152 The Robin’s Nest: Clare’s withdrawal into the more remote or ‘private’ retreats of nature is both negative and positive. It derives in part from the ‘De contemptu mundi’ theme in late-eighteenth-century poetry; it is also a matter of a personal liking for solitude and of social disenchantment; it is probably most emphatically rooted in an almost pre-conscious affinity with the less compromised reaches of natural life.

p. 156 Wild heaths to trace — and note their broken tree: MC reads ‘not’, but the sense requires ‘note’.

p. 164 Yet to all minds: MC reads ‘mind’.

p. 165 The morn with saffron stripes: MC reads ‘safforn strips’ but Clare elsewhere writes ‘stript’ for ‘striped’, and was familiar with Byron’s liking for ‘saffron’.

p. 171 The hated sign by vulgar taste is hung: here Clare transfers the term ‘vulgar’ from the poor to the landowners. Cf. E. P. Thompson’s comment on a similar turn in Wordsworth: Education and Experience, Leeds University Press, 1963.

p. 172 Nor carry round some names to win: in their edition of Clare (Oxford University Press, 1984), RP omit ‘to win’, producing an incomplete line.

p. 190 On the twenty-ninth of May: Oak-apple Day, officially the celebration of Charles II’s escape, probably derived from an earlier rural festival.

p. 193 The Old Man’s Song: Clare was not yet forty when he wrote this. It has clear affinities with the poetry of Cowper’s melancholia, but rehearses the themes of Clare’s own circumstances, prior to and following the move or flitting to Northborough. He enclosed this and other poems in a letter to L. T. Ventouillac, 9 May 1830, who had asked Clare for some ‘short, lyrical, spirited compositions’ (Letters, ed. M. Storey, Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 507). In the version enclosed with the letter, ‘Joy once reflected brightly of prospects overcast’ reads, ‘of prospects that are past’, and ‘Is overspread with glooms’ reads, ‘Is overcast with . . .’ ‘Joy once reflected brightly of prospects overcast . . .’: ‘reflected’ may signify ‘mirrored’ or ‘thought of’; ‘of’ may therefore be intended as ‘off’.

p. 195 Remembrances: the names refer to some of Clare’s favourite walks around Helpstone; the two named oak trees were both felled to make way for the new boundaries, hedgerows and ditches of enclosure.

p. 1

96 While I see the little mouldiwarps: the mole-catcher hung dead moles on the tree, to display the fact that he had done his job. Nowadays, the moles are stuck on the barbs of barbed-wire.

p. 198 The Flitting: this and the following poem, ‘Decay’, were written after Clare’s removal to Northborough. There is a draft of part of ‘Decay’ on a letter written to Clare at Northborough.