I Am

The John Clare edition

Photo by Álvaro Serrano on Unsplash

I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes—
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.”
― John Clare, "I Am": The Selected Poetry of John Clare

“O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away”
― John Clare, Poems Chiefly from Manuscript

There is a charm in Solitude that cheers
A feeling that the world knows nothing of
A green delight the wounded mind endears
After the hustling world is broken off
Whose whole delight was crime at good to scoff
Green solitude his prison pleasure yields
The bitch fox heeds him not -- birds seem to laugh
He lives the Crusoe of his lonely fields
Which dark green oaks his noontide leisure shields”
― John Clare, John Clare: Selected Poetry and Prose

“Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rude
And fled to the silence of sweet solitude.”
― John Clare, Poems Chiefly from Manuscript

When once the sun sinks in the west,
And dewdrops pearl the evening's breast;
Almost as pale as moonbeams are,
Or its companionable star,
The evening primrose opes anew
Its delicate blossoms to the dew;
And, hermit-like, shunning the light,
Wastes its fair bloom upon the night,
Who, blindfold to its fond caresses,
Knows not the beauty it possesses;
Thus it blooms on while night is by;
When day looks out with open eye,
Bashed at the gaze it cannot shun,
It faints and withers and is gone.”
― John Clare, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery

“O take me from the busy crowd,
I cannot bear the noise!
For Nature's voice is never loud;
I seek for quiet joys.
The book I love is everywhere,
And not in idle words;
The book I love is known to all,
And better lore affords.”
― John Clare, The Later Poems, 1837-1864

“How frail the bloom, how short the stay
That terminates us all!
Today we flourish green and gay,
Like leaves tomorrow fall.”
― John Clare, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery

“I find more pleasure in wandering the fields than in musing among my silent neighbours who are insensible to everything but toiling and talking of it and that to no purpose.”
― John Clare

“harm falls most in mans destroying way”
― John Clare, Poems of the Middle Period, Vol. V: 1822-1837

“And what is Life?—An hour-glass on the run,
A mist retreating from the morning sun,
A busy, bustling, still repeated dream;
Its length?—A minute’s pause, a moment’s thought;
And happiness?—A bubble on the stream,
That in the act of seizing shrinks to nought.”
― John Clare, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery

“I hate the very noise of troublous man
Who did and does me all the harm he can.
Free from the world I would a prisoner be
And my own shadow all my company.”
― John Clare, Poems Chiefly from Manuscript

“O lead me onward to the loneliest shade,
The darkest place that quiet ever made,
Where kingcups grow most beauteous to behold
And shut up green and open into gold.”
― John Clare, Poems Chiefly from Manuscript

“In mid-wood silence, thus, how sweet to be;
Where all the noises, that on peace intrude,
Come from the chittering cricket, bird, and bee,
Whose songs have charms to sweeten solitude.”
― John Clare, The Village Minstrel, and Other Poems

“For everything I felt a love,
the weeds below the birds above.”
― John Clare

“Remember us better than we are.”
― John Clare

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