extols the bountifulness of nature by commenting on the sizeand abundance of his subjects. ‘Cowslip peeps’ (little flowers, asthe last word suggests) ‘have gotten e’er so big’; the ‘water-blobsand all their golden kin / Crowd’; a variety of flowers are ‘shining …Like morts of folken flocking at a fair.’ Clare emphasises thegorgeousness and the multitude of these flowers by detailing thebright colour, listing all the profusion of species and personifyingthe plants as they crowd, nod, flock.

• Tension is introduced into this little narrative with the intrusion ofthe ‘rude marauders’. The children, equipped for the gathering,immediately declare war on the sheep and cows who ‘snatch theblossoms in such eager haste / That basket-bearing children … dothink they’ll get them all / And hoot and drive them’ off theirplunder.

• Clare chooses not to divide the poem into stanzas and thisquickens its pace. The slightly haphazard rhyme scheme alsoenhances our sense of the rough and tumble of the children.

• Clare describes the children with realism but also with tenderness.He does not spare us the fact that the scramble after flowers(brilliantly evoked with well-judged enjambment) results in fights(‘The next one pops her down’), tears and a lot of wasted blooms.The “unruly” children trample molehills and meadow grasses, stealfrom birds’ nests, scare nervous larks and, as all children do,suffer minor wounds and rip and dirty their clothes. The account islaced with humour, however: he characterises the children’sdesperation with ‘As though there wa’n’t a cowslip peep to spare’;he describes the chase after the untied bonnet with such precisionand economy that its perilous tremble ‘on the deep lake’s verybrink’ is effectively conveyed; and he tells us that ‘Bidding the lastday’s troubles all goodbye’ they are ready for more the next day –to the consternation of the ‘red-pied cow’ who ‘hastens from thesport she fears’ and the ‘old ewe’ who ‘calls her lamb’ and decidesagainst ‘crop[ping] a cowslip in their company.’

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Emmonsales Heath


This poem is based on a large heath near Clare’s home – a place whichis now, aptly, a nature reserve – and the scene of many of hisramblings, including one, documented by him where, as a boy, hewandered off for the day and returned at nightfall to discover that halfthe village had turned out to look for him. The following extract fromhis autobiographical writings not only extols the heath but revealssome of the reasons he found such solace and inspiration there (thespelling and punctuation are Clare’s).

I lovd this solitary disposition from a boy and felt a curiosityto wander about the spots where I had never been beforeI remember one incident of this feeling when I was very youngit cost my parents some anxiety it was in summer and I hadstarted off in the morning to get rotten sticks from the woodsbut I had a feeling to wander about the woods and I indulged it I had often seen the large heath called Emmonsalesstretching its yellow furze from my eye into unknownsolitudes . . . . I had imagind that the worlds end was at theorison and that a days journey was able to find it . . . so Ieagerly wanderd on and rambled among the furze the whole daytill I got out of my knowledge when the very wild flowers andbirds seemd to forget me and I imagind they were theinhabitants of new countrys the very sun seemd to be anew one and shining in a different quarter of the sky stillI felt no fear my wonder seeking happiness had no room forit I was finding new wonders every minute and was walkingin a new world often wondering to my self that I had not foundthe end of the old one

Though Clare uses the poem to proclaim his common theme of thebountifulness of nature, he also links nature’s abundance with theexistence and the benevolence of a creator God, a point on which he isnot often so explicit. In addition he begins to explore his idiosyncraticview of the relationship between nature and poetry, a premisedeveloped in more detail later in the collection.

How does Clare express his love for the place and give us a sense of itscharacter?

Emmonsales Heath

TASK 14

continue over




• He personifies the heath throughout, from his suggestion that theheath is clothed (‘In thy wild garb’) and ‘lingering … laz[il]y’ in waitfor him to his gratefulness that ‘In thy security / … blooms that lovewhat man neglects / Find peaceful homes in thee.’

• He stresses his enthusiasm for the wildness of the place,explaining this as part of nature’s own strategy. It is ‘nature’s easywill’ that covers the hills with furze; ‘Nature its family protects’ fromthe incursion of ‘savage men’ that would hunt ‘the poor hare’. Asever, nature’s purpose is to bring ease and ‘Joy’ to ‘nurse[d] me inher happy moods’, for instance through ‘The brook’ which will



‘weariness … soothe’. Any attempt to tame the heath, with ‘ascythe’ or ‘ploughshares’, ‘wrong’ it. The place and its features are‘blythe … unsullied … Untouched … mingling free … forever green… neglected … lawless’.

• The young people of the village are able to appreciate the heath’svirtues, ‘the swain sojourning there’, perhaps in the hopes ofmeeting ‘maidens gathering flowers.’

• Looking beyond this particular heath, Clare shows frank disbeliefthat anyone ‘can pass such lovely spots / Without a wish to stray’and shares his love of the solitude in which he can profitably ‘leavelife’s cares … / To muse an hour away’. He goes on to assert thata man who fails to ‘leave a lingering wish behind / To make theirpeace his home’ is a man without proper feeling (‘No love his mindemploys’) and one who is never likely to respect the world of theimagination (‘Poesy with him ne’er shares its flowers’), the worldwhere the unspoiled mind of the child can see life clearly and thetime ‘When fancy tries its wings.’

• He concludes by giving us little snapshots of especially lovely‘spots’ on the heath where the seasons are personified to makenatural wonders even more pleasing – here, for instance, Springdefies Winter and lovingly ‘drops’ flowers for the ‘surprise[d]’ childto come upon.

• Almost shyly, he articulates his gratitude to a ‘mighty power’ that‘Must in his splendour be’ so ‘kind’. He continues to characterisesuch a God by suggesting that it is his ‘joyous rapture’ that ‘fill[s] /The low as well as high’ and he is as considerate of the ‘pismires’as of the poet himself. Nature, it seems to Clare, represents theway God gives humanity ‘hope’, glimpsed in ‘gleams of harmony’and the sun which ‘is seen of every eye’ as (appropriately) a ‘halo /In nature’s wide and common sky’.

What other typical concerns does Clare air in this lovely poem?TASK 15



• He constructs an argument against the encroachment ofindustrialisation, demonising it as ‘Stern industry with stubbornpride / And wants unsatisfied’.

• He uses the framework of the description to record details ofvarious named birds and animals and their habitats.

• He expresses his usual enthusiasm for ancient customs andplaces, envisaging ‘Creation’s steps’ where he is treading andglorying in the idea that ‘Things seem the same in such retreats /As when the world began.’ The brook is ‘Still … / Crooked andrude as when at first / Its waters learned to stray’.

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Summer Tints


The countryside is so beautiful that even those who work in it areforced to admire and reflect on its loveliness. Though this early poemis pleasing, its scope is small, maintaining as it does the themesuggested by the title – that of the colourfulness of nature. As ischaracteristic of Clare in his poetry, this is portrayed through a varietyof sensual experiences which reveal nature as both nurturing andinspiring.

In this poem, how does Clare help his readers to share his ownestimation of the countryside?

.Here are some of our ideas:

• His description emphasises the countryside’s health andwholesomeness, using terms such as ‘mellowing’, ‘ripening’(perhaps over-ripening as with the ‘lightly scorched’ beans).

• Colour, texture and pattern are key to this picture of abundance:tawny yellow, green and curiously oxymoronic ‘bleachy brown’, forexample, and the ‘checkered plain’ and ‘streaking banks’. As heusually does, Clare personifies the seasons and their agents, here

TASK 16

Summer Tints

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Summer Tints


visualising Summer itself producing the different ‘shades’ ofripening with a ‘mellowing pencil’ which ‘sweeps’ over thelandscape and the wind ‘softly … lingering’ over ‘the face ofnature’ so that it has time for ‘mixing the brown and green’ over thelandscape, reminding us of the kindly creator God of EmmonsalesHeath.

• He uses personification again to give us striking visual images ofthe countryside. The ‘bearded corn’ is ‘like armies on parade’, apicture which also suggests its submission to its cultivators andmaybe to nature herself. Later ‘nodding lands of wheat’ seem toexpress a big affirmative to life.

• A fairly diffuse rhyme scheme gives this sonnet a reflective feeloverall.

Clare also stresses personal engagement with the countryside as thebest way to appreciate it. How can humans respond appropriately?


• The landscape is best valued by ‘wander[ing] bosom-deep in grain’or allowing oneself to revel as in the case of the shepherds who‘from their bowers have crept / And stood delighted musing o’erthe scene.’

• A reaction to the bounty of nature is also shown by the reactionsof the ‘maid and clown’. As Clare describes how they are ‘Formingthe little haystacks up and down’, telling us that their work‘Contrasts a sweetness to the rural scene’, he is surely not onlythinking of the neat stooks of hay which are being built (or indeedthe contrast between the boys and girls themselves) butsuggesting a sexual response to the glories of nature.

TASK 17

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: The Summer Shower


This is a lengthy, detailed poem which contrasts interestingly with thepoem The maiden ran away which gives us a much more alarmingpicture of a rain shower. Clare attempts a number of objectives here.As an obsessive chronicler of local natural history, he is keen to recordthe characteristics and habits of the wildlife around him. He enjoyedreading and writing stories and uses this poem to compose a littlenarrative which introduces us to a number of village characters. Asever, he also wants to stress the beauty and the inspiration of nature.

How well does he succeed in all these aims?

The Summer Shower

TASK 18

continue over




• The poem is introduced with personal experience. Clare is neverafraid to tell us that he loves nature; as usual here he is happy ‘tospend a quiet hour’ enjoying her, watching the intricate detail ofthe woodland (for example how the ‘woodbine weaves’). This firstverse employs enjambment very effectively to stress his mainpurpose: ‘To list the summer shower.’

• The next stanzas appeal to a variety of the senses as we areurged to feel the ‘luscious coolness’ and the raindrops ‘on theuplifted hand’ as well as hear the ‘quickening’ shower ‘pattering’the woods.

• Listing the reactions of the birds to the rain, Clare is able to detail arange of their habits, for instance, the ‘trim[ming]’ and ‘prun[ing]’ofthe dusty wings, the various nests and holes where they live (andeven what lines them), their ‘joyful’ singing, ‘nimbling’ (a delightfulcoinage) and to stress his theme of the unity of nature as heemphasises how ivy conceals the blackbird and her ‘downy brood’and the ‘oven house’ of the chiffchaff is made safe from the‘pilfering boy.’

• Country names such as ‘Pettichap’ both lend the poem authenticityand endear the creatures to us.

• Clare moves into the narrative proper with his description of theintensifying shower – which he achieves not simply by telling usthat ‘The busy falling rain increases now’ and later ‘from thesouthwest sky the showers thicker come’ but by showing us sucheffects as the ‘sopping leaves’, ‘loaded bough’, ‘Humming alongthe vale’ and ‘dimpling’ of the brook. Nature is nothing butbenevolent as she ‘Strings [the plants’] green suit with pearls’, alovely image.



• The main story is of ‘the weeding troop’ and Clare tells this withcharacteristic humour, detailing the villagers’ frantic dashes and‘huddling’, their laughter at their plight and the fate of ‘beauty’ whomisses her footing and reveals a pretty leg – but ‘inly feeleth proud/ That none a fault can spy’ with her shapeliness. Of course, thereis always a ‘meddling clown’ to pass ‘vulgar gibes’ and make thegirl ‘bashful … and … half afraid’ lest he interfere with her whileshe ‘climb[s] the stile’; and there is always a dame who ‘assails theknave … And makes him well behave.’

• A second narrative, also tinged with humour, introduces us to the‘Birdnesting boys’ who are ‘anxious’ and ‘impatient’ to be abouttheir plundering. They note how the ‘straining eye’ of the bull‘seemeth their steps to wait’ and eventually have to crawl andclamber home as best they can, arriving back fearing to bescolded for being so ‘wet and draggled’.

• Other villagers and their beasts are introduced and characterised,from the ploughboy who ‘lolls’ home to his contentedly chewinghorse and the gypsies who are ‘heedless’ of such inconveniencesas a drop of rain and ‘Jump o’er the pasture hills’.

• The lark acts as a discourse marker signalling the relaxing of theshower as she ‘with sudden impulse starts and sings’ and ‘Quiversher russet wings.’ The scene is left bathed in ‘joy-inspiringcalmness’. Nature has invigorated and strengthened once more.The atmosphere is likened to the peace of ‘Sunday’s leisure hour’when the ‘spirits … heartsick of toil’ can wander, muse and ‘Lielistening distant bells’ as the labourer, having prudently storedaway his implements, now rests, ‘Filling his mind with store ofhappy things’.

• The curious metre, with two iambic pentameters followed by twotrimesters in each stanza (a combination which is enhanced by theABAB rhyme) serves to move the reader from the reflective to thespecific in each verse.

Haycocks by Norman Garstin (1847 – 1906)

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Summer Moods


This is a fairly simple but evocative poem in which Clare describes hisown enthusiasm for nature and the idiosyncrasies of various birds andanimals in the context of a solitary walk ‘at eventide’. As he oftendoes, Clare makes this poem more striking by presenting it as personalexperience.

How does this help us to appreciate what is going on in the worldaround him?

Here are some of our ideas:

• The personal is emphasised by the repetition of ‘I love to’ followedby a frank declaration of his favourite pursuits. He is clear thatbeing ‘alone’ is an advantage and his alliteration demonstrates tous that a freshly cut meadow (‘newly mown’ where he can ‘muse’)is a particular treat.

• Clare uses enjambment to track the emergence of a snail as hewatches it. The snail’s colour (‘Jet black’) enhances the sense ofsurprise when it suddenly ‘creeps out’ and the transferred epithet

Summer Moods

TASK 19



‘timid horn’, which implies that the feelers themselves are scaredas they ‘sprout’, gives us a clear picture of the animal’s actions.

• An interesting rhyme scheme, where concluding words often meettheir rhymes several lines further into the poem, adds to itsmysterious mood.

How else does Clare characterise nature here?


• As ever, Clare’s verse appeals to a range of senses in addition tothe visual. The thorn and the evening atmosphere are ‘dewy’, the‘withering grass’ sends out ‘perfumes’, the air is ‘sultry’, the droneof the disappointed bees is ‘sad and weary’, the twilight corn is‘juicy’. There is a suggestion of decadence in this lush, dripping,slightly decaying environment. The quail and the landrail have theirspecific calls, rendered into faux-English by the country people.

• The sonnet form is used to good effect here to indicate the varietyof experiences to be enjoyed at this time of day. Clare’s walker isfirst in the narrow lanes and then spends as long ‘mus[ing] o’ermeadows’. The concluding sestet shows us the rarest of thecountry creatures as they dare to announce their presence nowthat they ‘see light fade into glooms around.’

TASK 20



How does Clare usefully evoke the twilight to explore some of hisinsights into nature?

This is a transitional time when nature changes as Clare reminds usnot just through his snapshots of the quail and landrail who aregrateful for the darkness but through the humorous description of thebees who ‘search round … / In vain for flowers that bloomed but newlythere’.

TASK 21

Landrail orcorncrake

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Sonnet: “The maiden ran away’


This is a vividly drawn picture of a rainstorm. Again it is in sonnetform but Clare does not really utilise the traditional structure of thesonnet (typically an octave followed by a sestet where one section ofthe poem expresses some general points and the other refines themdown to some specific example or insight) but uses his fourteen linessimply to list what happens and to build a growing sense of panic andwonder.

How does Clare present us with the development of the storm andconvey the impression of its magnitude?


• He centres his description on people, giving us snapshots of themaiden collecting in washing who is inadequately prepared for thesudden squall, her apron over her head no match for the showerwhich ‘beat and almost dowsed her to the skin’, the boy forced towade, ‘the half-drowned ploughman’ up to his knees in water andthe women who scream as they open the door to it. Occasionaldialect expressions earth the scene in its specific context.

• As the storm gathers in strength, even the birds high in the treesare ‘almost drowned’. The ‘ruts ran brooks’ then the streets are

Sonnet: ‘The maiden ran away’

TASK 22



transformed into rivers – and flooding rivers at that (‘till they floatedo’er’) – and all the ‘Labour’, a lovely collective term for theworking people of the village, ‘fled home’ to (dubious) safety.

• Clare builds up suspense in the poem by starting the second lineof each couplet with ‘And’, leaving us with the sense that disasteris piling upon disaster.

• He stresses the intransigence of the storm with ‘ruts ran brooks asthey would ne’er be dry’ and later ‘still it fell as it would never stop’,highlighting the apprehensiveness felt at dealing with this force ofnature.

• At the end the rhyme scheme changes from the couplets of thepreceding lines maybe to illustrate how the storm is becomingmore erratic.

How does this poem show Clare dealing with nature in a slightlydifferent way?TASK 23




• The poem presents nature as a force of which to be scared ratherthan as a generous benefactor - note especially the personificationof the storm which ‘catched’ the maiden. Even the title makes theweather an enemy to be feared.

• Though threatening, there is a hint of the fantastic, even magical,in the description. Would the ruts ever dry out or the rain everstop? The pit which he wonders at in The passing traveller is thesubject of even more extravagant claims: it ‘Was brimming o’erand floated o’er the top.’

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Song: ‘She tied up her few things’


Few people in Clare’s day travelled very far from home. Clare himselfspent most of life in Helpstone but was deemed quite adventurous inthat he had been to London four times and out of his immediate area tolook for work even though he lived under the same roof as his parentsfor a great deal of his life and moved out only to another house inHelpstone (see The Flitting) and, subsequently, the asylum. However,there was quite a strong tradition of itinerant workers, male andfemale, some ethnically gypsies, some just working people. This latepoem about Jinney evokes the impression made on the villagecommunity by a humble yet special woman. The title song and theballad-like metre alerts us that this is going to be a different sort ofpoem from the usual run of Clare’s work, perhaps in deference toJinney herself and her singing talents, perhaps because Clare’s ownhealth, both mental and physical, was so fragile by now.

How does Clare bring Jinney so vividly to life?

He stresses her poverty and virtue: she has ‘few things’ (but one ofthe possessions she always carries round with her is a Bible), herbonnet is ‘worn through at the crown’, her laced shoes are functionalnot pretty. But she is clean (‘than snow her caps whiter’) and ready forwork (‘Her apron tied tighter’).

In this poem, how does Clare convey the sense that the villagers shouldhave been sadder to see her go and that the natural instincts of theanimals are truer?

Song: ‘She tied up her few things’

TASK 24

TASK 25




• People pause in their work: the ‘Thrasher-man’ stops ‘whopping’though he does not come out but calls ‘o’er the door cloth … luckand no harm’, a blessing which seems rather grudging.

• Meanwhile the responses of the animals are more affirmative. Avillage dog straining ‘All the length o’ his chain’ does all of which adog is capable in that he ‘licked her hand kindly and huffed her



goodbye’. The hens ‘prated’ and the cock ‘strutted proudly’ in herhonour and even the horse gives way to her. Clare may be guiltyof a little anthropomorphism here or he may simply be painting forus a picture of ‘the old mossy farm’ through her eyes (and showingus what met her ears too – ‘Bees hummed … the red Robinswhistle’) as ‘she took just one look’ at it.

• The following stanza gives us an almost elegiac portrait of thevillage at this time of year. It is Michaelmas, a time of transition(Clare’s readers, whether urban or rural, would of course haveregulated their lives by the Church’s festivals: Michaelmas is 29September) when the summer’s work is nearly done. Clare detailsthe crops that have been harvested, even which ones are beingprocessed in a vivid snapshot of the ‘cote-pigeon-flocks’ whichgreedily ‘round beans shelling cluster’. The summer implementshave been sharpened, signalling the end of the harvest seasonand thus of Jinney’s usefulness. Has she been forgotten once sheis not needed? Clare’s repetition of ‘She lapped up her earnings’suggests that she is glad to be paid and off to ‘her own town.’

• The first two lines of the last stanza are even more poignant. The‘flowers a-springing’ in the following year ‘Will miss Jinney’ssinging.’ Maybe Clare is revealing that she will die over winter. Theopening of her Bible implies that she is turning to serious mattersand the folding down of the page seems to mark an ending that isgraver than the close of the summer. ‘Her bosom’s forewarnings’may be telling her that this will be her last harvest – or perhapsshe senses that something is wrong in the village. Either way,even the flowers, let alone the villagers themselves, will miss her.Clare emphasises the loss by characterising her by her singing, ametaphor for creativity, imagination, joy and wholesomeness.

How does Clare utilise the form of the poem to suit his meaning?TASK 26



The folksong metre, which is occasionally complemented by dialectwords and grammar and artificial syntax (for example, ‘Wished o’erthe door-cloth her luck and no harm’ which puts stress on theimportant words), sets this poem firmly in a rural context and gives itthe timeless quality of traditional songs. The rhyme scheme enhancesthis songlike character: it is very melodious and effective, the shortlines using feminine (two syllable) rhymes and the longer lines justone syllable rhymes.

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: The Foddering Boy


This slight early poem is little more than an extended description of afarm boy feeding the cows in bad weather. As a picture, it has all thefine detail we would expect of Clare and his frequent use ofenjambment drives the reader through the poem. But the poem’sclimax – when the boy makes it to the hay stack and delivers the feedto the hungry animals – is scarcely worth the wait. However, TheFoddering Boy is interesting as an illustration of the ways in whichClare portrays individuals and atmosphere.

List the characteristic ways in which he achieves this in this poem.

The Foddering Boy

TASK 27

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: The Foddering Boy


Here are our thoughts:

• The severe conditions are carefully delineated. Clare gives us‘crumping snows’, ‘the blast that keenly blows’, ‘lodging snows’ inhis detailed description of the storm. The impact of the weather ismade more visual as he tells us of ‘many a track’ which the cowsmake ‘About the snows’.

• As usual Clare conveys the force of the elements via the effectsthey have on individuals. The boy’s legs are ‘straw-band-belted’against the cold; he ‘beats his fingers warm’; he holds a ‘foldedarm’ up against the harsh wind which is so fierce that he canbarely face it and ‘oft turns for breath’. Other details involve hisclothing: he is described as ‘Buttoning his doublet closer …slouching his brown beaver o’er his nose’. The boy’s task isrepresented as a mission, even a quest, where he has to ‘face’ hisadversary and gain his goal (‘seeks the stack’ employs alliterationto emphasise this objective). The wind is so high that he has to‘brawl’ to call the cows over.

• The ‘expecting cattle’ that (in Clare’s idiosyncratic grammar) ‘lows’are as vivid an element of this bleak environment as the boy. Thereader is invited to enter the ‘impatient’ desperation with whichthey pace the ‘snows’, ‘making many a track’ as they strain to hearhim come and ‘staring’ to pick him out through the bad weather.

• Nature is again bountiful, almost profligate – even in this climate‘huge fork-fulls’ of ‘sweet hay’ are available as the carelessnesswith which the boy ‘litters’ it about indicates.

• Enjambment, confined within a precise sonnet form and ademanding rhyme scheme, seems to emphasise the determinationof the boy to beat the storm and fulfil his responsibilities to theanimals.

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: The Gipsy Camp


Clare was very fond of the company of the gypsies who used to camparound Helpston and spent a lot of time with them, especially as ayoung man. He was attracted to their unregimented but secret lifestyle,and intrigued by their customs and values; in return he was sufficientlyaccepted by them to be invited to their weddings. Gypsies werefrequently blamed for local thefts and other misdemeanours and wereconstantly being arrested for poaching but Clare always claimed thathis friends were “more honest than their detractors”.

This poem dwells on the less glamorous aspects of gypsy existence,particularly the hardships faced by the travellers during the winter.Though the portrait is stark to the point of unpleasantness and Clare’stone seems blunt rather than sympathetic, the last line suggests that hefeels the gypsies are misunderstood and hard done by if not entirelyblame-free. A late poem, this work resonates with the gloom of Clare’sown life in his last years.

How does Clare succeed in conveying the rigours of gypsy survival tothe reader and how effectively does he gain our compassion for theclan?

The Gipsy Camp

TASK 28

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: The Gipsy Camp



• The winter conditions are described in a variety of ways:

o literally (‘The snow falls deep … half hid in snow … whichbreaks away the wind’)

o by means of metaphor (as when the forest itself ispersonified as ‘alone’ since so few people frequent it due tothe bad weather)

o through the actions of those who endure it (the boy ‘hurriesback’ to his fire, the ‘Gipsy knocks his hands and tucksthem up’).

• Terming it ‘squalid’, Clare depicts the camp quite unsentimentally.The place is semi-outdoors and like a ‘hovel’; the dinner is of‘stinking mutton’ but sufficiently valued by the group that ‘none abit can spare’ for the dog.

• Clare spends four of the fourteen lines on detailed description ofthe dog, suggesting that the animal itself could be read as ametaphor for the sort of person who lived: hungry, withunsophisticated manners (‘squats … and rubs’), uncomfortable(‘half-roasted’ since he ‘feels the heat too strong’ though thealternative is to freeze), watchful, liable to be disappointed in hisexpectations of others’ goodwill and destined to be ‘aloof’ fromconventional society.

• Here, ‘picture’ can signify a literal representation of the group andtheir living conditions or be meant ironically. Perhaps Clare intendsto imply sympathy with ‘’Tis thus they live’. He may even besuggesting that this portrayal of the gypsies’ plight should act as areproof to society as a whole. Certainly he goes on to state,without much support elsewhere in the poem, that they are ‘quiet’and ‘unprotected’, implying that they are inoffensive and needsomeone to champion them. He rather confuses the issue byjuxtaposing these two modifiers with ‘pilfering’, insinuating that thegypsies’ secrecy may be self-imposed since their silence cloakstheir dishonest deeds and that they do not really deserveprotection, from the law at least. Is this a rather strained attempt athumour or is he simply showing that he recognises that his friendsare not above reproach? Either way, the epithet in the last lineleaves us with a puzzle – which may not have been the poet’sintention.

• The form of the poem – a fourteen-line sonnet of blank verseculminating in a rhyming couplet, reminiscent of a Shakespearespeech – is classic and stately as might befit a more flatteringaccount. Hence the last line is given a more weighty significance: itis a pity that Clare does not lead up to it more coherently.

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Winter Fields


This is another snapshot of village winter life, though a more ambitiousone than The Foddering Boy provides. Here, while Clare concentratesmost of the poem on the shepherd, he makes good use of the contrastsbetween the worker’s lot and an idealised winter existence and evokesthe relationship between man and beast more subtly.

What about this poem captures the imagination so successfully?

Winter Fields

TASK 29




• The poem is personal and starts by conjuring up a cosy indoorscene which seems all the more blissful (if not actually smug)when it is set against the foul weather outside. Clare unashamedlyrefers to his own favourite recreation (‘a pleasant book’) as analternative to the circumstances which the shepherd is obliged totolerate. (Plenty of shepherds in Clare’s day could scarcely readand, even if they could, would not necessarily select reading astheir preferred winter occupation!)

• He characterises winter through personification, a technique whichhe employs many times in his poems and which helps the readerto appreciate the bad weather perhaps as the country peoplethemselves did – as not just an inconvenience but an enemy, evena threat to life and livelihood. It is clear that winter is in control (andthat his ‘sway’ must be avoided by cheating. As he doeselsewhere (for instance in Christmas), Clare opposes the figure ofwinter with the figure of mirth who is here presented as a jovial,comfortable, rather loud gentleman with a ‘hearty laugh’, ‘rich’ ingenerosity of spirit, who feels sufficiently at home to ‘rub his legson corner seat’.

• As he often does, Clare portrays the weather not just by describingit clearly (for instance the ‘fields [which] are mire and sludge’, the‘pudgy paths’, whose disagreeableness is highlighted more by thealliteration and internal rhyme, the ‘sloughs that nearly meet’) butby showing how it affects people and animals. There is a slightsense of mockery at those who do not get going fast enough; thenhe explains in some detail the elaborate precautions of theshepherd, a man more used to ‘striding’ who now has to ‘prog off’with his ‘ready hook’, to find the ‘driest way’. Sympathy is createdwhen we learn the reason for these safeguards: ‘wetshod feet’result in the ‘hacking cough / That keeps him waken till the peep ofday’. The portrait of the dog is presented more humorously: theanimal is vividly delineated both physically (‘croodling and thin’,‘hirk[ling]’, jumping warily from dry patch to dry patch) and as apersonality, grudging but bound to his master (‘loath … [who]stops and quakes… till whistled to pursue’).

• The little narrative seems to have a happy ending – though therhyme scheme is irregular, the poem concludes on a confidentrhymed couplet, implying that master and dog did ‘hirkle through’to warmth and safety. .

Clare was not obliged to use his native dialect – his own readingindicates that he had a wide vocabulary drawn from standard Englishat his disposal and that he was familiar with accepted grammar. Heseems to have been rather ambivalent about any editing of his workwhich his publishers ventured, sometimes asking or expecting it to bedone, sometimes annoyed with their “nice amendings” or correctionsof his “pointings”. He was conscious that much of his celebrityderived from that fact that he was a “peasant poet” and maybe this wassomething of a spur to introduce some of his local expressions to a



wider public. However, there is no sense in his work that he forcesNorthamptonshire dialect down the reader’s throat. This poem containsmore dialect words than most.

Which words in particular seem to reinforce the sense of place andpersonality so striking in this poem?

Especially evocative seem to be: ‘pudgy’, ‘croodling’, ‘progs off’,‘hirkles’. Not only do these terms pin the poem to a specific place andto the ordinary working people and working animals who live there butthere are no satisfactory equivalents for them in standard English.

TASK 30

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: The Cottager


This is an affectionate portrait of a ‘simple-worded plain old man’whose virtues and flaws Clare records intricately: the man is actuallymore complex than he seems at first. Clare describes the villagerwithout patronising and only occasionally sentimentalising him.

What sort of details does Clare give us of this man and how successfulare they in conveying not only the man’s character but also Clare’sfondness for him?

• The first element to stress is the cottager’s conservativenesswhich, Clare implies, is linked with his honesty and

The Cottager

TASK 31

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: The Cottager


honourableness: the man is ‘True’ and, sure ‘as the church clockhand the hour pursues’, he will go about his daily tasks andpursuits in the same way every day. The man believes inmoderation: he will visit ‘market all the year about / And keeps onehour and never stays it out.’ Clare develops this sense of the manas completely trustworthy by telling us that, though he enjoys hispipe and beer, he ‘runs no scores on tavern screens to clear.’

• He is a typical narrow-minded villager, for whom, Clare does notscruple to inform us, ignorance is sometimes a point of pride andinconsistency is overlooked as the man ‘is right scrupulous in onepretext / And wholesale errors swallows in the next.’ Suspicious ofanywhere that is not his own territory, he will ‘talk of ‘Lunun’ as aforeign land’. Clare helps us to envisage the scorn the man feelsfor the metropolis with a dash of the Northamptonshire accent.Here is a person who ‘ne’er went fifty miles in all his life’ from hisown door, who ‘twenty years behind the march of mind’ willconsider new knowledge as ‘blasphemy’ and new inventions suchas steam energy as ‘witchcraft’. His books are conventional, well-worn and well looked-after and ‘he reads and reads [them] again’:the Bible (with, obviously, pages devoted to family records at thefront), Prayer Book and other religious works; he reads FiveHundred Points of Good Husbandry rather than more entertainingor poetic works which might ‘deal(s) in fancy’ – as abhorrent to himas singing (even in the pub). His respect is for the ‘old Vicar …who should be right’ but, despite his doubts about the new man,he ‘never keeps away’ from church and enjoys a simple, strongfaith whose inspiration means that he ‘bows his head when Jesusmeets his ears’. Clare assures us that his ‘good intents take errorsin their plan’ and, blinkered though the cottager is, his heart isgood: he retains ‘one spare room to welcome every guest’ in his‘humble’ cottage and ‘for his childern’s sakes’ keeps the ‘pooty’shells they gathered years ago ‘in wreaths above the cupboards’.He rejoices in his patriotic pictures and is compassionate towardsnature – perhaps overmuch since Clare describes him as‘sentimental’, liable to ‘look(s) on trifles and bemoan(s) their pain’ –and frequently inveighs against blood sports of all kinds: he ‘thinksthe angler mad and loudly storms / With emphasis of speech o’ermurdered worms / And hunters cruel’ though Clare does not seemtoo sympathetic with this ‘Pity’s petition for the fox and hare’.Nature enters his home as part of the decorations. Interestingly,nature is kind to him: ‘He hears the mountain storm – and feels itnot’ and the ‘tall poplar’ he planted himself ‘shades his chimney’.

• Old-fashioned, upright yet passionate, the man’s desert, Claresuggests, is to be ‘content’, ‘happy as a child at play’ as ‘Time’ is‘scarcely noticed’. He is ‘too happy to be poor’.

• The main weakness in this poem is that it often comes across asnot much more than a list of the man’s attributes, a sense which isunderlined by the rather pedestrian sequence of rhyming coupletafter rhyming couplet: even the iambic pentameter gives the poema slightly plodding feel.

Cottagers by George Moorland(1763 - 1804)

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: The Crow Sat on the Willow


Here Clare attempts to incorporate many aspects of the ballad genreinto a poem which also aims to articulate the moral superiority ofsimple people and of the natural world but he is less than convincing.

What does the poet seem to be trying to do in this late poem and whatmakes his efforts unsuccessful?

The Crow Sat on the Willow

TASK 32




• The people in this poem are characteristic of pastoral poetry whichClare will have read. The stereotypical lovers of the pastoral genre(which still had its practitioners when Clare was writing) tended tobe of humble origins – usually shepherds and shepherdesses –and, since they lived in a fantasy classical setting, they werenormally given Greek names such as ‘Phoebe’. However, theprotagonists of British ballads bore traditional British names.

• The crow is a staple of British ballads where s/he frequentlycomments on the main story of the poem and often heralds asinister outcome. It is not very clear what Clare’s crow is doing inthe poem. He ‘hoarsely croaked’ his song – but what is his song?He has a ‘glossy … coat’ – but what are the implications of this,other than that Clare likes writing about fine birds? He sits on awillow tree – and willows are noted in ballad for implying sorrow –but Clare does not develop this. The crow seems himself to havesome experience of love (not a typical ballad feature). s the merepresence of the bird in the poem intended to hint at some tragedy?It does not help that Clare’s grammar is more than usually non-standard in this poem so it is difficult to tell whether the ploughmanis taking about a love that is current (‘My love she is a milkingmaid’) or one that is over (‘I loved her many a week’).

• Though some of the best of them present their narrative linesobliquely, ballads generally have a strong plot. This tends to beemphasised through dialogue, sometimes a symmetricalconversation between protagonists; occasionally the poemconsists of dialogue as in the splendid Edward. Repetition is a keyfeature used to underline characters’ significant feelings or actionsor to show how these have changed. It is unclear what the point ofthe ploughman’s reiterated declarations is. Perhaps Clare meansus to deduce the following scenario:

o the ploughman starts off by being sure of the milkmaid’slove (‘I love my love because I know / The milkmaid sheloves me’)

o he continues by extolling her virtues (‘She keeps her pailsso bright’) as well as her feminine qualities and strongconnection to her country roots (‘And blythe she trips thedewy grass … / Her face was rosy health’) and herpleasure in her ‘drab’ but honest working clothes andacceptance that ‘nature was her wealth’

o in mentioning that she is as ‘young and handsome / As anyin the town’, does he leave to be implied that she has beenunfaithful to him with a town dweller? That his‘ploughman’s ransom’ will not be enough to attract herback and that his ‘rustic lay’ is too unsophisticated toappeal to her?

• However, the ploughman seems to sing ‘lustily’ and throwhimself more and more enthusiastically into his work as the



poem goes on and the fields confidently echo his sentiments.Maybe Clare simply wanted to air a few “balladic” devices andexperiment with traditional “balladic” syntax (such as theparalleled ‘And glossy was … And loud the ploughman … Andhoarsely croaked’), catchphrases (‘At morning and at night’)and vocabulary (such as ‘bonny lass’).

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: from ‘The Parish’


This excerpt is from a much longer poem which was written early onin Clare’s poetic career but not published until after Clare’s death: hismentors advised against it. Its mood is much sharper, angrier and, insome ways, more mature than most of his work. However, though thepoem makes some perceptive points and is stylishly composed, it is notvintage Clare – rather, it owes its tone to the poet whom he quotes atthe beginning of the work: Pope.

Does Clare master this kind of verse effectively or does the poem endup almost as a pastiche of the earlier poet?

from ‘The Parish’

TASK 33




• Like Pope and his contemporaries (usually referred to as theGeorgians), Clare begins his discussion in this extract with a greatdeal of personification of qualities, noble and ignoble. Sentencesare huge, ranging sometimes over many lines and the argument isconsequently very dense. His targets – hypocrisy, flattery, selfinterest, deceit and his main quarry, ‘Cursed affectation’ – areones which he genuinely abhorred but are also the popular butts ofGeorgian satire, though his imagery is often less subtle than thatof the best Georgians, drawing contrasts between what is real andwhat is pretended in a rather exaggerated way (for example,‘blasts blow blessings every time they blow’). He is moresuccessful when he uses imagery that at least echoes his ownfield of reference – ‘Thy sheepish features and thy crouching gait /Like sneaking cur’ for instance. Similarly, his ‘rogue that’s carted tothe gallows tree’, for Clare is ‘far more honest in his trade’ than theflatterer ‘Whose smooth tongue uttered what his heart denied’though such a character might have been a little too rough for theGeorgians.

• Again with less subtlety than the Georgians, Clare asserts that‘nowadays truth grows a vile offence / And courage tells it at hisown expense’, later rather overstating the consequences forhimself. He presents himself as ‘fearless’ and unperturbed by ‘theslander stung deceit may raise.’ His ‘bark is launched’ too far on‘Life’s rude sea’ to be troubled by the ‘waves’ made by those who‘may wish the wreck’ though they ‘dread the war’. Afflicted by‘ignorance … scorn … envy … hate’, they will ‘Die of their owndistempers’. However, we may detect some bitterness in Clare’scontention that ‘A public name’s the shuttlecock of fame’ and that‘Friendship like theirs is but the name’s disgrace’ since the poet’sdealings with acquaintances and business associates were notalways harmonious.

• Uncharacteristically, Clare continues to justify himself and offer usgeneralities about the mechanisms of satire. ‘Satire should notwax civil o’er its toil’, he avers, vowing to ‘Tell truth nor shrink forbenefits to none’. Despite the dangers of ‘folly’, Clare uses ‘satire’sMuse … like a bloodhound’ to winkle out ‘each smoothfacedtyrant’.

Undoubtedly Clare is not at his best in this kind of verse; or, at least,he makes more of an impact when he is on home ground.(Unfortunately he is setting himself up to be judged against the finestand most urbane and elegant of satirists.) The rest of this extract,though more savage than Clare’s usual writing, is more convincing.Here he moves onto known territory as he explores the ways in which‘affectation’ is ruining rural communities where, in days ‘of yore’,‘master, son and serving man and clown / Without distinction daily satthem down’ and ‘the poor’ considered themselves ‘as equals, not asslaves’. ‘These all have vanished like a dream of good,’ writes Clareheatedly.



How does Clare convey his fears so powerfully?


• He uses very effectively the image of ‘the old oak table’ roundwhich both ‘kitchen’ and ‘hall’ could dine and which was banished

TASK 34



to a lumber room as ‘disgusting to my lady’s sight’, eventually tobe ‘Transformed to stable doors or troughs for swine.’ Againemploying the images of household objects to make his point, hetells us how ‘pewter rows are all exchanged for plate’.

• He goes on to explain all the other changes that have been madein the ‘upstart’ farmer’s household – ‘The liveried footman’, forexample – which make his ménage scarcely different from that of‘his Lordship’.

• However, his sharpest satire is reserved for the people themselves– the ‘farmer’s daughter, unreserved though shy’ who has‘dwindled’ from the ‘lovely maid’ who would involve herselfcheerfully and unaffectedly in the farm chores to a highly bredcreature who ‘cannot dare to venture in the street’, who‘despise[s]’ her background, who has been taught to ‘view oldcustoms with disdainful eyes’ and whose pursuits are all trivial orpretentious. Her ‘mincing fine airs’ have been ‘misconceived atschool’, Clare avers, until ‘Trying to be something’ she becomes‘nought at last.’

• Clare then gives us more specific detail about one of his ‘Ladies ofthe Farm’. ‘Miss Peevish Scornful’, ‘prettyish’, ‘Brought up a lady,though her father’s gain / Depended still on cattle and on grain’ isdrawn unsparingly. Clare gives us a detailed picture of a‘simpering’ girl who affects all the ambitions of a Jane Austenheroine and welcoming the empty attentions of ‘Squire Dandy’,‘frowned’ at the honest praise of a man who was one of her‘equals’. As the girl’s visions of an elopement with her favouredbeau fade, she ‘Caught the green sickness’ and ‘gave up sickvisits, balls and plays’, trying to be ‘plain’ once more. But she has‘played show-woman much too long’ and her equals will not takeher seriously. Her end is humorously fitting: ‘grown husband-mad,away she ran … with … the servant man.’

• He next turns to ‘Young farmer Bigg of this same flimsy class’ whosimilarly ‘Struts like the squire and dresses dignified’ even to theextent of being ‘Braced up in stays’. A fool and a flirt, his posturingis perhaps more dangerous than that of ‘sickly Miss’, as he isportrayed as preying on girls who are just below him in status:‘Teasing weak maidens with his pert deceit’ so that ‘maids areruined oft and mothers made’. The girls will ‘live dishonoured and… die unwed’ while the young man will ‘bribe’ his way out oftrouble and, bolstered by friends who lie for him, remains ‘A proud,conceited, meddling fellow still.’

• The excerpt ends with a short summary where Clareuncharacteristically deplores the fact that ‘Nature … moulds byturns the monkey or the man’ often giving ‘wisdom’ to the personwho has ‘an empty purse’ and ‘o’erflowing pockets’ and to the‘empty head’: ‘merit vainly tries / While heedless folly blunders onthe prize’, he concludes with a gloom which most of his countrypoems eschew.

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: St Martin’s Eve


This narrative poem ends this section on a more comforting note,stressing the things in which Clare really believes and securely set inhis own territory.

How does the poet restore our faith in the village community?

St Martin’s Eve

TASK 35




• Clare conveys the dismal mood of the village as ‘the year growswearisome with age’ evocatively, detailing the change from the‘meadow romp’ of the villagers under a sky full of a ‘joyous crowd’of birds; a time dominated by the ‘rude winds’ and ‘threateningrain’, ‘woods [are] desolate of song’, ‘roaring trees’ and ’Winter’simprisonment’ for the village children who are intriguinglydescribed as ‘Pining for freedom like a lovesick nun’. Only the‘lone and melancholy crane’ is left to characterise the season.

• However, the villagers are more resilient than to let the weatherdetermine their moods for long. ‘The fireside evening ownsincreasing charms’, visitors arrive, tales are told and naturally the‘eldern wine that warms / In purple bubbles’ has something to dowith the ‘blessed’ feeling that the company shares.

• He singles out one particular ‘St Martin’s eve’ (11 November)when, despite the ‘outdoor symphonies’ of the weather, theresidents of one cottage and their guest contrived to ‘cares so welldeceive / That the old cottage rung with merriment’, giving themthe impression ‘That (it) seemed as Summer’s sport had neverabsent been.’

• As ever, Clare appeals to our senses with food and drinklipsmackingly described as ‘creaming’, ‘seasoned’ and the warmthof the cottage evoked with images of the fire and the ‘glad catcurled’ in the midst of the company.

• A variety of jokes and sports is related to us and while they mayseem very simple pleasures to a twenty-first century audience,they clearly entertain the villagers – Clare spends nearly a stanzadetailing their laughter (even that of the ‘dame … (whose) bestblue china’ has been broken that day). Most seem based on theage-old premise that embarrassing one’s friends will always causemirth (for example, one game involves placing a red hot knife intoa blindfolded man’s hand) and many groups of friends have a‘poor Hodge’ who is the bait of this sort of joke and whose‘wisdom’, however much he promises himself ‘I’ll beat ‘em, now ornever’, is no match for the others.

• Nearly all the community is involved as an ‘old dame’ is taken in by‘the urchin’ and ‘smiles too against her will’, ‘old men’ are ‘as wildas boys’ and ‘Old women … / Dance with the girls’.

• The merriment is so frantic that Clare likens it to ‘strife’.

• Clare is not over-sentimental however and acknowledges that notall are equipped or even allowed to share the fun. ‘Once-beguiledKate’ who is ‘condemned to live without a mate’ because she‘made one slip in love and played the fool’ here ‘on corner stool …sits all silent’. Despite her dreams, her charms, her beliefs in thepromises of gypsies, she is left to ‘Nurs(e) rude melancholy’ while



the others dance and, whatever their worries, make a truce, asClare implies, with joy.

• ‘Fatigue and all its countless ills’ are forgotten as the villagers taketurns to sing and play their rudimentary musical instruments. This‘clamorous noise’ is scarcely music – but the sense oftogetherness of the villagers results in their ‘converting all theytouch[ed] to gold’ – though Clare suggests wryly, ‘ignorance isbliss’.

• Eventually, when they get tired, someone ‘reads a tale’ and thecompany sit through ‘Stories though often read yet never stale’.Interestingly, ‘Things least to be believed are most preferred’ bythe ‘simple souls’ and Clare relates some of the most popular,especially the exploits of Tib, ‘all too true to be a fib’. ‘It were a sinto doubt o’er tales so true,’ the poet responds with fond sarcasm.

• Midnight disperses the company and the villagers ‘tittering go’homewards, loud with ‘stout ale berry-brown’, at one with eachother and the world.

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: The Wren


Read the poem through carefully. Consider how Clare celebrates theeveryday birds of the fields and comment on how this links to theRomantic vision.

In this sonnet Clare celebrates the beauty of the song of the woodrobin and the wren. Unlike the renowned songs of the cuckoo or thenightingale, Clare suggests, the songs of these more common andeveryday birds have a beauty of their own and one that is not oftenacknowledged. He questions the generally accepted idea that it is onlythe nightingale or the cuckoo that can act as muses and raise ‘One’sheart to ecstasy and mirth’. In keeping with the Romantic vision, Claresuggests that these birds act as catalysts to a nostalgic image of thepast. The poet is seen ‘tenting’ (tending) his sheep as the song of thebirds conjures up ‘happy stories of the past again.’

THE POEMS: BIRDS AND BEASTS

TASK 36

The Wren

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Sonnet: The Crow


Now read The Crow. Make notes on the way that Clare, once again,celebrates the unconventional beauty of the bird.

In this poem, Clare champions the common crow that is seen everyday over the fields and woods. There is a sense of freedom that isconveyed to those who engage with the bird as it flies ‘Over the woodsand fields, o’er level fen.’ In contrast to the woodmen who engage inhard travail as they ‘their daily labours ply’, the crow is seen to ‘soshaskew’ or rise above the ‘hid woodman’s stroke’ and so ‘sail’ beyondthe limiting world of man untroubled by the violence of the wind orman’s struggle to survive. Clare uses the image of the ‘chimneysweeps’ and describes the bird as ‘the sooty crow’ to create a pictureof both the colour and the rather ragged appearance of this creature.Once again Clare insists on celebrating not the conventional beauty ofa bird and its song but the crow’s ‘croaking joy’ that sets it apart fromhumans and in many ways from more beautiful birds. The poemconcludes with a celebration of freedom and the contrast between thegraceful movement of the bird like a ship in full sail and the earthbound vista of ‘fields, and woods and waters’ that are spread below.

We often see Clare using what might be considered ratherunconventional language. An example of this is found in The Crow.What effect do you think this creates?

TASK 37

Sonnet: The Crow

TASK 38

continue over

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Sonnet: The Crow


It seems that Clare chooses to use phrases like ‘sosh askew’ to createa sense of the rural landscape and, in keeping with the Romanticideal, he is using the language of the common man that Wordsworthwas so keen to exploit. The effect in The Crow is to present a linkbetween the working man in the fields and the glory of nature. There isa sense in which this language allows the reader to empathise withthe simple rural life and, in a sense, it serves to demystify the poeticsensibility and develop a connection between man and nature all ofwhich were the aims of the Romantic poets.

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Sonnet: ‘I love to hear the evening crows go by’


Consider the ways in which Clare once again celebrates the fortitude ofthe birds that do not migrate but remain on English shores.

There is a sense of the busy nature of the various birds mentioned inthis poem. Interestingly, what we are presented with is a series ofimages of the behaviour of various birds who affect the poet as theygo about their daily lives. Once more Clare uses dialect words tocreate a sense of place, offering the reader an engagement with rurallife in Helpston, the village of his birth and the spot where he wrotemany of his poems. The tone is celebratory as Clare presents thereader with a snapshot of the fortitude and endurance of the wild birdsthat are forced to bear the harshness of the winter months in England:being ‘short of flight’, they find refuge in the ‘hovel where the cows arefed’ or ‘beneath the eaves.’ As with many of his poems, this sonnet iswritten in rhyming couplets offering a simplicity and songlike quality tothe verse.

Sonnet: ‘I love to hear the evening crows go by’

TASK 39

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: The Skylark


Consider the ways in which Clare creates a sense of innocence in thispoem through the thoughts of the young boys who attempt to connectwith the skylark. Also look carefully at the structure of the poem andconsider the effect of the repetition of particular images.

The poem opens with a vivid description of the spring awakening seenthrough the description of the corn that is ‘sprouting its spiry points oftender green’. The vulnerability of the corn is linked to the picture ofthe hare that ‘squats … to terrors wide awake’ – thus Clare creates asense of the innocence and vulnerability of the natural world that isalways at the mercy of either the elements or predators. This idea iscontinued in the following image of the boys who blithely rustle thehedgerows and vie with each other as to who ‘shall be the first topluck the prize’ of the ‘early blossoms’. The boys themselves are seenas free and innocent as they wander ‘far from home’ but they becomepredators as they disturb the nesting skylark and force her to hoverover her nest until the boys have passed. Again Clare reinforces theidea of vulnerability as the skylark is seen to be at the mercy of both

The Skylark

TASK 40

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: The Skylark


the elements and human whims as she nests ‘upon the ground whereany thing / May come at to destroy.’ The boys, however, arethemselves lost in a world of relative innocence as Clare suggests thatthey idealise the freedom of the bird and believe it to be ‘free fromdanger as the heavens are free / From pain and toil’. Hence, thewhole poem takes on a circular form that refers the reader back toimages seen earlier in the poem. Clare uses the same word twice inthis poem as we see the boys pass the lark’s nest; we follow the birdas it flies up and down, back to the nest which the boys have nowpassed; and, as the bird settles, our attention is led back to the boys,with whom it stays for what remains of the poem. The effect is tocreate a sense of the open fields and the linking of humans and naturethrough a sense of innocence and vulnerability.

Selected Poems by John Clare he Poems: Sonnet: ‘Among the orchard weeds’


In this poem, Clare celebrates the clever and cunning way in which thehen manages to ensure her eggs are not taken.

Consider the ways Clare presents this scenario like a small vignette, asnapshot of nature’s ability to recreate itself.

The poem offers a sense of safety and security for the hen that is‘from every search / Snugly and sure’. The use of the word “snugly”creates a sense of being cosy, warm and comfortable, well away fromthe prying eyes of the servant girl whose remit is to collect the eggs forher employer. Clare uses the words ‘cackles’ and ‘cackling’,suggesting a mocking tone to the hen’s call as she sits among theorchard weeds. The poem concludes with the triumph of the hen anda celebration of new life as the ‘young brood come chirping to thedoor.’ Here the cackle has been replaced by ‘chirping’, a more mellowsound and, one might suggest, a more innocent one; not yet taintedby the vicissitudes of life.

Sonnet: ‘Among the orchard weeds’

TASK 41

Selected Poems by John Clare he Poems: The Landrail


Clare once again celebrates the secretive and clever nature of a birdthat manages to defeat people’s attempts to find it or its young.

In your notes, consider the way Clare creates a sense of freedom, of aworld in which the song of the bird whispers through the meadows asit defies any attempt to be found.


• The song of the landrail becomes an insistent murmur throughoutthe poem. It is heard ‘Through meadows night and morn’ and, tothe human ear, seems almost unreal as it cannot be traced to aparticular place. It is ‘like a fancy everywhere’. The sense ofmystery is reinforced by the description of the search for thesource of the ‘craiking’. Here again we see Clare’s use of dialectto create not only the sound pattern of the bird but also a sense ofplace and his engagement with the local area.

• What we are offered here is a real sense of Clare’s deepknowledge of the countryside and his ability to recreate themysteries of the life of different birds through his poetry. Hence,Clare is able to celebrate the freedom of the bird as it remainsdetached from the world of people who, for the most part, areunable to identify the ’noisy guest’ and so it remains ‘a pleasantwonder tale / For all the summer long.’

The Landrail

TASK 42

Selected Poems by John Clare he Poems: Sonnet: The Nightingale


In this poem, Clare celebrates the song of the greatly venerated bird,the nightingale. As with many of his poems Clare chooses a particularaspect of the landscape to focus upon and in this case it is the beauty ofthe song of the nightingale.

Consider the sentiments expressed in this poem. (You might like tolink this poem with the other bird poems you have read so far.)

Here, once again, Clare offers the reader a meticulous description of aparticular aspect of the countryside, in this case, ‘from the littleblackthorn spinny … / To the old hazel hedge that skirts the vale’. Themusic of the bird is described as ‘thrilling’, offering a sense of its magicand the effect it has on human ears. The ploughman does not justhear but he ‘feels’ the music that he attempts to imitate. Unlike thebird’s, his path is not clearly mapped out and his way is easily lost.The ‘Nightingale’ however remains undaunted as she continues tosing ‘her sweet melodious song.’

Sonnet: The Nightingale

TASK 43

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: The Nightingale’s Nest


In this poem, Clare develops his celebration of the nightingale as heplaces himself in the poem as observer and possible plunderer of hernest.

Having read the poem through carefully, consider the way Clarepresents his relationship with nature and the sense of urgency withwhich he impresses upon the reader his need to offer a description of aparticular aspect of the bird’s habitat and his respect for it.

The Nightingale’s Nest

TASK 44

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: The Nightingale’s Nest



• The poem begins with an invitation to ‘softly rove / And list thenightingale’. The reader is invited to join the poet on this journey tohear and see the nightingale in her habitat. Clare addresses thereader personally as if s/he might disturb the moment he is hopingto enjoy, that is, the vision of the bird. His determination to ‘find hernest and see her feed her young’ is described through images of‘creeping’ and hunting, revealing the methods he employs to fulfilhis desire. However, Clare asserts that all these hours were vainlyspent as the bird remained ‘as hidden as a thought unborn.’

• In the next few lines Clare celebrates the simplicity of the bird’sappearance in contrast with its status in the human world. Thedetail Clare offers of how the bird seems to be entranced by itsefforts to ‘release her heart / Of its out-sobbing songs’ serves toreinforce his connection with the nightingale and his close link tosome of nature’s mysteries. Clare fuses the sound of thenightingale with the attempts of the thrush to imitate the melody ofthis timid bird that once ‘Lost in a wilderness of listening leaves’ isable to ‘pour its luscious strain’. There is richness in the languagehere that serves to emulate the beauty and glory of the song of thebird. The imagery he associates with the thrush is characterised bythe deathlike qualities of winter whereas the nightingale is seen asa bird of the summer, one whose ‘joys are evergreen’ and who isassociated with a boundless freedom where ‘her world is wide.’

• Just as in the earlier poems, we are given an image of a worldwithout boundaries, a world before the green fields of Clare’syouth were enclosed by the 1809 Act. This is a world that Clareassociates with the state of man before the fall, an Eden: a worldof freedom and innocence. All of this is, of course, in keeping withthe general attitudes and values of the Romantic movement and,in this poem as in many others, we see Clare developing his ownsense of the Romantic sublime through small vignettes ofparticular aspects of the landscape, in this case the nightingale.

• The poem repeats itself in terms of the poet’s desire to invite thereader to witness the nightingale at first hand and here we seeanother aspect of Clare’s particular style of writing, as hedescribes the landscape not only through the use of dialect butalso through compound adjectives as in ‘And hunt this fern-strownthorn-clump round and round’. The timidity of the bird is reinforcedas man’s intrusion is seen to inhibit the delightful melody of thebird as ‘our presence doth retard / Her joys and doubt turns everyrapture chill.’

• The poem concludes with a very vivid description of the bird’seggs as they lie hidden in the thorn bush and, once again, Clareaddresses the reader directly as he instructs them to avert theirgaze and to leave the bird to her prelapsarian existence, ‘stillunknown to wrong / As the old woodland’s legacy of song.’ Thusthe poem concludes with a sense of a world of innocenceuntainted by change.

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: The Yellowhammer’s Nest


In The Yellowhammer’s Nest, Clare again acts as a recorder of thehabits and struggles of the natural world.

Read through this poem and explore the ways in which Claredemonstrates his engagement with the beauty and vulnerability of thisbird.

Here are our ideas:

• Again we see Clare inviting the reader to act as an observer ofnature as he captures a moment in time when the small bird hasbeen disturbed by a cow-boy. We are offered a vivid description ofthe nest lined as it is with ‘the horse’s sable hair’. Through hisattention to detail, Clare allows the reader to experience at firsthand the sight of the nest.

• He moves on to describe the eggs, fusing the image of the writerwith that of the natural world, developing the link through thedescription of them as ‘nature’s poesy’. The bird itself is seen asone of nature’s poets and Clare uses the image of ‘Parnass hill’, or

The Yellowhammer’s Nest

TASK 45

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: The Yellowhammer’s Nest


as we may know it Mount Parnassus, the mystical mountain inCentral Greece, Delphi. In Greek mythology, it was associatedwith poetic imagination, being the home of the Muses.

• The poem however, takes on a darker tone as Clare touches onanother key feature of the Romantic imagination that of the fusingof pain and pleasure. Although it is seen by the observer as ‘Ahappy home of sunshine, flowers and streams / Yet in thesweetest places cometh ill.’ Here Clare demonstrates his sense ofthe vulnerability of the little bird’s nest and the looming possibilitythat snakes may take the unhatched eggs leaving behind ‘ahouseless home a ruined nest’. In a similar vein to Keats who, inOde to Melancholy, asserts ‘Ay in the very temple of delight veil’dmelancholy hath her sovereign shrine’, Clare demonstrates thetragic pattern of the natural world.

Selected Poems by John Clare he Poems: The Pettichap’s Nest


In this poem, Clare celebrates the pleasure he feels when a chancesighting allows him to see not only the nest of the shy pettichap(garden warbler) but also the bird itself.

Having read through this poem, make notes on the way Clare engagesthe reader in his sense of surprise and wonder as he happens upon thenest and the bird

• In this poem Clare adopts a conversational style as he begins withthe words ‘Well, in my many walks I rarely found/ A place lesslikely for a bird to form/ Its nest…’ The reader is invited to sharehis surprise and pleasure as he offers details of the nest and theclever way it is hidden from the sight of predators. The rich sibilantsounds, ‘silken stole / And soft as seats of down for painless ease’are used to conjure up the image of warmth and security in thenest. Clare celebrates the amazing tenacity of the nest that teeterson the edge of destruction, being at the mercy of all who pass andyet he says it remains ‘like a miracle in safety’s lap’.

• The gentle rhythmic flow of the poem is suddenly broken by theinsertion of the word ‘Stop’ and the reader is drawn into thesurprise and delight of the poet’s revelation that he has glimpsed,possibly for the first time, the shy pettichap and been able to seeher habitat. The poem ends on a note of revelation as Clareasserts, ‘never did I dream until today / A spot like this would beher chosen home.’

TASK 46

The Pettichap’s Nest

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Sonnets: The Hedgehog


The cruelty of people and their desire to destroy harmless creaturesbecomes the focus of this poem.

In your notes, consider how Clare presents the hedgehog’s struggle tosurvive in a world characterised by thoughtless and often uncaringhuman beings.


• In these two sonnets, Clare explores the behaviour and fortitude ofthe hedge pig as it struggles to survive in an inhospitable world

Sonnets: The Hedgehog

TASK 47

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Sonnets: The Hedgehog


where its only defence against the gypsies’ noisy dogs is to roll up‘like a ball, a shapeless hog’.

• The fact that the gypsies see the meat of the hog as a kind ofdelicacy makes its existence more precarious. Throughout the firstsonnet, Clare details the unobtrusive life of the hog that scavenges‘On the hedge-bottom’ hunting for food.

• In the second sonnet, Clare denigrates those who pursue thehedgehog presenting them as careless folk who justify their pursuitof the animal by weaving scurrilous tales about its behaviour.Clare, however, attempts to redress the image created bydescribing the tiny mouth of the vulnerable creature that could not,he purports, ‘milk the cows’ or ‘Nibble their fleshy teats’.Nevertheless, these small creatures remain the prey of the gypsyfolk and Clare concludes with an image of the savage nature of thehunt and the fact that ‘no one cares’ and so the hedgehogcontinues to suffer as ‘the strife goes on.’

• What is interesting about this poem, and particular to thiscollection of animal poems, is Clare’s insistence on the beauty andsuffering of these wild creatures both at the hands of humans andalso as a result of nature’s law of the survival of the fittest. Whathe gives us here is a snapshot of these small animals that allstruggle to maintain life and yet offer a beauty to the landscapethat often goes unnoticed in our busy world.

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Sonnet: ‘One day when all the woods were


Having read this poem, comment on how Clare engages the reader inthe immediacy of his reaction to experiencing a small wonder ofnature.

Once again, Clare offers the reader a moment when he is suddenlygiven the opportunity to see a squirrel’s nest. He describes it withprecise detail using the language of the ordinary man (‘T’was oval-shaped’) and he relives the effect of this experience as he presentsthe emotions he felt, ‘strange wonder filled my breast.’ The experienceacts as a catalyst to his developing sense of engagement with thesurrounding landscape. Clare concludes the poem using dialect, ‘Isluthered down’, reinforcing the sense of place and his connection to itwhilst at the same time illustrating the effect this moment has had onhis imagination as ‘wondering’ he journeys on.

TASK 48

Sonnet: ‘One day when all the woods were bare’

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Sonnet: ‘I found a ball of grass among the


Here we have yet another snapshot of a sudden and unexpectedexperience. This time, Clare uses the sonnet form to capture themoment of haphazardly prodding a ball of grass only to find a mousesuckling her young tucked in among the hay.

How does Clare make this incident memorable?


• What is interesting about this poem is its conclusion as Claremoves swiftly from the description of the mouse to capturing aparticular aspect of the landscape at that moment in time.

• The rhyming couplets throughout the poem create a jaunty rhythmbut, as the poem concludes, these are used to redirect thereader’s vision from the mouse to the movement of the water andfinally to the warmth of the sun.

TASK 49

Sonnet: ‘I found a ball of grass among the hay’

Harvest mousenest

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: The Ants


This poem allows Clare to demonstrate how his imagination is fired bya simple encounter with even the lowliest of creatures.

Read through the poem carefully and consider how Clare reflects onthe world of the ants and how a chance encounter can create a sense ofwonder and amazement.

The sense of wonder and amazement is seen in this poem throughthe flight of fancy Clare describes as he watches the ants busyingthemselves. He asserts that ‘Pausing amazed, we know not what wesee’, suggesting perhaps that man’s belief in himself and his superiorknowledge can be so easily undermined by what might be consideredto be creatures at the very bottom of the life chain. As he watchesthem silently, there is a sense in which he implicitly offers a contrast tohuman social activity. He does not make an overt statement but hisdescription of the way ‘A swarm flocks round to help their fellow men’seems perhaps at odds with the behaviour of mankind. Clare moveson to suggest that ‘Surely they speak a language whisperingly / Toofine for us to hear’, intimating that their world is perhaps more orderedand refined than the somewhat savage world of humans. Heconcludes his flight of fancy with the idea that the ants are possibly‘Deformed remnants of the fairy days.’ Thus we see how these tinycreatures act as a catalyst to Clare’s own imagination and enable himto explore the possibility of different worlds outside of his own earthlyexperience.

The Ants

TASK 50

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Little Trotty Wagtail


This simple and almost childlike poem celebrates the tenacity of thelittle bird who despite the adversity of the weather continues to enjoythe life he leads.

How does Clare effectively characterise the bird for us?


• There is a real sense of the bird’s love of life as he is describedwaddling ‘in the water pudge and waggle went his tail’ and thesong of the bird is captured in the word ‘chirruped’, creating asense of pleasure at his antics.

• As with many other poems in this section of the collection, Clarefocuses the reader’s vision on a particular moment in time oraction of a bird or small creature. In this poem, in particular, we areoffered a sense of Clare’s love of the freedom of the bird thatdefies life’s vicissitudes and simply revels in the glory of life. Thepoem concludes with an image of the bird retiring to a safe haven

Little Trotty Wagtail

TASK 51

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Little Trotty Wagtail


in the ‘warm pigsty’ as the poet addresses him personally biddinghim ‘Goodbye’ safe in the knowledge that this little wagtail hasnothing to fear from the encroaching night time world.

• As this section concludes, we are left with a sense of Clare’swonder at the fortitude of the small animals he sees around himand his joy that they can survive in a changing world where peopleseem to be becoming distanced from a sense of place andbelonging. In these small vignettes, Clare offers the reader a worldof innocence that teeters on the edge of being destroyed by theever-changing world of mankind.

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Song: ‘The Morning mist is changing blue’


Clare focuses on a chance meeting with a pretty maid and celebratesthe effect this has upon him.

After reading through this poem, make careful notes on the way Clareexplores the complex emotions of desire against the backdrop of thenatural landscape.

LOVE

TASK 52

Song: ‘The Morning mist is changing blue’

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Song: ‘The Morning mist is changing blue’


Compare these ideas with your own:

• Clare captures the beauty of the new day through a detaileddescription of the landscape of which he feels so much a part. Themorning mist is compared to smoke, creating a sense of itsephemeral quality. There is almost a cinematic effect as theactivities of the day are brought into focus, firstly with the view ofthe arched bridge and then the cows and finally the maids workingin the fields. Against this backdrop, Clare invites the reader tonotice, as he does, the beauty of one maid in particular whosedistinguishing feature is her ‘inky hair’ and who is inextricablylinked to the natural landscape being ‘As bonny as the morning.’

• The description of the maid is developed in the second stanza andClare builds up the tension, and the impact the maid has uponhim, through the use of a snappy staccato rhythm. He writes, ‘Shelooked – my heart was fairly won’ and, with those words, thereader is given a sense of the immediacy of his reaction. Thesensation of joy, as in many of Clare’s poems, is almostimmediately counterbalanced by pain. However, this response isnot seen as negative but one to be embraced as he asserts, ‘Butpain I know can soon be well; / …And for my life I cannot tell /Which feeling was the dearest.’ Thus Clare touches on thecomplexity of the speaker’s emotional response to the burgeoningof new love and desire.

• In the final stanza the speaker celebrates the glory of the day anddescribes how the world around him appears ‘bright’ and ‘clear’.Thus nature herself seems to respond to the speaker’s mood ashe asserts, ‘All nature in her sweetest dress / Was still but sweetlydawning’, just as his emotional engagement with the young maid isnew and full of promise. Thus Clare links the dawning of a newday with all its unfulfilled promise to the possibilities that may lieahead for the speaker and the bonny maid.

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: First Love’s Recollections


This poem is characterised by a yearning for what has gone before.Throughout the poem the speaker nostalgically reflects on an earlierperiod in his life when Mary, possibly Mary Joyce, with whom Clarefell in love, a woman who was to become his muse and as he describedmetaphorically his “second wife”, responded to his love and lifeseemed full of possibilities.

Read the poem through carefully. Consider the ways Clare reflects onthe delights of first love in contrast to his present position of beingrejected and alienated from the Mary of the poem.

First Love’s Recollections

TASK 53

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: First Love’s Recollections


Here are some of our thoughts:

• The poem opens with an emotive insistence that the power of‘First love will with the heart remain / When all its hopes are by’.The frailty, yet endurance, of such a feeling is captured in thecomparison with rose blossoms that ‘still retain / Their fragrance tillthey die’. Clare uses the image of the seasons to develop thesense of change and an unspoken move towards winter, ‘Assummer leaves the stems behind / On which Spring’s blossomshung.’

• In the second stanza, the tone changes as Clare writes of wordsvexing the ear of their recipient and that ‘time and change’ havecome to alter ‘The love of former days’. The difference betweenformer times and present day is clearly illustrated by the languageClare chooses to describe these two conflicting states in stanzathree, by dividing the past from the present into two equal parts.The stanza opens with rich and sensuous language, offeringimages of ‘honied tokens’ and intimate descriptions of ‘Howrapturous to thy lips I clung’. In contrast, the last four linesdemonstrate the division that now exists between them as hesuggests Mary would recoil from him ‘like an untamed bird / Andblush with wilder fear.’

• The intensity of their love is caught in the balanced line at thebeginning of stanza four when he insists, ‘How loath to part, howfond to meet / Had we two used to be’. Once again this iscontrasted with the present circumstances as time has divided thecouple. Nevertheless, there is a lingering sense of Mary’spresence that haunts the speaker as he describes in stanza fivehow, although memory has faded, the clear image of the girlremains still: ‘there thy beauty lingers yet’ but it now ‘wears astranger face.’ The sense of loss and the pain of that loss iscreated in stanza seven as the speaker insists that ‘Impressionslinger on’ and the reader is offered a picture of a man who isunable to fully detach himself from his loss even though ‘all thegilded finery / That passed for truth is gone.’

• In the penultimate stanza, Clare alludes to Mary as his muse, onewho gave him confidence in his writing as she offered a ‘blushinglook of ready praise’. In contrast he now imagines her scorn at hisverse which, although accepted by the public at large, may ‘Seemdiscord to thine ear.’

• The poem concludes with a characteristic move from the personalto the wider landscape and nature in general as the speakerphilosophically reflects on the unfulfilled possibilities of this earlylove. In the final lines of the poem, Clare asserts that ‘A fate likethis hath oft befell / E’en loftier hopes that ours’ as nature itself isoften seen to fail to bring to fruition the promise it engenders,‘Spring bids full many buds to swell / That n’er grow to flowers.’Thus the nostalgia and sense of loss that dominate the poem areultimately replaced by a tone of acceptance as Clare links theemotional world of man with that of nature.

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Ballad: ‘I dreamt not what is was to woo’


In this poem Clare adopts the persona of a woman who describes thecomplexity of the pain and pleasure experienced when uncertaintycharacterises a relationship.

Read this poem through carefully and consider how Clare presents thegirl’s pleasure and excitement but also her pain.

The opening stanza offers a sense of the glory of falling in loveagainst all the odds as the young girl insists that she had felt her ‘heartsecure’ yet the young man’s simple smile and seemingly honest wordscaptured it. As she reveals, this comes as a surprise to her: ‘Howsweet it (is) to love.’ The journey to town is described in simple termsas the speaker seems to become more emotionally involved with theyoung man who holds her hand and helps her over each stile.However, the final stanza changes the tone of the poem as the girldescribes a distance between the two when they reach the town, aplace where others can see them. The lover sighs but ‘kissed me not’,and makes no definite promises to develop the relationship with thegirl. So the poem concludes, like many others in this group, with asense of loss and pain as the young man’s cheek is deemed to have‘bruised my heart and left a pain / That robs it of its rest.’ Thus we seeClare focusing on the unsettling nature of love and the pain that it cancause.

Ballad: ‘I dreamt not what is was to woo’

TASK 54

Selected Poems by John Clare he Poems: Song: ‘Say what is love’


Here is another short poem that deals with Clare’s loss of Mary Joyce.In short rhyming couplets, he traces the pain of loss and attempts tounravel the nature of love.

Make notes on the images Clare offers as he attempts to explore thecomplexity of this abstract human emotion.

The opening couplet seems to illustrate the topsy - turvy nature of lovethat offers the promise of life yet just as easily courts death. Claresums this up in the concise line ‘To live and die and live again.’ In thenext couplet he offers the paradox of being imprisoned by love and yetstill being free. This is reinforced in the following couplet where hesees freedom as being in the realms of appearance. Clare seems tosuggest that once smitten by love one can never be free of ‘hopelesshopes’ that offer no fulfilment. He goes on to question whether reallove exists on earth and, in these lines, there seems despondency aslove appears ephemeral and cannot be contained. Clare insists that it‘fades and nowhere will remain / And nowhere is o’ertook again.’ Thetransient nature of love is emphasised as Clare uses the image of therose leaf that blooms but just as quickly fades and, having beenbeautiful, will soon die. The final couplet of this poem refocuses thereader onto the relationship Clare had with Mary and his insistencethat, although love itself may be transient, there is a lasting quality to itthat despite the passage of time makes him believe that ‘whate’er it be/ It centres Mary still with thee.’

Song: ‘Say what is love’

TASK 55

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Song: ‘Love lives beyond’


In contrast to some of the sentiments about love we have seen in thecollection so far, this poem appears to celebrate the enduring nature oflove that the speaker asserts lives beyond death.

In your notes, consider the way Clare weaves his love of the naturallandscape into his feelings about human love and look carefully at theconclusion in contrast to the opening of the poem.


• Clare begins this poem using enjambment, forcing the reader tostop and consider before he qualifies his thoughts with ‘The tomb– the earth’. Thus a sense of the endurance of love is created; anemotion that the speaker suggests can defy even death. The tonethen becomes more wistful as the speaker says ‘I love the fond, /The faithful and the true.’

Song: ‘Love lives beyond’

TASK 56

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Song: ‘Love lives beyond’


• Stanza two develops the idea of love’s all encompassing nature aswe are told ‘Love lives in sleep’ and is ‘The happiness of healthydreams’. Clare now moves on to link his ideas about love to natureand the landscape that surrounds him. The language becomescelebratory as Clare suggests that love can be found in the beautyof nature, in ‘flowers’, ‘the even’s pearly dew’, ‘On earth’ and in the‘eternal blue’ of the sky.

• The burgeoning new life of spring is fused, in stanzas four andfive, with lovers and the delights of young love. It is here that Clareseems to move towards a celebration of young love that, like thespring, offers so much possibility and promise. The poemconcludes with an echo of the first stanza but now the young havebecome the focus of the speaker’s attentions as, although thespeaker still asserts that ‘Love lives beyond / The tomb, the earth,the flowers and dew’, there is a suggestion, at the end of thispoem, that perhaps it is embraced more fully by the young whobelieve themselves to be ‘faithful … and true.’

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Ballad: ‘The Spring returns, the pewit screams’


This poem, like several others we have encountered, deals with the lossof love and in particular Clare’s loss of Mary Joyce.

Read the poem through carefully and consider how Clare presents thecontrast between pain and pleasure and the effects of lost love.

Ballad: ‘The Spring returns, the pewit screams’

TASK 57

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Ballad: ‘The Spring returns, the pewit screams’



• The pewit (a common name for the green plover or lapwing) is asocial bird that inhabits open, usually arable, countryside. The birdcan often be seen wheeling against the sky above its nest on theground and making a plaintive call (peeeeeee….wit).

• Once again, Clare focuses the reader onto a particular aspect ofthe natural landscape. This time it is the song of the pewit whosecall does not change; but Clare suggests that, to human ears, thesound is dependent upon one’s emotional state. Clare insists itsounds ‘harsh and ill’ now and yet, when his love was blossomingwith last year’s spring, ‘T’was music last May morning.’

• The intimacy and delight of his time with Mary is captured throughthe references to the surrounding landscape. Mary is seen topraise ‘the screaming plover’, whilst her lover plucks a daisy andoffers it to her as a ‘May-garland for her bosom.’ The images thenare all associated with the freshness of spring and all thepossibilities that offers.

• In the third stanza, the repetition of ‘I’ demonstrates the poet’ssense of personal delight in these intimate moments as hedescribes how he ‘claimed a kiss’ and ‘thought myself a king thatday’, having for his throne ‘beauty’s bosom’.

• It is in the fourth stanza that there is a sudden change of tone asthe image of the flower loses its benign quality and becomes ‘athorn to wound me’. The souring of love is described in terms ofphysical pain and wounding and the glory of spring is replaced byimages of death as the flower has now ‘withered’ and love hasbecome ‘despised’. In the fifth stanza, Clare returns to the contrastthat opened the poem; that is, the difference between hisperceptions of nature when his love blossomed and his feelingsnow that Mary is lost to him. It seems that now there is ‘Nowhereon earth where joy can be’ and Mary is ‘stolen treasure’.

• The poem concludes with a sense of the pain engendered by theemotional distance between the lovers. Clare asserts thatphysically her home is only an hour from his own but he insists, ‘Ifseas between us both should roar / We were not further parted.’ Inthe final stanza, the tone changes once again as Clare seems tomove away from a feeling of self pity to one of blame in which hemoves from the individual Mary to women as a whole. He onceagain embraces the natural landscape, that of the sky and clouds,but uses the image to make a damning comment on the vacillationof women as he asserts that ‘The wind and clouds, now here nowthere, / Hold not such strange dominion / As woman’s coldperverted will / And soon-estranged opinion.’ Thus the poem isconcluded on a bitter note as Clare resorts to blaming theinconsistencies of women for his present lassitude.

The pewit

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: An Invite to Eternity


This is an interesting poem as Clare, uncharacteristically, moves awayfrom the natural landscape and sets his poem in a world beyond death.

Having read the poem through, make notes on how effectively Clarecreates a world beyond the grave.

An Invite to Eternity

TASK 58

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: An Invite to Eternity


Here are some of our thoughts:

• The poem opens with a reiterated question to a young maidperhaps posed to measure the strength of her commitment to thespeaker. Rather than painting a picture of new life and newbeginnings in this world, Clare conjures up an image of a worldthat exists on the other side of the grave. This world ischaracterised by valleys deep in shade, a place ‘Where the pathhath lost its way’ and ‘Where the sun forgets the day’. The darkand forbidding nature of the description seems quite at odds withan invitation to a young maiden and very different in style from theother love poems in this selection.

• Clare develops the dismal image of this forbidding world in thesecond stanza as he creates a picture of a world where all theusual pleasures of earthly life ‘fade like visioned dreams’. This is aworld characterised by a loss of identity and one ‘Where parentslive and are forgot / And sisters live and know us not’. Thepessimistic nature of Clare’s description seems to act as achallenge to the young girl who, it could be suggested, is beingtested on the strength of her love.

• In the penultimate stanza, Clare presents a world of oppositeswhere the blossoming joy that love and togetherness should bringhas be replaced by a ‘death of life’, a life that offers no ‘home, orname’. Clare echoes Shakespeare’s Hamlet when he describesthe nature of existence in the afterlife, ‘At once to be, and not tobe’ and to live in a world where everything passes like shadows.

• The poem concludes with an insistence from the speaker that themaid commit herself to a desire to live with him in eternity. It is onlyon these terms that the speaker seems willing to commit himselffully to the young girl. In the final lines, he invites the maid to ‘tracethy footsteps on with me; / We’re wed to one eternity.’ Thus he issuggesting that the maid has accepted his vision and that he feelssecure in her commitment and the possibility that his love shall notbe defeated by death.

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Love and Memory


This section of love poems concludes with a theme touched on in AnInvite to Eternity, that of death. This time, however, the speakerremains alive and it is the woman who has died. As we know, MaryJoyce died young at the age of 41 and it is possible to read this poem asClare’s testament of his loss and of the pain he experiences havingonly memories left to create images of Mary.

Read the poem through carefully and consider the ways in which Clarepresents the loss of a loved one.TASK 59

Love and Memory




• The poem opens with a stark statement about the death of theloved one: ‘Thou art gone the dark journey / That leaves noreturning.’ Although there is a tone of acceptance, ‘’Tis fruitless tomourn thee’, nevertheless this is counterbalanced by the imagescreated by his memory that leave him ‘desolate now.’

• The second stanza conjures up images of the loved one in heryouth and Clare reflects on the feelings of the young who feelinvulnerable and see themselves as ‘immortal’. The imagery usedto describe this feeling is almost metaphysical as Clare refers to‘Heaven’s halo’ weaving a secure ring around them both, one sostrong it could defy ‘Earth’s hopes’ that ultimately all will die. Thesecond half of the stanza celebrates the beauty of the youngwoman and the special place she held in the speaker’s heart as heinsists, ‘To my heart thou art nearest’.

• The imagery that opens the third stanza is more in keeping withClare’s usual descriptions of the natural world that surrounds himbut, interestingly, he moves beyond this to the world of theimagination that is purified by its link to the lover now in heaven.Thus there is another metaphysical leap from the earthly to theheavenly as the speaker insists ‘More pure is the birth / Ofthoughts that wake of thee / Than thought upon earth.’

• The next stanza offers a sense of the acceptance of the transienceof life as Clare moves from the image of the ‘bud green in Spring’to ‘a rose blown in June’. The speaker seems to suggest that theyoung woman was ‘too fair’ for this world and the tone ofacceptance continues as there is almost a note of approval that,by dying young, she has defied the ravages of age, ‘And ere agedid thee wrong / Thou wert summoned away.’ This is a commonRomantic idea, that of dying young and not facing the horror ofgrowing old. Several writers of the age share this idea and we seeit particularly in the poetry of John Keats. You might like to look atOde to a Nightingale by Keats where he says, ‘Now more thanever seems it rich to die, / To cease upon the midnight with nopain, / While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad / In such anecstasy!’

• The tone changes in the next two stanzas as acceptance isreplaced by the pain of loss and the grief felt by the speaker whocannot reconcile himself to being alone. The world for him haschanged since the absence of the lover has destroyed ‘The mostthat I loved / And the all I enjoyed.’ The image of the fountain is nolonger used to illustrate purity and the life force as for the speaker,his world had darkened, and the fountain of his life is now ‘dry’.Life now offers no pleasure and the more the speaker involveshimself in life, the more poignant becomes his loss.

• In the following three stanzas, Clare returns to images of thenatural landscape and links the sense of loss to the cyclical natureof the seasons. Once again it is the natural world that seems to



offer some solace and a tone of acceptance returns to the poemas he asserts ‘The year has its Winter / As well as its May’ and soit must be recognised that ‘the sweetest must leave us / And thefairest decay.’ He moves on to celebrate the glory of life throughthe image of the sun that acts as a catalyst to bring about new lifeand regeneration. However, this eighth stanza concludes with anoverwhelming sense of the darkness of the speaker’s world as heacknowledges the beauty of the sun and the seasons yet insiststhat ‘As sweet as they be / Shall (n)ever more greet me / Withtidings of thee.’ The following stanza celebrates the song of thebirds particularly the cuckoo and the nightingale; one heard inspring and the other in summer. Yet, unlike in the bird poems, thistime there is an insistence on the idea of impending death. Clareseems to suggest that the happier one is the more likely it is thatone will ‘Sink the deepest in sorrow.’ This mood is quiteuncharacteristic of that in the other love poems and seems todemonstrate the intensity of the pain of loss.

• In the penultimate stanza, the mood changes again to a sense ofacceptance that everything must die. Once again there is the useof metaphysical imagery as Clare compares the death of the lovedone to the fall of ‘stars from the sky’. Earth now seems to becharacterised by pain and suffering and he contemplates how hewould not wish ‘thee from joy / To earth’s troubles again’.

• The poem concludes with a reiteration of the terrible sense of lossand suffering the speaker continues to experience as for him ‘Mybeing is gone’. We are offered a picture of a man who feels he haslost not only his love but himself and that his love’s death hasrobbed him of any purpose or sense of joy. As with many otherromantic writers, Clare insists that the intensity of grief cannot bearticulated: ‘Words know not my grief’. However, the reader is leftwith a sense of the deep pain and emptiness the speaker feels, ashis life remains bereft of his love.

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Remembrances


Here Clare reflects on the loss of childhood and, in particular, presentshis feelings of sadness towards the ways in which familiar childhoodhaunts have changed beyond recognition.

Having read the poem, look at it again and make notes on the wayClare presents the reminiscent and reflective tone.

Here are some of our points to add to your own:

• A reference to summer is the initial way in which Clare establishesthe idea of time and, by commenting on ‘pleasures’ that are ‘gone’,he immediately creates a sense of sadness at the loss of timesgone by.

• The repetition of ‘far away’ also creates a sense of reflection ashappier, summer times seem now to be a distant memory. Thisnotion is enforced further by the use of words such as ‘gone’ and‘decay’ as well as by the simile created in the final two lines of thefirst stanza.

• Throughout the poem, Clare uses the past tense and the repetitionof phrases that emphasise the idea of the past such as ‘When Iused to… ‘. These all help to create a tone of reflection andreminiscence for the reader.

LOSS AND THE POLITICS OF NATURE

TASK 60

Remembrances

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Remembrances


• Clare uses poetic techniques such as figurative language andalliteration to create the reflective tone. Images such as the ‘thehills of silken grass’ and ‘boyhood’s pleasing haunts like a blossomin the blast’ suggest a nostalgic view of past times; their evocativesensory descriptions emphasising the feeling of loss. Soft soundpatterning also creates the feeling of nostalgia, perhaps mostevidently in the sixth stanza where the reader is bombarded withalliterative phrases.

Now look at the way in which Clare presents his views on thechanging landscape of his own childhood.


• Most notable is Clare’s use of proper nouns such as ‘LangleyBush’, ‘Lea Close Oak’ and ‘Cowper Green’. These all give clear,fixed and real reference points for the reader and emphasise thereality of the changes being described. The nouns also add agreater sense of Clare’s personal loss as it is as if he namingfriends.

• The way in which Clare juxtaposes the images of childhoodfreedom and pleasures with the desolation of the landscape as hesees it now helps to create the sense of his sadness at thechanges and emphasise a feeling of anger. Words such as‘raptures’, ‘eternal’, ‘pleasures’, ‘delicious’ and ‘joys’ are used tohighlight the pleasant past but are always used alongsideexpressions such as ‘decay’, ‘all alone’, ‘naked’ and ‘sudden bare’,expressing the harsh changes to the landscape Clare haswitnessed. It could be argued that this juxtaposition is used toecho the conflict of old and new; the lively, vivacious vocabularyreflects the carefree attitudes of Clare as a boy whereas thestagnant, dull descriptions of the present are the voice of a jadedadult.

TASK 61

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: The Flitting


Echoing the tone of Remembrances, this poem also deals with Clare’ssense of sadness at the changing landscape and his feelings ofisolation. It was written when, at the age of nearly 38, Clare moved outof the home in which he had been born to another house three milesaway. It may also recall homesickness as a result of having spent timein London, away from his childhood environment.

Considering the tone and topic of the poem as a whole, make notes onthe impact the title and rhyme scheme may have.


• The title creates a feeling of restlessness and can suggest brevity.This could be seen to reflect the brevity of Clare’s separation fromhis own particular beloved countryside (his memories of suchplaces helping him cope while away from his old home) but couldalso be seen, on a larger scale, to echo the way in which changesto the landscape will not be permanent. The notion that thecountryside’s beauty is perpetual is seen throughout the poem soperhaps the title comments on the brevity of wealth in comparisonto nature’s infinite charms.

• The poem follows a simple ABAB rhyming pattern, creating aregular, rhythmical beat. This pattern could echo Clare’s simple

The Flitting

TASK 62



engagement with the landscape and his straightforwardappreciation of its beauty.

Focusing more clearly on the first five stanzas, how does Clareestablish a feeling of sadness and loss?


• The repetition of ‘I’ highlights the individual and suggests theisolation Clare feels.

• The personification of summer in the opening stanza is aninteresting way of creating the feeling of loss as it suggestssomeone familiar is now a stranger. The description of thenightingale that ‘seems at loss’ (stanza four) also echoes a similaridea.

• Repetition of ‘Royce Wood’ also emphasises a longing for homeand familiar places. Clare uses the proper noun often inconjunction with phrases that express an inability to engage withthe new landscapes that surround him. Most interesting perhaps isthe image of him ‘lean(ing) upon the window sill’ – there is asuggestion that he can see the new landscape but the glass of thewindow prevents him experiencing it completely.

TASK 63



• Vocabulary choices such as ‘native’ and the repetition of ‘home’highlight the longing for familiar places. The word ‘native’, inparticular, seems to suggest that the poet feels out of place in hiscurrent environment.

In the middle section of the poem (particularly in stanzas seventeen tonineteen) Clare expresses his views on the perpetual beauty of nature.Make notes on the ways in which this view is expressed.

Here are some suggestions:

• Words such as ‘ancient’ and ‘heritage’ initially create the feeling ofnature’s continual beauty. Clare also refers to images that last ‘forever’ and ‘never seem to die’, emphasising his belief in thestrength of the countryside.

• References to the Garden of Eden can be seen throughout thisbrief section which depicts Clare’s belief that the countryside isEdenic and is often seen by Clare as a gift from God. Therefore,his frustrations at its destruction, in the latter stages of the poem,are vehemently expressed.

The final section of the poem can be seen as a lyrical presentation ofthe influence the countryside has on Clare’s poetic eye. Comment onthe way his relationship with the land is presented.

TASK 64

TASK 65



Here are the points we noted:

• Clare openly rejects the idea of a lavish, wealthy lifestyle in theopening line of the final section (‘Give me no high-flown fangledthings’). Instead, he focuses most of his attentions on highlightingthe powerful influence of the simple things in life. Rather than dwellon ‘pomp’ and ‘splendour’, he finds comfort in the ‘mild and bland’.(It is interesting to note that the use of the word ‘verse’ in stanzatwenty one suggests that Clare’s complaint is not just with thosewho live lavishly but also with the poets who present thissumptuous wealth in their poetry. He seems to indicate that themore simplistic the presentation of nature in literature, the moreheartfelt and realistic it is.)

• Repetition of ‘simple’ in stanza twenty four and the use of wordssuch as ‘trifle’ highlight the importance of simplicity for Clare. Eachof these simple depictions of nature has a profound influence onthe poet as he finds ‘love and joy’ within them.

Selected Poems by John Clare The Poems: Decay, a Ballad


Calling upon the traditional ballad form, Clare uses refrain andrepetition as well as a memorable metre to emphasise his concerns atthe decaying art of writing poetry. Once again we see Clare use imagesof nature to present his thoughts and feelings. Here it is particularlyinteresting to note how poetry and nature seem to be synonymous.

Having read the poem, look again at the first three stanzas and makenotes on the way Clare presents images of nature to reflect the dyingart.

Here are some ideas:

• The personification of both nature and poetry is used in the firststanza to suggest that the two feminine forms that used to be sofamiliar to Clare are now becoming unrecognisable.

• Clare appears to be suggesting that images of the countryside(images so influential in his earlier poetry) are aging and decaying.In the opening stanza ‘the fields grow old’ and beauty is requiredto ‘cling[s]’ on in a fight against the changing landscape. Thesecond stanza also depicts images of the changes to countrysidescenes as Clare juxtaposes the new regimented landscape that isdominated by manmade ‘paths’, ‘gravel’ and ‘shaven grass’ withthe images of the organic views of the past (‘brambles overspread’and ‘molehills’) that has a much greater influence on him.

Decay, a Ballad

TASK 66



• The final line of the third stanza is perhaps the clearest indicationthat, without nature, in its purest, simplest form, Clare cannot beinspired to write as here, instead of ‘hardly know(ing)’ the art ofwriting, he ‘cannot find’ his inspiration.

Now look at stanzas four and five. Comment on the vocabulary andstructure used here. How are Clare’s thoughts and feelings reflectedthrough them?


• Although stanza four starts with optimistic images of the sun, thesense of a dejected and despondent mood is reflected in use ofdark vocabulary in the remainder of the verse. The uplifting visionof ‘mornings’ is overpowered by the connotations of words such as‘grey’, ‘mist’, ‘homeless’ and ‘stranger’.

• The fifth stanza sees a change in tone and pace as Clare usesshort, staccato sentences to reflect his frustrations anddisappointment.

Comment on the ways in which Clare presents his relationship withpoetry in the final two stanzas.

TASK 67

TASK 68



Here are some suggestions:

• Using references to the seasons and the passing of the dayillustrates the sense of nature’s cycle: a possible indication that theloss of his inspiration is all a part of life’s pattern.

• The repetition of ‘I have had’ suggests that Clare feels his time asa poet has justifiably come to an end as he has experienced all hecould expect.

• The final line of the poem includes a reference to ‘faith’ whichcould suggest that Clare feels his relationship with poetry issynonymous with religious belief; his inability to relate to God andnature has perhaps caused this loss of faith.

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: Song: Last Day


This poem deals with death, as the title suggests. It has a verydespondent and, at times, apocalyptic tone and Clare seems to beexploring the emotions involved with facing the end of the world.

Having read the poem, look at it again and make notes on thetechniques Clare uses to present the despondent tone.

• The vocabulary used in the opening stanza is the perhaps themost poignant way in which Clare creates an air of anger and asense of destruction. For example, ‘dreadful’, ‘blast’ and ‘vacuum’all contribute to the sense of doom. ‘Oblivion’, ‘destruction’ and‘shadows’ also help instil the feeling of disaster.

• The plosive alliteration in the phrase ‘day, a dreadful day’ alsohelps to emphasise the anger and aggression of the poem.

• Images that echo an apocalyptic tone are used to stress the senseof decay. The idea that ‘towns and cities, temples, graves / Allvanish like a breeze’, for example, creates the sense of completedevastation, emphasised by the use of listing and made morepowerful by the simplicity and gentleness of the ‘breeze’.

• Pathetic fallacy is used as Clare introduces the image of ‘deadlythunder’ towards the end of the poem, creating a disturbing senseof the darkness of the poem.

• The continual reference to “dark” and “darkness” adds to thedespondency of the poem as the repetition of such images(‘shades’, ‘shadows’, ‘black’ and ‘day’s light be done’ may also beconsidered here) is quite overwhelming for the reader.

Song: Last Day

TASK 69

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: The Fallen Elm


Clare’s political agenda is on display here as he reflects on the impactof radical new changes to work and agricultural law. Although there isclearly a sense of anger and frustration at these changes, Clare’s loveof nature is evident through the use of the fallen elm as an extendedmetaphor.

Looking particularly at the first half of the poem (lines 1 – 28), makenotes on the way in which Clare presents the image of the tree.

• Clare personifies the tree making it sound almost like a familiar friend.He focuses particularly on the sounds of the tree, using descriptionssuch as ‘murmured’, ‘sweetest anthem’ and ‘whispering calms’ tostress the gentle demeanour.

• There is also a focus on the ways in which the tree protects from theelements and its sturdy nature is echoed through vocabulary such as‘steadfast’. Other images such as ‘thy leaves was green’ and thevision of children making their playhouse in the shade of the treerepresent the familiarity of and love for this vision of natural beauty.

In the final half of the poem, Clare makes his political commentsregarding the enclosure laws and changes to the agricultural workingenvironment that formed the basis of the Agricultural and,subsequently, the Industrial Revolution. The Enclosure Acts took awaya village’s common land (to which individual villagers had no legaltitle) and divided it up into fields which were sold to large landowners.As a result, villagers were forced to leave the land and migrate to thecities. Clare is particularly concerned with the villagers’ feelings ofpowerlessness in the face of economic greed and the ways in whichchanges to farm life encroached upon the beauty of the landscape.

The Fallen Elm

TASK 70

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: The Fallen Elm


Make some notes on the ways in which Clare presents these politicalopinions throughout the poem.


• In the second part of the poem, Clare intensifies his tone andspeaks aggressively of those who have introduced the enclosurelaws. Vocabulary choices such as ‘enslaving’, ‘ruin’, ‘injure’ and‘overwhelm’ are indicative of Clare’s frustration and anger at thedecision to take over the common land. Images such as ‘Thecommon heath, became the spoilers’ prey’ also suggest hissadness at the change in the landscape; the word ‘prey’ isparticularly evocative as it creates a feeling of the land beingravaged by the greed of those buying up the land.

• Juxtaposing images such as ‘the common heath’ and ‘nature’sdwellings’ with the ‘workhouse prisons’ that were built on suchsites of beauty is another way in which Clare expresses his angerand disappointment at the destruction of the countryside.

• Clare also refers to the way in which those who sought to changethe agricultural laws used propaganda to justify their actions,claiming that the change in law would bring about freedom for farmworkers by giving them the opportunity to buy their own land. Thereality, of course, was that only those with wealth could benefitfrom the selling of the common land and, consequently, the lawbrought about great poverty. It is easy to see Clare’s resentment ofsuch propaganda within the poem as he speaks of those insupport of the law as ’knaves’ and highlights how they ‘Bawlfreedom loud and then oppress the free.’

TASK 71

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: The Lament of Swordy Well


A lament often reflects feelings of grief and mourning. In this poem,the lament refers directly to a specific place of beauty to which Clarewas attached. The title therefore suggests a feeling of the loss oflandscape and is an expression of the grief felt when the place that hadbeen so important to him was turned into a quarry.

Having read the whole poem, consider first of all the impact of thenarrative voice used.

Clare uses first person narrative, taking on the persona of the place inthe title. This unusual narrative technique helps the reader to engagewith the plight of the countryside as ‘Swordy Well’ speaks directly tous of the sadness of being damaged by the new political ideals. Givingthe place a voice is also emotive as it allows Clare to champion thelandscape and, in some ways, creates a sense of liberty for the verything that is being constrained. This is particularly significant in thethird stanza where ‘Swordy Well’ speaks of its lack of agenda.

What techniques are used by Clare to reflect his opinions and feelings?

TASK 72

TASK 73

The Lament of Swordy Well

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: The Lament of Swordy Well



• Personification is used within the poem. ‘Pity’ is seen as femininein the opening stanza and this is juxtaposed with the masculinepersonification of ‘profit’ in the second stanza. This could suggestthat Clare associates greed with men and sympathy with women,perhaps because the politicians behind the agricultural changeswould have been male. Other elements are personified within theearly part of the poem: ‘dependence’ and ‘want’, for example, aredescribed human qualities as well as the place itself of course,which ‘wail(s)’ and is ‘taunt(ed)’. These elements add to the notionthat the destruction of such beauty is as severe as physical pain.

• Sound patterns such as sibilance and alliteration are used in manyplaces throughout the poem. The repetition of ‘s’ in ‘sooner swear’and ‘w’ in ‘worst to want, who lurch’ in the opening stanza, forexample, create a sense of the persona’s anger as these harshsounds seem almost to be spat out.

• Tripling is used in many places as Clare seems to bombard thereader with images of destruction and decay. ‘They rend and delveand tear’ is perhaps the most notable example.

• Vocabulary choices in the second half of the poem are used toemphasise the decay of the site as a result of enclosure. OftenClare blends images of natural beauty with words and phrases thatsuggest the weakening of the environment: ‘bees’ are ‘feeble’ and‘almost-weary’ and ‘tussocks bow and sigh.’ Repetition of negativephrases such as ‘shan’t’ and ‘shouldn’t’ reinforce the despondenttone. The most significant repetition though is of ‘scarce’ as thishighlights the way in which the enclosure laws diminished the oncesumptuous countryside.

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: The Moors


Once again, in this poem about a place with which he was veryfamiliar, Clare illustrates his frustrations and sadness at the changinglandscape resulting from the Agricultural Revolution. The moor inquestion is thought to be an area of overwhelming natural beauty inHelpston. In this passionately beautiful poem, Clare describes thedivision and destruction of the landscape through the enclosures law.

Having read the poem, look more closely at the first section (lines 1 –34). What techniques are used by Clare to create the sense of themoors’ beauty?


• Clare bombards us with images of freedom and abundance in thefirst section of the poem. Phrases such as ‘eternal’, ‘unchecked’and ‘wild’ all help create the sense of liberty felt prior to theenclosures law.

• Reference to ‘boyish hours’ suggests the freedom felt in the timebefore the enclosures law was one synonymous with childhoodadventure. It also, however, is a timely reminder that this freedomis a thing of the past.

• In this section, Clare focuses on animals, using their changedexistence to illustrate the limitations of enclosure. Before the lawthey were ‘free to range’ and ‘went and came’ with a sense ofnatural, inherent ease. The references to ‘rising sun’ and simplepassing of the day emphasise this idea. These images, typical ofClare, are direct, literal and simplistic and it is perhaps this plainadmiration that gives the poem its strength.

TASK 74

The Moors



In the shorter section from lines 35 – 50, how does Clare develop thesense of sadness and frustration at the way the landscape is beingchanged?


• The fricative alliteration of ‘fled and flats’ echoes Clare’s anger andfrustration at the destruction of the land. Vocabulary choices suchas ‘mangled’ and ‘bereft’ also help to stress the violent destruction.

• Clare uses the repetition of ‘little’ for the first time here andcontinues to use it in the remainder of the poem. This could first bea reference to the way in which land is limited and rather thanbeing spacious is ‘little’. It also relates to the narrow-mindednessof those who insist on the enclosure.

The final section of the poem becomes much more aggressive andfocused on the political agenda. What views of the changing laws doesClare present and what techniques does he employ to suggest suchchanges

TASK 75

TASK 76

continue over



Here are some suggestions.

• Though Clare uses some sumptuous and soft images (similes andsibilance seem predominant), the final section is dominated by thepersecution of those behind the enclosures law. Nouns such as‘philistine’ and ‘tyrant’ are used to show Clare’s anger towardsthese men and their decisions.

• The paradoxical phrases ‘scared freedom’ and ‘lawless law’suggest the contrasting way in which the law was promoted asthey both refer to the method of justification; those in charge of theenclosures insisted it would bring financial freedom to agriculturalworkers when in fact it destroyed many farmers and prevented adivision of wealth.

• In the final stages of the poem, Clare alludes to the power ofnaming when he refers to ‘birds and trees and flowers without aname’. Within literature, the notion of naming is often associatedwith control and ownership; the fact that these visions of naturalbeauty ‘All sighed’ at the introduction of the enclosures lawindicates they are now owned by somebody rather than being partof the common land and the sadness of such a controlling act ispresent in their lament.

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: ‘I Am’


Questioning his own existence, Clare here seems to explore feelings ofisolation and a sense of emptiness.

Having read the poem, look at it again and make notes on the wayClare presents a despondent tone.

• The poem begins with Clare’s lament that nobody ‘cares or knows’of him, creating a feeling of isolation and pity. He describes himselfas being ‘the self-consumer of (his) woes’, a phrase that indicateshe is aware of the fact that he internalises his anguish and theword ‘consumer’ evokes feelings of being taken over, dominatedand destroyed by such pities.

• Vocabulary such as ‘nothingness’ and phrases like ‘neither senseof life or joys’ encourages the reader to empathise with Clare’sfeeling of despondency.

• The metaphor ‘the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems’ is perhapsthe most poignant way in which the sadness of the poem andClare’s frustrations at his life are exposed. Though clearlyhyperbolic, the image is highly effective: creating a visual image ofthe desolate man, searching for meaning but finding only thesense of being adrift.

• The ‘long(ing)’ described in the final stanza creates a sense thatClare is full of desperation to find meaning in his life. The fact thathe longs for a ‘place’ is significant as it represents his need to feelat home and rested. However, the sense that he wants this placeto be where emotions are not felt (‘where woman never smiled orwept’) is rather disturbing. Coupled with the plea to be with hiscreator, the poem ends with a sense of Clare’s desire to die.

JOHN CLARE, POET

‘I am’

TASK 77

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: A Vision


Although both the title and final stanzas of this poem suggest freedomand liberty, it ultimately deals with frustrations and feelings ofabandonment. Many of his emotions here seem to be associated withClare’s religious beliefs.

Having read the poem, look at it again and make notes on the wayClare presents his relationship with religion.


• Beginning with a reference to his loss of belief (‘I lost the love, ofheaven above’) suggests this poem will reflect Clare’s feelings ofisolation: in previous poems, his faith has been presented assomething that is a vital support to him. However, the simplemelodic tone of the internal rhyme maintains an upbeat feel that isconsolidated in later verses. It seems to be more of an explorationof faith rather than a testament to its difficulties.

• Contrasts between heaven, hell and earth are presentedthroughout the poem and Clare seems to suggest he has adifferent relationship with each. If we consider this idea inconjunction with the title of the poem and the final liberatingimages of him keeping his ‘spirit with the free’, it could be arguedthat Clare is presenting the notion that it is only through anunderstanding of every element of the nature of religion that wecan fully appreciate the world.

• Vocabulary that echoes a sense of abundance and liberty is usedthroughout the poem, again adding to the sense of freedom gainedthrough being at one with all elements of the world. Phrases suchas ‘the sun’s eternal ray’ and ‘On every shore, o’er every sea’, forexample, create a feeling of release.

A Vision

TASK 78

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: To John Clare


Using an unconventional sonnet structure, Clare presents us with aseries of simple images of natural sights and a sense of childhoodinnocence creating a feeling that he has returned to his native home.

Comment on the natural images presented by Clare in this poem.

.There is a sense that these pictures of the countryside are fragmentedand disjointed visions from both Clare’s childish and adultperspectives. The descriptions of ‘olive feathers’ and ‘wattles and redcomb’ illustrate an understanding of the surrounding countryside yetphrases such as ‘seems to like some best’ show a simplisticengagement with the image. This contrast could suggest anexploration of all elements of Clare’s experience of the countrysideand seems to echo the fact that he and the landscape are at one.

To John Clare

TASK 79

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: ‘A seaboy on the giddy mast’


Here Clare compares his life to the open sea but, rather than presentingfeelings of freedom, the poem talks of restlessness and dejection.

Considering the poem as a whole, make notes on the ways in whichClare creates a feeling of restlessness and disappointment.

Here are some ideas to compare with your own:

• The use of the word ‘giddy’ in the opening line is perhaps the firstindication of restlessness. This is consolidated throughout thepoem by repetition of words such as ‘inconstant’ and the finalrhetorical question ‘When shall I find my life a calm, …?’

• The image of the sea can be considered a metaphor for Clare’srestlessness as it is often associated with a sense of freedom andcan be seen as a symbol of abundance. However, the fact that theimage is presented through the use of dark vocabulary such as‘grave’, ‘black’ and ‘troubled’ could indicate a sense of fear andanxiety surrounding such lack of restraint.

• The poem uses a simple, rhythmical ABAB pattern throughout,with the exception of the final stanza where the words ‘storm’ and‘calm’ are emphasised by their jarring lack of rhyme. The wordsseem to echo the phrase “calm before the storm” and theirconnection is paradoxical. This muddle of emotions also adds tothe poem’s restless feel.

TASK 80

Song: ‘A seaboy on the giddy mast’

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: The Peasant Poet


Referring to himself in the third person, Clare explores the changes hehas made during his development from boy to man. He once again usesreligious images to express his thoughts, this time regarding hisopenness and engagement with nature.

Read the poem carefully and make notes on the techniques used byClare to present his thoughts and opinions.


• The plosive alliteration in the title of the poem and the sibilance inthe opening lines create a melodic and rhythmical tone.

• The poem is written in the third person; Clare refers to himself as‘he’ throughout and so gives a reflective and thoughtfulperspective. There is a sense that Clare wants to take a step backfrom his writings and view their purpose and impact with a moreobjective eye.

• There is an optimistic tone adopted throughout the poem whichechoes the sense that Clare thrives on the role of ‘Peasant Poet’.This is most clearly reflected in the final part of the poem whenClare notes that he is ‘A Peasant in his daily cares - / The Poet inhis joy.’ The use of the indefinite article “a” in the first part of thissection could indicate a sense of unity with other peasants,reiterating his position as “poet for the people”. In contrast, thedefinite article “the” on the final line suggests his pride in being aspokesman for his fellow men.

The Peasant Poet

TASK 81

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: Sighing for Retirement


Although the title may suggest this poem is a lament reflecting thepoet’s desire to retire, Clare actually presents us with happyreminiscences of his writing career. Again, he uses images of nature toreflect these feelings.

Consider the ways in which Clare presents his ideas and emotions.

Here are some of our ideas to compare with your own:

• The poem begins with Clare’s plea for the peace and quiet of thecountryside in a stanza that suggests he is perplexed by the bustleof the town. There seems to be a sense of frustration and the ideathat the poet cannot focus when surrounded by others. The cry of

TASK 82

Sighing for Retirement

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: Sighing for Retirement


‘O’ that starts the poem and the exclamative in the opening twolines reflect this desperation.

• The next two stanzas include the repetitive phrase ‘The book I loveis everywhere’. This book may be the Bible as Clare also makesreference to God within this section; or he could be suggesting thatNature herself is the book which is ‘known to all’. He seems to besuggesting that it is God and the Bible or Nature that are hisinspiration and he should be able to feel this inspiration anywhere(‘The book I love is everywhere, / And every place the same’). Thiscould indicate that Clare feels he should be encouraged to writeeven though he is not surrounded by his beloved countryside butis instead living in (the not so salubrious) Epping and in theconfinement of the asylum there where he was incarcerated for atime.

• Stanza four outlines Clare’s simple approach to writing poetry andhis direct description of what influences him (‘I found the poems inthe fields’) has strength in its simplicity.

• Though Epping is described reasonably favourably in stanza five,the lack of descriptive imagery, so typical of Clare’s poetry, marksthe fact that he struggles to be inspired and instead he ‘wait(s) forbetter days.’

• The latter parts of the poem become more descriptive withreferences to ‘brakes and fern’, ‘rabbits’ and ‘pleasant Autumn’.There is also a greater sense of emotion as Clare talks of ‘taste’and ‘love’, descriptions suggestive of his need to experiencenature to be inspired.

• The final stanza has the tone of a prayer as Clare addresses Goddirectly and asks for help in continuing his role as poet, despite hislack of inspiration when away from the countryside.

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: Song’s Eternity


This poem is a celebration of the power of song and poetry. There is areal sense of innocence and simplistic beauty in the way that Clarepresents his admiration of writing through visions of nature and it isperhaps this simplicity that gives the poem its strength.

Make notes on the ways in which Clare creates an optimistic tone.

• The structure of the poem is the first, most noticeably optimisticfeature. Its pattern is similar to that of a song: a simple rhymingpattern with a refrain. The sound patterns of alliteration andrepetition also add to the poem’s melodic quality. This is not onlyuplifting but it suggests that the poem itself is paying homage tothe song form.

• The use of words such as ‘here’ and ‘now’ throughout the poemcreates a sense of immediacy which could echo the excitement ofthis celebratory poem. These vocabulary choices also suggest thatthere should be a perpetual celebration of the song form.

• Other vocabulary choices add to the light-hearted and optimistictone. Words such as ‘thrive’, ‘awakened’ and ‘alive’ create a vividimage of the lively nature of song.

Song's Eternity

TASK 83

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: Song’s Eternity


• Images of nature also add to the optimism. The freedom of the‘Bird and bee’ is used to reflect the freedom of song and the fertile‘grass’ displays the abundant nature of this form.

• The sound of the bird’s ‘Tootle tootle tootle tee’ echoes throughoutthe poem and emphasises the celebratory tone. The idea ofplacing poetry and song alongside an image of natural beauty is,of course, something we have seen Clare use before.

• In the final stanza, Clare refers to song as ‘Nature’s universaltongue’. The personification here suggests that the poet feels,through this and many of his other works, that he is giving a voiceto the countryside. The songs will, like nature itself, be around ‘Forever.’

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: Glinton Spire


Using an unconventional sonnet format, Clare celebrates the beauty ofa church spire that pierces the landscape in an elegant manner. Heblends the image of the spire with visions of nature suggesting,perhaps, that this sign of religion and God is at one with thecountryside.

Comment on poetic techniques used in this poem.

• A rather fragmented rhyming pattern is used here rather than theregular and quite formulaic traditional ballad form and, thoughiambic pentameter is used, there seems to be a more organic,natural feel to the way in which Clare structures his thoughts. Thiscould perhaps indicate that the feelings and emotions presentedare more heartfelt and realistic than those of other, more traditionalpoets.

• Sibilance and alliteration are used to create a soft, melodic tonethat echoes Clare’s musing on the spire. Again, this could arguablybe seen as a more organic method of creating rhythm in the poemand a suggestion that the poem is a close record of Clare’s actualthoughts and feelings.

Glinton Spire

TASK 84

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: The Eternity of Nature


This poem presents visions of the cycle of life and compares themortality of the human race with the perpetual existence of nature.Clare blends images of nature with a sense of the freedom of childhoodto create an optimistic, light-hearted tone.

Having read the poem, look at it again and make notes on the influencenature has on Clare’s writing.


• The pensive way in which Clare talks of the leaf and the daisy inthe opening section reflects his fascination with nature and thecountryside. The sense of nature’s perpetual beauty is also clear

The Eternity of Nature

TASK 85

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: The Eternity of Nature


in this part of the poem as he talks of how the daisy ‘strikes its littleroot / Into the lap of time’ and this is seen in contrast to the fleetingnature of poetry as he believes his ‘simple rhyme / Shall beforgotten’. Nature, therefore, is an inspiration to the poet, whoclearly wishes his writing could survive in the same way as thedaisy.

• A similar sense of nature’s abundant, perpetual beauty is shown inthe middle section of the poem when Clare refers to the notion thatthe man-made (even poetry) will be out-lived by the natural world.This is most keenly reflected as the phrase ‘kings and empiresfade and die’ is compared with the images of ‘meadows’ that willremain the same for ‘two thousand years’.

• Also in the middle section are references to biblical images, inparticular the Garden of Eden. The suggestion is that the naturalbeauty of earth is synonymous with the beauty of Eden. This issomething we have seen Clare do in other poems such as TheFlitting and it is considered to be a reflection of his immenseadmiration of earth’s magnificence.

• Other images in the poem suggest that Clare believes that hispoetry can help to bring nature to life and eulogise it. The ‘littlebrooks’, for example, ‘sing’ when the poet writes of them as it isthrough these poems that their beauty is celebrated.

• Clare repeatedly presents us with references to birdsong and thesounds of nature throughout the poem. Often these images arecoupled with references to the lyrical qualities of poetry, thoughoften the suggestion is that nature’s song is far stronger. Forexample, the ‘little robin … / Sings unto time a pastoral and gives /A music that lives on and ever lives.’ Similarly, the image of ‘BothSpring and Autumn years rich bloom and fade / Longer than songsthat poets ever made’ echoes the notion that nature will outlive thepoet’s work.

• The influence these sublime images of nature have on Clare’swriting is most obvious in the lines ‘So in these pastoral spotswhich childish time / Makes dear to me I wander out and rhyme’.The use of the words ‘childish’ and ‘wander’ create the feeling ofsimple appreciation but also a sense that the poet is so much inharmony with these images of beauty that writing seems theobvious way to celebrate them.

• Ultimately, the poem is constructed as a list of visual images, all ofwhich celebrate the infinite beauty of the countryside. It is oftensaid that Clare was an “outside worshipper”: his beliefs were firmlyrooted in the natural world. This poem, therefore, is like a prayerpraising God through the celebration of the countryside. Perhaps afinal comment to make in the light of this concept concerns theway in which Clare repeatedly refers to ‘five’ in the final section ofthe poem. This could arguably be a manipulation of the idea of theholy trinity, its extension creating a sense of nature’s abundance.

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: Shadows of Taste


This poem explores the influence of taste on the way we see the world.In some ways it is a celebration of the variety of interpretations but itcould be seen in some ways as an implicit criticism of those (poets andwriters in particular) who cannot engage with nature.

The poem can be divided into sections as Clare considers differentelements of nature and the human condition. Make notes on thetechniques and tone on each of the following areas studied in thepoem: birds, flowers, insects, style, man.

Shadows of Taste

TASK 86



Here are some of our ideas to compare with your own:

BIRDS

• Within the opening section of the poem Clare makes reference tothe ‘yellowhammer’, a brightly coloured small bird, whose arrival isdescribed as being ‘like a tasteful guest’. This image evokes asense of Clare’s appreciation of the vision of the bird and creates afeeling of the homely way in which the poet experiences nature.

• The descriptions of other birds and their various positions in naturecreate a feeling that Clare is surrounded by these visions offreedom. Using plosive alliteration he describes the ‘Birds bolder-winged on bushes’ and those who take safety in the ‘cradle(s)’ ofthe trees. The use of emotive vocabulary (‘feel no moods of fear’,‘joy’) and images of freedom (‘house upon the clouds’) creates asense of admiration for the birds’ liberty.

FLOWERS

• Clare seems to want to convey a sense that, though delicate-seeming, they are actually robust and hardy visions. The idea thatthey ‘delight to bloom’ in areas where nothing else can grow andthe fact that they ‘flourish’ in either light or shade are celebrationsof their mettle.

• Vocabulary such as ‘glory’, ‘beauty’ and ‘joy’ as well as sensorydescriptions (‘taste of joy’) are used to enhance the magnificenceof the flower as Clare sets about celebrating their beauty andpower.

INSECTS

• There is a sense of the chaotic and vivid world of the insectpresented to us here. Vocabulary such as ‘wild disorder’, ‘run’ and‘busy sun’ emphasise the idea that the most striking feature of thiselement of nature is their scuttling, hectic character.

• He goes on to describe the vision of poetry as, to some, a vision ofnature. Poetry can be then ‘a page of May’ and the ‘breathing word/ … a landscape heard and felt and seen’. The use of the senseshere evokes a vivid image of the power of poetry.

STYLE

• With direct reference to key poetic figures such as John Donne,Clare explores the many varied styles poets adopt. The vocabularyhere is focused on the art of writing, with references to ‘rhymes’,‘metres’, ‘prose’ and ‘verse’ and there is the clever personificationof words to create a lively image of the writing process (‘One linestarts smooth and then, for room perplexed, / Elbows along andknocks against the next’).



• Obviously this section of the poem is both self reflective and selfconscious as it is a direct comment on the process of writing: acelebration of the poet.

MAN

• This section acts almost as a summary of what one might callClare’s obsession with all aspects of nature. Hyperbolic phrasessuch as ‘His joys run riot’ and ‘recordless rapture’ occur; the notionthat Clare feels a great sense of admiration for ‘nature’s beauty[‘s]’is explored and there is a feeling of the sublime throughout.

• Having established references to other poets, this next sectioncould be seen as a criticism of those writers who cannot engagewith images of nature. The line ‘The heedless mind may laugh, theclown may stare;’ consolidates the notion that Clare believes thosewho cannot appreciate or feel inspired by the small and simpleaspects of nature are fools. The poet who can ‘A world of beautyadmire and praise’ approaches the eternal, ‘that great being’.

• Through the remainder of the poem, Clare continues to present tothe reader images of how the seemingly insignificant aspects ofnature can be as inspirational as those grand ones mentionedelsewhere in the poem. The ‘common weed’ and ‘common bladesof grass’ are presented as things of great significance, symbolisingthat taste is individual as not everyone would see such simplisticimages in such a visionary way.

• As is typical of Clare’s writing, the ending of the poem has a moreominous feel as he presents us with the consequences ofdestroying such visions of natural beauty by destroying theirenvironment. There are images of many ways such natural beautycan be destroyed as tastes change and people long for moreordered and neat country images. Although there are no directreferences to the enclosures law (unlike in other poems seenearlier) there is a sense that it is this formal division of thecountryside that influences the change in tone in the poem.

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: To be Placed at the Back of his Portrait


During Clare’s periods of disturbed mental state, he often insisted thathe was a reincarnation of Shakespeare. Though the references to the‘Bard’ could obviously be influenced by this thought, it would seemthe poem focuses much more on Clare’s own writing experience and,once again, he presents his relationship with nature through poetry.The title suggests that the poem is designed to act as a memorial to thepoet.

Consider the ways in which Clare uses description and imagery toreflect his feelings and emotions about nature and its influence on hiswriting.

• The opening line suggests the comfort Clare felt in nature as hedescribes his ‘mossy cot’; the phrase creates an image of the poetbeing caressed by nature. This image continues throughout thepoem, echoing Clare’s feeling that his writings make him part ofnature. The references to the ‘Bard’ being ‘of’ various images fromnature emphasises the idea that the poet is at one with thelandscape, a voice for the countryside.

• There are ideas about the simple power of nature here and howthe land can feed and support the people who live on it. The ideathat in the countryside ‘a stone makes a table’ is a good exampleof this impression of the countryside’s abundance. Again, this

To be Placed at the Back of his Portrait

TASK 87

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: To be Placed at the Back of his Portrait


sense of the landscape providing for the writer creates a feeling ofcomfort in the bond between the two.

• The final two lines of the poem are perhaps the most significant ineulogising Clare’s work. Here, through his poetry, the poetsummarises the fact that the countryside will be forever beautiful.The two things seem to feed off each other therefore: without thelandscape to influence him, Clare might not have been such aprolific writer and as thanks, he captures the beauty of thechanging views of the countryside forever in his works. The‘Daisies’ and other images of nature therefore ‘live in thy pages.’

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: Memory


Once more, Clare adopts the sonnet format. As in To John Clare andGlinton Spire, the structure is unconventional but he still seems to beusing the form to reflect intense feelings and powerful emotions. Here,his views are focused on the fear of being forgotten.

Having read the poem, look at it again and make notes on the wayClare presents his fears of death.

• In the opening line, Clare talks of ‘my being’, a phrase that can beseen to refer to both body and soul. His fears, therefore, are of hisessence being forgotten as well as his body decaying.

• The reference to ‘every common lot’ could suggest that Clare fearshe will be lost amongst the masses and not celebrated as anindividual.

Memory

TASK 88

Selected Poems by John Clare The poems: Memory


• The idea that his remains will reside in a ‘strange andunfrequented spot’ seems fearful to the poet. In the context ofClare’s writing, this is understandable as place and home areimportant to him.

• Most significant is Clare’s fear that he will be ‘forgot’. The image ofhis beloved nature ‘sigh(ing)’ and ‘weep(ing)’ around him creates afeeling of unease; the reader may feel that this peaceful restingplace would be a blessing to the man who loved nature so much. Itappears, however, that this bard wants to be remembered byfriends as well as those who ‘merely’ pass ‘by / To read who lieththere’. There is a fear, perhaps, that he will be remembered as apoet and not as a person. This notion is consolidated by the finalimage of a familiar face ‘pay(ing) to friendship some few friendlytears.’

• The unconventional format and muddled rhyming pattern echo thepoet’s unrest but the poem does end with a couplet, suggesting asense of finality and conclusion.

Selected Poems by John Clare Essay Questions


1. Explore the ways in which Clare’s writing reflects some of the basic principlesof Romanticism.

2. What does John Clare consider to be significant about the specific instants intime he describes throughout this collection of poems?

3. Imagination was seen as the key to Romantic poetry. How do you feel JohnClare explores the use of the imagination throughout this collection of poems?

4. The fusion of pain and pleasure is a key concept in Romantic thinking. Howdo you feel this is explored in John Clare’s poetry?

5. John Clare’s writing is characterised by his passion for nature. Consider theways Clare presents his relationship with nature throughout this collection ofpoems.

6. Nostalgia for a previous golden age in which men lived in a simple andunsophisticated manner was a characteristic of the Romantic movement. Inwhat ways does Clare present a nostalgic view of country life throughout thiscollection of poems?

7. Like most Romantic poets, Clare celebrated the innocent outlook of the child.Consider the ways in which Clare presents the world of the child in thiscollection of poems.

8. Much of Clare’s writing was a reaction to the Enclosure Act of 1809. Considerhow Clare addresses this issue in this collection of poems.

9. Clare called himself the ‘peasant poet’. How do you feel this is reflected in thelanguage and focus of his writing?

10. Clare, like many other Romantic poets, was preoccupied with the transienceof life. Explore the ways in which this is reflected in this collection of poems.

11. In some areas of this collection of poems, Clare focuses on the unsettlingnature of love and the pain that it can cause. Explore the ways in which Clarepresents not only the pleasure and excitement but the loss and sufferingcaused by love.

12. Much of Clare’s poetry concerns itself with isolation and loneliness. Considerthe ways in which these emotions are explored within this collection ofpoems.

13. Clare saw himself as a man on the outside of society. Within his writing, howdoes he explore this sense being an outsider?

14. A feeling of melancholy pervades this collection of poems. Explore the waysin which Clare creates this emotion in his poetry.

~ End ~

ESSAY QUESTIONS

selected poems by john clare

Documents