276 Stanzas: the title probably derives from Byron’s ‘Stanzas for Music’.

p. 281 The Invitation: the natural world is apprehended more and more through the ear as Clare ages; his eyes register a variety of vibrant movements that will not be still (this observation I owe to Tim Chilcott).

p. 282 Prison Amusements: I have supplied the title; MS 19 contains none, but the evidence of Clare’s letters strongly supports the view that this is of a piece with the earlier sequence. Clare’s text is preceded by a quotation from Cowper’s ‘The Task’: ‘O for a Lodge in some vast wilderness /Some boundless contiguity of shade/Where rumour of oppression and deceit/Of unsuccessful or successful war/ Might never reach me more’. There is a strong affinity between this and the last stanza of the previous sequence. The gate . . . then claps: see note to p. 266.

p. 283 boyhood’s secret: a reference to Clare’s first experience of terror or vastation: secret, because he had kept it to himself.

p. 284 Ave Maria: cf. Byron, Don Juan, Canto 3, stanza CII.

p. 286 Hath time made no change: the stanza pattern here breaks down and Clare shifts to rhyming couplets.

p. 289 Pays in destruction: cf. Byron, ‘pays off moments in an endless shower/Of hell-fire . . .’ (Don Juan, Canto 2 , stanza CXCII).

p. 294 Song: most of the songs in this sequence are unsuccessfully rendered in the language of Burns, but there was not enough iron in Clare’s soul to maintain a Burnsian tone.

p. 295 the old stone wall: this stanza is followed by this quatrain: ‘Verses on Olney: A charm is thrown o’er Olney plains/By Cowper’s rural muse/While sunshine gilds the river Ouse/ In morning’s meadow dews.’

p. 297That loved the many all alike: Clare acknowledges that many young women have attracted his affections/aroused his desires. He rushes to redeem himself in the last line of the stanza.

p. 298 Yet ‘Man was made to mourn’: cf. Burns, ‘Man was made to Mourn’.

The pheasant’s nest: the manuscript reads ‘peasants’. ‘Yardley Oak’ was one of Cowper’s most celebrated poems; it included a recognition of the claims of Fancy over Reason that Clare would himself endorse.

p. 304 Where are the citys: cf. the reference to Sodom, p. 249. Clare’s interest in the fate of Sodom is not merely a case of his growing fascination with the vision of some apocalyptic destruction, but also derives specifically from the fascinated revulsion which the perverse sexuality of some of the inmates at High Beech seems to have aroused in him.

Following this stanza is a song which I omit from this selection. It is dated 15 February 1845.

p.