That woodman at the gap
Hath put it from the hedge-’tis olive green
Well I declare it is the pettichap
Not bigger than the wren and seldom seen
I’ve often found their nests in chance’s way
When I in pathless woods did idly roam
But never did I dream untill today
A spot like this would be her chosen home

THE NIGHTINGALE’S NEST

Up this green woodland ride let’s softly rove
And list’ the nightingale - she dwelleth here
Hush, let the wood-gate softly clap - for fear
The noise might drive her from her home of love
For here I’ve heard her many a merry year
At morn and eve nay all the live-long day
As though she lived on song - this very spot
Just where that old man’s beard all wildly trails
Rude arbours o‘er the road and stops the way
And where that child its blue bell flowers hath got
Laughing and creeping through the mossy rails
There have I hunted like a very boy
Creeping on hands and knees through matted
thorns
To find her nest and see her feed her young
And vainly did I many hours employ
All seemed as hidden as a thought unborn
And where these crimping fern-leaves ramp among
The hazel’s underboughs I’ve nestled down
And watched her while she sung and her renown
Hath made me marvel that so famed a bird
Should have no better dress then russet brown
Her wings would tremble in her extacy
And feathers stand on end as ’twere with joy
And mouth wide open to release her heart
Of its out-sobbing songs - the happiest part
Of summer’s fame she shared - for so to me
Did happy fancies shapen her employ
But if I touched a bush or scarcely stirred
All in a moment stopt - I watched in vain
The timid bird had left the hazel bush
And at a distance hid to sing again
Lost in a wilderness of listening leaves
Rich extacy would pour its luscious strain
Till envy spurred the emulating thrush
To start less wild and scarce inferior songs
For cares with him for half the year remain
To damp the ardour of his speckled breast
While nightingales to summer’s life belongs
And naked trees and winter’s nipping wrongs
Are strangers to her music and her rest
Her joys are evergreen her world is wide
— Hark, there she is as usual let’s be hush
For in this blackthorn clump if rightly guest
Her curious house is hidden - part aside
These hazel branches in a gentle way
And stoop right cautious ’neath the rustling boughs
For we will have another search today
And hunt this fern-strown thorn-clump round and
round
And where this seeded woodgrass idly bows
We’ll wade right through. It is a likely nook
In such like spots and often on the ground
They’ll build where rude boys never think to look
Aye as I live her secret nest is here
Upon this whitethorn stulp — I’ve searched about
For hours in vain — there, put that bramble bye
Nay, trample on its branches and get near
— How subtle is the bird she started out
And raised a plaintive note of danger nigh
Ere we were past the brambles and now near
Her nest she sudden stops - as choaking fear
That might betray her home - so even now
We’ll leave it as we found it — safety’s guard
Of pathless solitudes shall keep it still
See there she’s sitting on the old oak bough
Mute in her fears - our presence doth retard
Her joys and doubt turns every rapture chill
Sing on sweet bird may no worse hap befall
Thy visions then the fear that now decieves
We will not plunder music of its dower
Nor turn this spot of happiness to thrall
For melody seems hid in every flower
That blossoms near thy home - these harebells all
Seems bowing with the beautiful in song
And gaping cuckoo with its spotted leaves
Seems blushing of the singing it has heard
How curious is the nest no other bird
Uses such loose materials or weaves
Their dwellings in such spots - dead oaken leaves
Are placed without and velvet moss within
And little scraps of grass - and scant and spare
Of what seems scarce materials, down and hair
For from man’s haunts she seemeth nought to win
Yet nature is the builder and contrives
Homes for her childern’s comfort even here
Where solitude’s deciples spend their lives
Unseen save when a wanderer passes near
That loves such pleasant places — Deep adown
The nest is made an hermit’s mossy cell
Snug lies her curious eggs in number five
Of deadened green or rather olive brown
And the old prickly thorn bush guards them well
And here we’ll leave them still unknown to wrong
As the old woodland’s legacy of song

TO THE SNIPE

Lover of swamps
The quagmire overgrown
With hassock tufts of sedge — where fear encamps
Around thy home alone

The trembling grass
Quakes from the human foot
Nor bears the weight of man to let him pass
Where thou alone and mute

Sittest at rest
In safety ’neath the clump
Of hugh flag forrest that thy haunts invest
Or some old sallow stump

Thriving on seams*
That tiney islands swell
Just hilling from the mud and rancid streams
Suiting thy nature well

For here thy bill
Suited by wisdom good
Of rude unseemly length doth delve and drill
The gelid mass for food

And here mayhap
When summer suns hath drest
The moor’s rude desolate and spungy lap
May hide thy mystic nest

Mystic indeed
For isles that ocean make
Are scarcely more secure for birds to build
Then this flag-hidden lake

Boys thread the woods
To their remotest shades
But in these marshy flats these stagnant floods
Security pervades

From year to year
Places untrodden lie
Where man nor boy nor stock hath ventured near
- Nought gazed on but the sky

And fowl that dread
The very breath of man
Hiding in spots that never knew his tread
A wild and timid clan

Wigeon and teal
And wild duck - restless lot
That from man’s dreaded sight will ever steal
To the most dreary spot

Here tempests howl
Around each flaggy plot
Where they who dread man’s sight, the water fowl,
Hide and are frighted not

’Tis power divine
That heartens them to brave
The roughest tempest and at ease recline
On marshes or the wave

Yet instinct knows
Not safety’s bounds — to shun
The firmer ground where sculking fowler goes
With searching dogs and gun

By tepid springs
Scarcely one stride accross
Though brambles from its edge a shelter flings
Thy safety is at loss

And never chuse
The little sinky foss
Streaking the moores whence spa-red waters spews
From pudges fringed with moss

Free-booters there
Intent to kill and slay
Startle with cracking guns the trepid air
And dogs thy haunts betray

From danger’s reach
Here thou art safe to roam
Far as these washy flag-grown marshes stretch
A still and quiet home

In these thy haunts
I’ve gleaned habitual love
From the vague world where pride and folly taunts
I muse and look above

Thy solitudes
The unbounded heaven esteems
And here my heart warms into higher moods
And dignifying dreams

I see the sky
Smile on the meanest spot
Giving to all that creep or walk or flye
A calm and cordial lot

Thine teaches me
Right feelings to employ
That in the dreariest places peace will be
A dweller and a joy

WILD BEES

These childern of the sun which summer brings
As pastoral minstrels in her merry train
Pipe rustic ballads upon busy wings
And glad the cotter’s quiet toils again
The white-nosed bee that bores its little hole
In mortared walls and pipes its symphonies
And never-absent couzin black as cole
That Indian-like bepaints its little thighs
With white and red bedight for holiday
Right earlily a morn do pipe and play
And with their legs stroke slumber from their eyes
And aye so fond they of their singing seem
That in their holes abed at close of day
They still keep piping in their honey dreams
And larger ones that thrum on ruder pipe
Round the sweet-smelling closen and rich woods
Where tawney white and red-flushed clover buds
Shine bonnily and beanfields blossom ripe
Shed dainty perfumes and give honey food
To these sweet poets of the summer field
Me much delighting as I stroll along
The narrow path that hay-laid meadow yields
Catching the windings of their wandering song
The black and yellow bumble first on wing
To buzz among the sallow’s early flowers
Hiding its nest in holes from fickle spring
Who stints his rambles with her frequent showers
And one that may for wiser piper pass
In livery dress half sables and half red
Who laps a moss ball in the meadow grass
And hurds her stores when April showers have fled
And russet commoner who knows the face
Of every blossom that the meadow brings
Starting the traveller to a quicker pace
By threatening round his head in many rings
These sweeten summer in their happy glee
By giving for her honey melodie

INSECTS

Thou tiney loiterer on the barley’s beard
And happy unit of a numerous herd
Of playfellows the laughing summer brings
Mocking the sun’s face in their glittering wings
How merrily they creep and run and flye
No kin they bear to labour’s drudgery
Smoothing the velvet of the pale hedge-rose
And where they flye for dinner no one knows
The dewdrops feed them not - they love the shine
Of noon whose sun may bring them golden wine
All day they’re playing in their Sunday dress
Till night goes sleep and they can do no less.
Then in the heath bell’s silken hood they flie
And like to princes in their slumber lie
From coming night and dropping dews and all
In silken beds and roomy painted hall
So happily they spend their summer day
Now in the corn fields now the new mown hay
One almost fancys that such happy things
In coloured moods and richly burnished wings
Are fairey folk in splendid masquerade
Disguised through fear of mortal folk affraid
Keeping their merry pranks a mystery still
Lest glaring day should do their secrets ill

FIELD-CRICKET

Sweet little minstrel of the sunny summer
Housed in the pleasant swells that front the sun
Neighbour to many a happy yearly comer
For joy’s glad tidings when the winter’s done
How doth thy music through the silk grass run
That cloaths the pleasant banks with herbage new
A chittering sound of healthy happiness
That bids the passer-bye be happy too
Who hearing thee feels full of pleasant moods
Picturing the cheerfulness that summer’s dress
Brings to the eye with all her leaves and grass
In freshness beautified and summer’s sounds
Brings to the ear in one continued flood
The luxury of joy that knows no bounds

I often pause to seek thee when I pass
Thy cottage in the sweet refreshing hue
Of sunny flowers and rich luxuriant grass
But thou wert ever hidden from the view
Brooding and piping o’er thy rural song
In all the happiness of solitude
Busy intruders do thy music wrong
And scare thy gladness dumb where they intrude
I’ve seen thy dwelling by the scythe laid bare
And thee in russet garb from bent to bent
Moping without a song in silence there
Till grass should bring anew thy home-content
And leave thee to thyself to sing and wear
The summer through without another care

SUMMER EVENING

The frog half-fearful jumps accross the path
And little mouse that leaves its hole at eve
Nimbles with timid dread beneath the swath
My rustling steps awhile their joys decieve
Till past — and then the cricket sings more strong
And grasshoppers in merry moods still wear
The short night weary with its fretting song
Up from behind the molehill jumps the hare
Cheat of its chosen bed — and from the bank
The yellowhammer flutters in short fears
From off its nest hid in the grasses rank
And drops again when no more noise it hears
Thus nature’s human link and endless thrall:
Proud man still seems the enemy of all

HARES AT PLAY

The birds are gone to bed the cows are still
And sheep lie panting on each old molehill
And underneath the willow’s grey-green bough
Like toil a-resting lies the fallow plough
The timid hares throw daylight fears away
On the lane road to dust and dance and play
Then dabble in the grain by nought deterred
To lick the dew-fall from the barley’s beard
Then out they sturt again and round the hill
Like happy thoughts — dance — squat — and loiter still
Till milking maidens in the early morn
Gingle their yokes and sturt them in the corn
Through well-known beaten paths each nimbling hare
Sturts quick as fear — and seeks its hidden lair

THE MARTIN

The martin-cat long-shagged of courage good
Of weazle shape a dweller in the wood
With badger hair long-shagged and darting eyes
And lower then the common cat in size
Small head and running on the stoop
Snuffing the ground and hind-parts shouldered up
He keeps one track and hides in lonely shade
Where print of human foot is scarcely made
Save when the woods are cut. The beaten track
The woodman’s dog will snuff, cock-tailed and black
Red-legged and spotted over either eye,
Snuffs barks and scrats the lice and passes bye
The great brown horned owl looks down below
And sees the shaggy martin come and go

The martin hurrys through the woodland gaps
And poachers shoot and make his skin for caps
When any woodman come and pass the place
He looks at dogs and scarcely mends his pace
And gipseys often and birdnesting boys
Look in the hole and hear a hissing noise
They climb the tree such noise they never heard
And think the great owl is a foreign bird
When the grey owl her young ones cloathed in down
Seizes the boldest boy and drives him down
They try agen and pelt to start the fray
The grey owl comes and drives them all away
And leaves the martin twisting round his den
Left free from boys and dogs and noise and men

THE HEDGEHOG

The hedgehog hides beneath the rotten hedge
And makes a great round nest of grass and sedge
Or in a bush or in a hollow tree
And many often stoops and say they see
Him roll and fill his prickles full of crabs
And creep away and where the magpie dabs
His wing at muddy dyke in aged root
He makes a nest and fills it full of fruit
On the hedge-bottom hunts for crabs and sloes
And whistles like a cricket as he goes
It rolls up like a ball or shapeless hog
When gipseys hunt it with their noisey dogs
I’ve seen it in their camps they call it sweet
Though black and bitter and unsavoury meat

But they who hunt the field* for rotten meat
And wash in muddy dyke and call it sweet
And eat what dogs refuse where e‘er they dwell
Care little either for the taste or smell
They say they milk the cows and when they lye
Nibble their fleshy teats and make them dry
But they who’ve seen the small head like a hog
Rolled up to meet the savage of a dog
With mouth scarce big enough to hold a straw
Will ne’er believe what no one ever saw
But still they hunt the hedges all about
And shepherd dogs are trained to hunt them out
They hurl with savage force the stick and stone
And no one cares and still the strife goes on

THE FOX

The shepherd on his journey heard when nigh
His dog among the bushes barking high
The ploughman ran and gave a hearty shout
He found a weary fox and beat him out
The ploughman laughed and would have ploughed him
in
But the old shepherd took him for the skin
He lay upon the furrow stretched and dead
The old dog lay and licked the wounds that bled
The ploughman beat him till his ribs would crack
And then the shepherd slung him at his back
And when he rested, to his dog’s supprise
The old fox started from his dead disguise
And while the dog lay panting in the sedge
He up and snapt and bolted through the hedge

He scampered to the bushes far away
The shepherd called the ploughman to the fray
The ploughman wished he had a gun to shoot
The old dog barked and followed the pursuit
The shepherd threw* his hook and tottered past
The ploughman ran but none could go so fast
The woodman threw his faggot from the way
And ceased to chop and wondered at the fray
But when he saw the dog and heard the cry
He threw his hatchet but the fox was bye
The shepherd broke his hook and lost the skin
He found a badger hole and bolted in
They tryed to dig but safe from danger’s way
He lived to chase the hounds another day

THE BADGER*

The badger grunting on his woodland track
With shaggy hide and sharp nose scrowed with black
Roots in the bushes and the woods and makes
A great hugh burrow in the ferns and brakes
With nose on ground he runs an awkard pace
And anything will beat him in the race
The shepherd’s dog will run him to his den
Followed and hooted by the dogs and men
The woodman when the hunting comes about
Go round at night to stop the foxes out
And hurrying through the bushes ferns and brakes
Nor sees the many holes the badger makes
And often through the bushes to the chin
Breaks the old holes and tumbles headlong in

Some keep a baited badger tame as hog
And tame him till he follows like the dog
They urge him on like dogs and show fair play
He beats and scarcely wounded goes away
Lapt up as if asleep he scorns to fly
And siezes any dog that ventures nigh
Clapt like a dog he never bites the men
But worrys dogs and hurrys to his den
They let him out and turn a harrow down
And there he fights the host of all the town
He licks the patting hand and trys to play
And never trys to bite or run away
And runs away from noise in hollow trees
Burnt by the boys to get a swarm of bees

When midnight comes a host of dogs and men
Go out and track the badger to his den
And put a sack within the hole and lye
Till the old grunting badger passes bye
He comes and hears they let the strongest loose
The old fox hears the noise and drops the goose
The poacher shoots and hurrys from the cry
And the old hare half-wounded buzzes bye
They get a forked stick to bear him down
And clap the dogs and bear him to the town
And bait him all the day with many dogs
And laugh and shout and fright the scampering hogs
He runs along and bites at all he meets
They shout and hollo down the noisey streets

He turns about to face the loud uproar
And drives the rebels to their very doors
The frequent stone is hurled where e’er they go
When badgers fight and every one’s a foe
The dogs are clapt and urged to join the fray
The badger turns and drives them all away
Though scarcly half as big, dimute and small,
He fights with dogs for hours and beats them all
The heavy mastiff savage in the fray
Lies down and licks his feet and turns away
The bull-dog knows his match and waxes cold
The badger grins and never leaves his hold
He drives the crowd and follows at their heels
And bites them through. The drunkard swears and reels,

The frighted women takes the boys away
The blackguard laughs and hurrys on the fray:
He tries to reach the woods, an awkard race,
But sticks and cudgels quickly stop the chace
He turns agen and drives the noisey crowd
And beats the many dogs in noises loud
He drives away and beats them every one
And then they loose them all and set them on
He falls as dead and kicked by boys and men
Then starts and grins and drives the crowd agen
Till kicked and torn and beaten out he lies
And leaves his hold and cackles groans and dies

LOVES

When, in December 1841, Clare was committed to Northampton General Lunatic Asylum by Dr Fenwick Skrimshire and Dr William Page, the certificate of insanity attributed his disorder of mind to heredity. In his poem, ‘First Love’, written at Northampton, Clare himself confesses that when he met Mary Joyce

My face turned pale a deadly pale
My legs refused to walk away
And when she looked what could I ail
My life and all seemed turned to clay

And then my blood rushed to my face
And took my eyesight quite away
The trees and bushes round the place
Seemed midnight at noon day
I could not see a single thing
Words from my eyes did start
They spoke as chords do from the string
And blood burnt round my heart

The benign arrow of Mary Joyce’s power to excite love found a peculiarly vulnerable target in John Clare, and much of his poetry is an obsessive and pertinacious effort, sustained for forty years, to find a language that was adequate to the power of such a mixed blessing as a love that neither wearied nor degenerated into mere domestic coexistence but also tantalized and haunted him, life long, as what-might-have-been.

Nothing in Clare’s poetry is more remarkable than the sheer output and intensity of his love-poems; and most of them were inspired by one woman, Mary Joyce. He married Martha ‘Patty’ Turner, but his true love — one might even say his only love — was Mary Joyce. The key to the intensity and persistence of this may well lie in the fact that this love was vernal and unfulfilled: the relationship ended around 1816, and she died, unmarried, in 1838, at the age of forty-one.

The consummation of Clare’s love for Mary, then, was entirely vicarious: and its persisting intensity was clearly a source of deep conflict and difficulty. Married to Patty, he wrote hundreds of love poems to Mary: in order to live under the same roof as his wife, he first concealed Mary’s identity by using asterisks. Over the years, she was also transformed into the divine, transcendent source of his own creative power: she became his muse.

VALENTINE TO MARY

This visionary theme is thine
From one who loves thee still
’Tis writ to thee a Valentine
But call it what you will
No more as wont thy beaming eye
To violets I compare*
Nor talk about the lily’s dye
To tell thee thou art fair

The time is past when hope’s sweet will
First linked thy name with mine
And the fond muse with simple skill
Chose thee its Valentine
Though some may yet their powers employ
To wreath with flowers thy brow
With me thy love’s a withered joy
With hope thou’rt nothing now

The all that youth’s fond spring esteems
Its blossoms pluckt in May
Are gone like flowers in summer dreams
And thoughts of yesterday
The heavenly dreams of early love
Youth’s spell has broken there
And left the aching heart to prove
That earth owns nought so fair

Spring flowers were fitting hope’s young songs
To grace love’s earliest vow
But withered ones that autumn wrongs
Are emblems meetest now
Their perished blooms that once were green
Hope’s faded tale can tell
Of shadows where a sun hath been
And suits its memory well

Then why should I on such a day
Address a song to thee
When withered hope hath died away
And love no more can be
When blinded fate that still destroys
Hath rendered all as vain
And parted from the bosom joys
’Twill never meet again

The substance of our joys hath been
Their flowers have faded long
But memory keeps the shadow green
And wakes this idle song
Then let esteem a welcome prove
That can’t its place resign
And friendship take the place of love
To send a Valentine

DEDICATION TO MARY*

O Mary thou that once made all
What youthful dreams coud pleasure call
That once did love to walk with me
And own thy taste for scenery
That sat for hours by wood and brook
And stopt thy curious flowers to look
Where all that met thy artless gaze
Enjoyd thy smiles and won thy praise
O thou that did sincerely love
The cuckoo’s note and cooing dove
And stood in raptures oft to hear
The blackbird’s music wild and clear
That chasd sleep from thy lovely eyes
To see the morning lark arise
And made thy evening rambles long
To list’ the cricket’s chittering song
Thou that on sabbath noons sought bowers
To read away the sultry hours
Where roseys hung the cool to share
With thee a blossom full as fair
Oft withering from noon’s scorching look
And fluttering dropping on thy book
Whispering morals as they fell
What thou ere this hath provd too well
Picturing stories sad and true
Beneath thy bright eyes beaming blue
How youth and beauty fades and dyes
The sweetest has the least to prize
How blissfull pleasures fade away
That have the shortest time to stay
As suns that blest thy eyes and mine
Are but alowd a day to shine
And fairest days without a cloud
A gloomy evening waits to shroud
So spoke the fading dropping flowers
That perishd in thy musing hours
I know not whether thou descryd
But I coud hear them by thy side
But thy warm heart tho’ easy wrung
Woud not be mellancholy long:
If such was felt, the cheering day
Woud quickly chase their glooms away
For thou sought fancys sweet to look
In every hour and every nook
To thee earth swarmd with lovely things
The butterflye with spangld wings
And dragonflye and humble bee
Hummd dreams of Paradise to thee
And o thou fairest dearest still
If nature’s wild mysterious skill
Beams that same rapture in thine eye
And left a love that cannot dye
If that fond taste was born to last
Nor vanishd with the summers past
If seasons as they usd to be
Still meet a favourd smile with thee
Then thou accept for memory’s sake
All I can give or thou canst take
A parted record known to thee
Of what has been, no more to be
The pleasant past, the future sorrow
The blest today and sad tomorrow —
Descriptions wild of summer walks
By hedges lanes and trackless balks
And many an old familiar scene
Where thou has oft my partner been
Where thou, enrapt in wild delight,
Hast lingerd morning noon and night
And where to fancy’s rapturd thrill
Thy lovely memory lingers still
Thy flowers still bloom and look the while
As tho’ they witnessd Mary’s smile
The birds still sing thy favourd lays
As tho’ they sung for Mary’s praise
And bees hum glad and fearless by
As tho’ their tender friend was nigh
O if with thee those raptures live
Accept the trifle which I give
Tho’ lost to pleasures witnessd then
Tho’ parted ne‘er to meet agen
My aching heart is surely free
To dedicate its thoughts to thee
Then thou accept and if a smile
Lights on the page thou reads the while
If aught bespeaks those banishd hours
Of beauty in thy favourd flowers
Or scenes recall of happy days
That claims as wont thy ready praise
Tho’ I so long have lost the claim
To joys which wear thy gentle name
Tho’ thy sweet face so long unseen
Seems types of charms that ne’er hath been
Thy voice so long in silence bound
To me that I forget the sound
And tho’ thy presence warms my theme
Like beauty floating in a dream
Yet I will think that such may be
Tho’ buried secrets all to me
And if it be as hopes portray
Then will thy smiles like dews of heaven
Cheer my lone walks my toils repay
And all I ask be given

FIRST LOVE’S RECOLLECTIONS

First love will with the heart remain
When all its hopes are bye
As frail rose blossoms still retain
Their fragrance till they die
And joy’s first dreams will haunt the mind
With shades from whence they sprung
As summer leaves the stems behind
On which spring’s blossoms hung

Mary I dare not call thee dear
I’ve lost that right so long
Yet once again I vex thine ear
With memory’s idle song
Had time and change not blotted out
The love of former days
Thou wert the last that I should doubt
Of pleasing with my praise

When honied tokens from each tongue
Told with what truth we loved
How rapturous to thy lips I clung
Whilst nought but smiles reproved
But now methinks if one kind word
Were whispered in thine ear
Thou’dst startle like an untamed bird
And blush with wilder fear

How loath to part how fond to meet
Had we two used to be
At sunset with what eager feet
I hastened on to thee
Scarce nine days passed us ere we met*
In spring nay wintry weather
Now nine years’ suns* have risen and set
Nor found us once together

Thy face was so familiar grown
Thyself so often bye
A moment’s memory when alone
Would bring thee to mine eye
But now my very dreams forget
That witching look to trace.
Though there thy beauty lingers yet
It wears a stranger face

I felt a pride to name thy name
But now that pride hath flown
My words e’en seem to blush for shame
That own I love thee on
I felt I then thy heart did share
Nor urged a binding vow
But much I doubt if thou couldst spare
One word of kindness now

And what is now my name to thee
Though once nought seemed so dear
Perhaps a jest in hours of glee
To please some idle ear
And yet like counterfeits with me
Impressions linger on
Though all the gilded finery
That passed for truth is gone

Ere the world smiled upon my lays
A sweeter meed was mine
Thy blushing look of ready praise
Was raised at every line
But now methinks thy fervent love
Is changed to scorn severe
And songs that other hearts approve
Seem discord to thine ear

When last thy gentle cheek I prest
And heard thee feign adieu
I little thought that seeming jest
Would prove a word so true
A fate like this hath oft befell
E‘en loftier hopes than ours
Spring bids full many buds to swell
That ne’er can grow to flowers

BALLAD*

Where is the heart thou once hast won
Can cease to care about thee?
Where is the eye thou’st smiled upon
Can look for joy without thee?
Lorn is the lot one heart hath met
That’s lost to thy caressing
Cold is the hope that loves thee yet
Now thou art past possessing
Fare thee well

We met, we loved, we’ve met the last
The farewell word is spoken
O Mary canst thou feel the past
And keep thy heart unbroken
To think how warm we loved and how
Those hopes should blossom never
To think how we are parted now
And parted oh for ever
Fare thee well

Thou wert the first my heart to win
Thou art the last to wear it
And though another claims akin
Thou must be one to share it
Oh had we known when hopes were sweet
That hopes would once be thwarted
That we should part no more to meet
How sadly we had parted
Fare thee well

THE MILKING HOUR

The sun had grown on lessening day
A table large and round
And in the distant vapours grey
Seemed leaning on the ground
When Mary like a lingering flower
Did tenderly agree
To stay beyond her milking hour
And talk awhile with me

We wandered till the distant town
Had silenced nearly dumb
And lessened on the quiet ear
Small as a beetle’s hum
She turned her buckets upside-down
And made us each a seat
And there we talked the evening brown
Beneath the rustling wheat

And while she milked her breathing cows
I sat beside the streams
In musing o‘er our evening joys
Like one in pleasant dreams
The bats and owls to meet the night
From hollow trees had gone
And e’en the flowers had shut for sleep
And still she lingered on

We mused in rapture side by side
Our wishes seemed as one
We talked of time’s retreating tide
And sighed to find it gone
And we had sighed more deeply still
O’er all our pleasures past
If we had known what now we know
That we had met the last

I’ve ran the furlongs to thy door
And thought the way as miles
With doubts that I should see thee not
And scarcely staid for stiles
Lest thou should think me past the time
And change thy mind to go
Some other where to pass the time
The quickest speed was slow

But when thy cottage came in sight
And showed thee at the gate
The very scene was one delight
And though we parted late
Joy scarcely seemed a minute long
When hours their flight had ta‘en
And parting welcomed from thy tongue
‘Be sure and come again’

For thou wert young and beautiful
A flower but seldom found
That many hands were fain to pull
Who wouldn’t care to wound
But there was no delight to meet
Where crowds and folly be
The fields found thee companion meet
And kept love’s heart for me

To folly’s ear ’twas little known
A secret in a crowd
And only in the fields alone
I spoke thy name aloud
And if to cheer my walk along
A pleasant book was mine
Then beauty’s name in every song
Seemed nobody’s but thine

Far far from all the world I found
Thy pleasant home and thee
Heaths woods a stretching circle round
Hid thee from all but me
And o so green those ways when I
On Sundays used to seek
Thy company they gave me joy
That cheered me all the week

And when we parted with the pledge
Right quickly to return
How lone the wind sighed through the hedge
Birds singing seemed to mourn
My old home was a stranger place
If told the story plain
My home was in thy happy face
That saw me soon again

THE ENTHUSIAST: A DAYDREAM IN SUMMER*

‘Daydreams ofsummersgone’

White*

Wearied with his lonely walk
Hermit-like with none to talk
And cloyed with often seen delight
His spirits sickened at the sight
Of life’s realitys, and things
That spread around his wanderings
Of wood and heath in brambles clad
That seemed like him in silence sad
The lone enthusiast weary worn
Sought shelter from the heats of morn
And in a cool nook by the stream
Beside the bridge-wall dreamed a dream
And instant from his half-closed eye
Reality seemed fading bye
Dull fields and woods that round him lay
Like curtains to his dreaming play
All slided by and on his sight
New scenes appeared in fairy light
The skys lit up a fairer sun
The birds a cheery song begun
And flowers bloomed fair and wildly round
As ever grew on dreaming ground
And mid the sweet enchanting view
Created every minute new
He swooned at once from care and strife
Into the poesy of life
A stranger to the thoughts of men
He felt his boyish limbs again
Revelling in all the glee
Of life’s first fairy infancy
Chasing by the rippling spring
Dragonflyes of purple wing
Or setting mushroom-tops afloat
Mimmicing the sailing boat
Or vainly trying by supprise
To catch the settling butterflyes
And oft with rapture driving on
Where many partner-boys had gone
Wading through the rustling wheat
Red and purple flowers to meet
To weave and trim a wild cockade
And play the soldier’s gay parade
Then searched the ivy-haunted dell
To seek the pooty’s painted shell
And scaled the trees with burning breast
Mid scolding crows to rob their nest
Heart bursting with unshackled joys
The only heritage of boys
That from the haunts of manhood flye
Like songbirds from a winter sky
And now tore through the clinging thorns
Seeking kecks for bugle horns
Thus with the schoolboy’s heart again
He chased and halooed o‘er the plain
Till the old church clock counted one
And told us freedom’s hour was gone.
In its dull humming drowsy way
It called us from our sports and play
How different did the sound appear
To that which brought the evening near
That lovely humming happy strain
That brought them liberty again
— The desk the books were all the same
Marked with each well-known little name
And many a cover blotched and blurred
With shapeless forms of beast and bird
And the old master white with years
Sat there to waken boyish fears
While the tough scepter of his sway
That awed to silence all the day
The peeled wand acting to his will
Hung o’er the smoak-stained chimney still
- The church yard still its trees possest
And jackdaws sought their ancient nest
In whose old trunks they did acquire
Homes safe as in the mossy spire
The school they shadowed as before
With its white dial o‘er the door
And bees hummed round in summer’s pride
In its time-crevised walls to hide
The gravestones childhood eager reads
Peeped o’er the rudely clambering weeds
Where cherubs gilt that represent
The slumbers of the innoscent
Smiled glittering to the slanting sun
As if death’s peace with heaven was won
All, all was blest, and peace and plays
Brought back the enthusiast’s fairy days
And leaving childhood unpercieved
Scenes sweeter still his dream relieved
Life’s calmest spot that lingers green
Manhood and infancy between
When youth’s warm feelings have their birth
Creating angels upon earth
And fancying woman born for joy
With nought to wither and destroy
That picture of past youth’s delight
Was swimming now before his sight
And love’s soft thrills of pleasant pain
Was whispering its deciets again
And Mary, pride of pleasures gone,
Was at his side to lead him on
And on they went through field and lane
Haunts of their loves to trace again
Clung to his arm she skipt along
With the same music on her tongue
The self-same voice as soft and dear
As that which met his youthful ear
The sunny look the witching grace
Still blushed upon her angel face
As though one moment’s harmless stay
Had never stole a charm away
That self-same bloom and in her eye
That blue of thirteen summers bye*
She took his hand to climb the stiles
And looked as wont her winning smiles
And as he met her looks divine
More tender did their blushes shine
Her small hand peeped within his own
Thrilled pleasures life hath never known
His heart beat as it once had done
And felt as love had just begun
As they’d ne‘er told their minds before
Or parted long to meet no more
The pleasant spots where they had met
All shone as nought had faded yet
The sun was setting o’er the hill
The thorn bush it was blooming still
As it was blooming on the day
When last he reached her boughs of may
And pleased he clumb the thorny grain
To crop its firstling buds again
And claimed in eager extacys
Love’s favours as he reached the prize
Marking her heart’s uneasy rest
The while he placed them on her breast
And felt warm love’s o‘erbounding thrill
That it could beat so tender still
And all her artless winning ways
Were with her as of other days
Her fears such fondness to reveal
Her wishes struggling to consceal
Her cheeks love’s same warm blushes burned
And smiled when he its warmth returned
O he did feel as he had done
When Mary’s bosom first was won
And gazed upon her eyes of blue
And blest her tenderly and true
As she sat by his side to rest
Feeling as then that he was blest
The talk, the whisper, met his ears
The same sweet tales of other years
That as they sat or mused along
Melted like music from her tongue
Objects of summer all the same
Were nigh her gentle praise to claim
The lark was rising from his nest
To sing the setting sun to rest
And her fair hand was o’er her eyes
To see her favourite in the skies
And oft his look was turned to see
If love still felt that melody
And blooming flowers were at her feet
Her bending lovely looks to meet
The blooms of spring and summer days
Lingering as to wait her praise
And though she showed him weeds the while
He praised and loved them for a smile
The cuckoo sung in soft delight
Its ditty to departing light
And murmuring childern far away
Mockt the music in their play
And in the ivied tree the dove
Breathed its soothing song to love
And as her praise she did renew
He smiled and hoped her heart as true
She blushed away in maiden pride
Then nestled closer to his side
He loved to watch her wistful look
Following white moths down the brook
And thrilled to mark her beaming eyes
Brightening in pleasure and supprise
To meet the wild mysterious things
That evening’s soothing presence brings
And stepping on with gentle feet
She strove to shun the lark’s retreat
And as he near the bushes prest
And scared the linnet from its nest
Fond chidings from her bosom fell
Then blessed the bird and wished it well
His heart was into rapture stirred
His very soul was with the bird
He felt that blessing by her side
As only to himself applied
‘Tis woman’s love makes earth divine
And life its rudest cares resign
And in his rapture’s gushing whim
He told her it was meant for him
She ne’er denied but looked the will
To own as though she blest him still
Yet he had fearful thoughts in view
Joy seemed too happy to be true
He doubted if‘twas Mary by
Yet could not feel the reason why
He loitered by her as in pain
And longed to hear her voice again
And called her by her witching name
She answered — ’twas the very same
And looked as if she knew his fears
Smiling to cheer him through her tears
And whispering in a tender sigh
“Tis youth and Mary standing by’
His heart revived yet in its mirth
Felt fears that they were not of earth
That all were shadows of the mind
Picturing the joys it wished to find
Yet he did feel as like a child
And sighed in fondness till she smiled
Vowing they ne‘er would part no more
And act so foolish as before
She nestled closer by his side
And vowed ‘We never will’ and sighed
He grasped her hand, it seemed to thrill,
And whispered ‘No, we never will’
And thought in rapture’s mad extream
To hold her though it proved a dream
And instant as that thought begun
Her presence seemed his love to shun
And deaf to all he had to say
Quick turned her tender face away
When her small waist he strove to clasp
She shrunk like water from his grasp.
He woke - all lonely as before
He sat beside the rilling streams
And felt that aching joy once more
Akin to thought and pleasant dreams

BALLAD

Fair maiden when my love began
Ere thou thy beauty knew
I fearless owned my passion then
Nor met reproof from you

But now perfection wakes thy charms
And strangers turn to praise
Thy pride my faint-grown heart alarms
And I scarce dare to gaze

Those lips to which mine own did grow
In love’s glad infancy
With ruby ripeness now doth glow
As gems too rich for me

The full-blown rose thy cheeks doth wear
Those lilys on thy brow
Forget whose kiss their buds did wear
And bloom above me now

Those eyes whose first sweet timid light
Did my young hopes inspire
Like midday suns in splendour bright
Now burn me with their fire

Nor can I weep what I bemoan
As great as are my fears
Too burning is my passion grown
To e’er be quenched by tears

BALLAD

O sigh no more, love, sigh no more
Nor pine for earthly treasure
Who fears a shipwreck on the shore
Or meets despair with pleasure

Let not our wants our troubles prove
Although ’tis winter weather
Nor singly strive with what our love
Can better brave together

Thy love is proved thy worth is such
It cannot fail to bless me
If I loose thee I can’t be rich
Nor poor if I possess thee

BALLAD*

The spring returns, the pewet screams
Loud welcomes to the dawning
Though harsh and ill as now it seems
’Twas music last May morning
The grass so green — the daisy gay
Wakes no joy in my bosom
Although the garland last Mayday
Wore not a finer blossom

For by this bridge my Mary sat
And praised the screaming plover
As first to hail the day — when I
Confessed myself her lover
And at that moment stooping down
I pluckt a daisy blossom
Which smilingly she called her own
May-garland for her bosom

And in her heart she hid it there
As true love’s happy omen
Gold had not claimed a safer care
I thought love’s name was woman
I claimed a kiss, she laughed away
I sweetly sold the blossom
I thought myself a king that day
My throne was beauty’s bosom

And little thought an evil hour
Was bringing clouds around me
And least of all that little flower
Would turn a thorn to wound me —
She showed me after many days
Though withered - how she prized it
And then she leaned to wealthy praise
And my poor love - despised it

Aloud the whirring pewet screams
The daisy blooms as gaily
But where is Mary? Absence seems
To ask that question daily
Nowhere on earth where joy can be
To glad me with her pleasure
Another name she owns - to me
She is as stolen treasure

When lovers part — the longest mile
Leaves hope of some returning
Though mine’s close bye - no hope the while
Within my heart is burning
One hour would bring me to her door
Yet sad and lonely-hearted
If seas between us both should roar
We were not further parted

Though I could reach her with my hand
Ere sun* the earth goes under,
Her heart from mine — the sea and land
Are not more far asunder
The wind and clouds, now here, now there,
Hold not such strange dominion
As woman’s cold perverted will
And soon-estranged opinion

CHANGES AND CONTRADICTIONS

If the satisfactions of Clare’s earlier poetry derives from a richly sensuous registration of his perceptions of a stable world, his maturity, from as early as 1821, and increasingly through the 1820s and early 1830s, incorporated or absorbed this achievement within a more complex reflectiveness: the syntax slowly veers from simple to elaborate as it comes to interweave many complex and contradictory discoveries: discoveries derived not so much from sheer observation as from sustained painful reflection, centred on his experience of changes and contradictions.

He came to explore the social, political and aesthetic meanings of economic changes and agricultural innovations — matters that changed fundamentally the relationships between the members of his own society and their environment. So he evolved a sense of a heritage, of being heir to natural blessings that were not merely a matter of sensory gratification or of physical well-being but, rather, of moral and spiritual import: fundamentally a matter of a wise love between the individual and his environment. Against such ‘natural’ virtue, Clare sets the cant and greed, the mania for improvement and the insensitivity of those for whose interests such a document as the following was framed:

And be it further Enacted, That no Horses, Beasts, Asses, Sheep, Lambs, or other Cattle, shall at any Time within the first Ten Years after the said Allotments shall be directed to be entered upon by the respective Proprietors thereof, be kept in any of the public Carriage Roads or Ways to be set out and fenced off on both Sides, or Laned out in pursuance of this Act. From: An Act for Inclosing Lands in the Parishes of Maxey...and Helpstone,inthe County of Northampton, 49 Geo. III. Sess. 1809.

In the process, he shaped a poetry that integrates a number of urgent and passionate questions, all centred on the question of what makes a life worth living. Simultaneously, he developed a sense of personal history as social and economic history: thus many of his strongest poems from the 1820s and 1830s tend to take the form of elegiac lament or social complaint, asserting his own pre-enclosure years as inherently pre-lapsarian, Edenic or paradisal. Enmeshed in such mythic framing is the equally urgent theme of first love unfulfilled and of disenchantment. The result is a poetry that is inescapably rooted in a particular epoch, a crisis in English history, but which also expresses the predicaments of one who found his world increasingly undependable, not to be trusted, in an extreme degree.

The delicate balance of his vulnerable mind was irrevocably disturbed by the scheme of well-meaning friends and patrons, who persuaded him to escape in 1832 from his ‘blue devils’ by leaving his birthplace, to move to a superior cottage in a nearby village. Henceforth, he felt himself to be in exile, in limbo.

AN IDLE HOUR

Sauntering at ease I often love to lean
O’er old bridge-walls and mark the flood below
Whose ripples through the weeds of oily green
Like happy travellers mutter as they go
And mark the sunshine dancing on the arch
Time keeping to the merry waves beneath
And on the banks see drooping blossoms parch
Thirsting for water in the day’s hot breath
Right glad of mud-drops plashed upon their leaves
By cattle plunging from the steepy brink
While water-flowers more than their share recieve
And revel to their very cups in drink.
Just like the world some strive and fare but ill
While others riot and have plenty still

MIDSUMMER

Midsummer’s breath gives ripeness to the year
Of beautiful and picturesque and grand
Tinting the mountain with the hues of fear
Bare climbing dizziness — where bushes stand
Their breakneck emminence with danger near
Like lives in peril - though they wear a smile
’Tis sickly green as in a homeless dream
Of terror at their fate - while underhand
Smiles with home hues as rich as health to toil
In mellow greens and darker lights that cheer
The ploughman turning up the healthy soil
And health and pleasure glistens every where
— So high ambitions dwell as danger’s guests
And quiet minds as small birds in their nests

THE SHEPHERD’S TREE

Hugh elm thy rifted trunk all notched and scarred
Like to a warrior’s destiny — I love
To stretch me often on such shadowed sward
And hear the laugh of summer leaves above
Or on thy buttressed roots to sit and lean
In careless attitude and there reflect
On times and deeds and darings that have been
Old castaways now swallowed in neglect
While thou art towering in thy strength of heart
Stirring the soul to vain imaginings
In which life’s sordid being hath no part
The wind of that eternal ditty sings
Humming of future things that burns the mind
To leave some fragment of itself behind

THE MEADOW GRASS

Delicious is a leisure hour
Among the sweet green fields to be
So sweet indeed I have no power
To tell the joys I feel and see
See here the meadows how they lie
So sunny, level, and so green
The grass is waving ancle-high
A sweeter rest was never seen

I look around and drop me down
And feel delight to be alone
Cares hardly dare to show a frown
While May’s sweet leisure is my own.
Joy, half a stranger, comes to me
And gives me thoughts to profit bye
I think how happy worlds must be
That dwell above that peaceful sky

That happy sky with here and there
A little cloud that would express
By the slow motions that they wear
They live with peace and quietness
I think so as I see them glide
Thoughts earthly tumults can’t destroy
So calm, so soft, so smooth, they ride
I’m sure their errands must be joy

The sky is all serene and mild
The sun is gleaming far away
So sweet, so rich - the very child
Would feel its maker brought the may
For heaven’s ways are pleasant ways
Of silent quietness and peace
And he who musing hither strays
Finds all in such a scene as this

Where no strife comes but in the songs
Of birds half frantic in their glee
Hid from the rude world’s many wrongs
How can they else but happy be
In places where the summer seems
Entirely out of trouble’s way
Where joy o‘er outdoor leisure dreams
As if’twas Sunday every day

For nature here in self-delight
Bestows her richest gifts - the green
Luxuriance all around - the light
Seems more then any common scene -
And yet appears no looker-on
Left to herself and solitude
I seem myself the only one
Intruding on her happy mood

Intruding as of wont to meet
That joyousness she throws around
To feel the grass beneath my feet
Heart-cheered to hear its brushing sound
Pit-patting at one’s legs, to feel
Their seeded heads then bounce away
There’s something more then joy to steal
A walk o’er meadows in the may

A noise now comes on joy’s repose
That May’s right welcome visit brings
Up from the bush the blackbird goes
The fanned leaves dance beneath his wings
And up with yet a louder noise
Woodpigeons flusker — roadway cows
Brouze there — and soon the herdboy shows
His head amid the shaking boughs

There’s something more to fill the mind
Then words can paint to ears and eyes
A calmness quiet loves to find
In these green summer reveries
A freshness giving youth to age
A health to pain and troubles drear
The world has nought but wars to wage
Peace comes and makes her dwelling here

I feel so calm I seem to find
A world I never felt before
And heaven fills my clouded mind
As though it would be dull no more
An endless sunshine glows around
A meadow like a waveless sea
Glows green in many a level ground
A very Paradise to me

‘Tis sweeter than the sweetest book
That ever met the poet’s eye
To read in this delightful nook
The scenes that round about me lie
And yet they are but common things
Green hedges bowering o’er the grass
And one old tree that stoops and flings
Its boughs o’er water smooth as glass

And on a ledge of gravel crags
Those golden blooms so nobly towers
Though but the yellow water-flags
They’re fine enough for garden-flowers
And overhead the breadth of sky
Goes spreading gladness everywhere
Yet on this meadow-grass to lie
Nowhere so happy seems as here

THE ROBIN’S NEST*

Come luscious spring come with thy mossy roots
Thy weed-strown banks — young grass — and tender
shoots
Of woods new-plashed sweet smells of opening blooms
Sweet sunny mornings and right glorious dooms
Of happiness - to seek and harbour in
Far from the ruder world’s inglorious din
Who see no glory but in sordid pelf
And nought of greatness but its little self
Scorning the splendid gift that nature gives
Where nature’s glory ever breathes and lives
Seated in crimping ferns uncurling now
In russet fringes ere in leaves they bow
And moss as green as silk - there let me be
By the grey-powdered trunk of old oak-tree
Buried in green delights to which the heart
Clings with delight and beats as loath to part
The birds unbid come round about to give
Their music to my pleasures - wild flowers live
About as if for me — they smile and bloom
Like uninvited guests that love to come
Their wild fragrant offerings all to bring
Paying me kindness like a throned king
Lost in such extacys in this old spot
I feel that rapture which the world hath not
That joy like health that flushes in my face
Amid the brambles of this ancient place
Shut out from all but that superior power
That guards and glads and cheers me every hour
That wraps me like a mantle from the storm
Of care and bids the coldest hope be warm
That speaks in spots where all things silent be
In words not heard but felt — each ancient tree
With lickens deckt — time’s hoary pedigree
Becomes a monitor to teach and bless
And rid me of the evils cares possess
And bids me look above the trivial things
To which pride’s mercenary spirit clings
The pomps, the wealth, and artificial toys
That men call wealth beleagued with strife and noise
To seek the silence of their ancient reign
And be myself in memory once again
To trace the path of briar-entangled holt
Or bushy closen where the wanton colt
Crops the young juicey leaves from off the hedge
In this old wood where birds their passions pledge
And court and build and sing their under-song
In joy’s own cue that to their hearts belong
Having no wish or want unreconsiled
But spell-bound to their homes within the wild
Where old neglect lives patron and befriends
Their homes with safety’s wildness — where nought
lends
A hand to injure, root up or disturb
The things of this old place — there is no curb
Of interest, industry, or slavish gain
To war with nature, so the weeds remain
And wear an ancient passion that arrays
One’s feelings with the shadows of old days
The rest of peace the sacredness of mind
In such deep solitudes we seek and find
Where moss grows old and keeps an evergreen
And footmarks seem like miracles when seen
So little meddling toil doth trouble here
The very weeds as patriarchs appear
And if a plant one’s curious eyes delight
In this old ancient solitude we might
Come ten years hence of trouble dreaming ill
And find them like old tennants peaceful still
Here the wood robin rustling on the leaves
With fluttering step each visitor recieves
Yet from his ancient home he seldom stirs
In heart content on these dead teazle-burs
He sits and trembles o‘er his under-notes
So rich - joy almost choaks his little throat
With extacy and from his own heart flows
That joy himself and partner only knows
He seems to have small fear but hops and comes
Close to one’s feet as if he looked for crumbs
And when the woodman strinkles some around
He leaves the twig and hops upon the ground
And feeds untill his little daintys cloy
Then claps his little wings and sings for joy
And when in woodland solitudes I wend
I always hail him as my hermit friend
And naturally enough, whene’er they come
Before me, search my pockets for a crumb
At which he turns his eye and seems to stand
As if expecting somthing from my hand
And thus these feathered heirs of solitude
Remain the tennants of this quiet wood
And live in melody and make their home
And never seem to have a wish to roam.
Beside this ash-stulp where in years gone bye
The thrush had built and taught her young to flye
Where still the nest half-filled with leaves remains
With moss still green amid the twisting grains
Here on the ground and sheltered at its foot
The nest is hid close at its mossy root
Composed of moss and grass and lined with hair
And five brun-coloured eggs snug sheltered there
And bye and bye a happy brood will be
The tennants of this woodland privacy

THE MOORHEN’S NEST

O poesy’s power, thou overpowering sweet
That renders hearts that love thee all unmeet
For this rude world, its trouble, and its care
Loading the heart with joys it cannot bear
That warms and chills and burns and bursts at last
O‘er broken hopes and troubles never past,
I pay thee worship at a rustic shrine
And dream o’er joys I still imagine mine
I pick up flowers and pebbles and by thee
As gems and jewels they appear to me
I pick out pictures round the fields that lie
In my mind’s heart like things that cannot die
Like picking hopes and making friends with all
Yet glass will often bear a harder fall
As bursting bottles loose the precious wine
Hope’s casket breaks and I the gems resign
Pain shadows on till feeling’s self decays
And all such pleasures leave me is their praise
And thus each fairy vision melts away
Like evening landscapes from the face of day
Till hope returns with April’s dewy reign
And then I start and seek for joys again
And pick her fragments up to hurd anew
Like fancy-riches pleasure loves to view
And these associations of the past
Like summer pictures in a winter blast
Renews my heart to feelings as the rain
Falls on the earth and bids it thrive again
Then e‘en the fallow fields appear so fair
The very weeds make sweetest gardens there
And summer there puts garments on so gay
I hate the plough that comes to dissaray
Her holiday delights - and labour’s toil
Seems vulgar curses on the sunny soil
And man the only object that distrains
Earth’s garden into deserts for his gains
Leave him his schemes of gain — ’tis wealth to me
Wild heaths to trace - and note their broken tree*
Which lightening shivered — and which nature tries
To keep alive for poesy to prize
Upon whose mossy roots my leisure sits
To hear the birds pipe o‘er their amorous fits
Though less beloved for singing then the taste
They have to choose such homes upon the waste —
Rich architects - and then the spots to see
How picturesque their dwellings make them be
The wild romances of the poet’s mind
No sweeter pictures for their tales can find
And so I glad my heart and rove along
Now finding nests — then listening to a song
Then drinking fragrance whose perfuming cheats
Tinges life’s sours and bitters into sweets
That heart-stirred fragrance when the summer’s rain
Lays the road-dust and sprouts the grass again
Filling the cracks up on the beaten paths
And breathing insence from the mower’s swaths
Insence the bards and prophets of old days
Met in the wilderness to glad their praise
And in these summer walks I seem to feel
These Bible pictures in their essence steal
Around me — and the ancientness of joy
Breathe from the woods till pleasures even cloy
Yet holy breathing manna seemly falls
With angel answers if a trouble calls
And then I walk and swing my stick for joy
And catch at little pictures passing bye
A gate whose posts are two old dotterel trees
A close with molehills sprinkled o’er its leas
A little footbrig with its crossing rail
A wood-gap stopt with ivy-wreathing pale
A crooked stile each path-crossed spinny owns
A brooklet forded by its stepping-stones
A wood-bank mined with rabbit-holes - and then
An old oak leaning o‘er a badger’s den
Whose cave-mouth enters ’neath the twisted charms
Of its old roots and keeps it safe from harms
Pickaxes, spades, and all its strength confounds
When hunted foxes hide from chasing hounds
— Then comes the meadows where I love to see
A floodwashed bank support an aged tree
Whose roots are bare — yet some with foothold good
Crankle and spread and strike beneath the flood
Yet still it leans as safer hold to win
On ’tother side and seems as tumbling in
While every summer finds it green and gay
And winter leaves it safe as did the may
Nor does the morehen find its safety vain
For on its roots their last year’s homes remain
And once again a couple from the brood
Seek their old birth-place and in safety’s mood
Lodge there their flags and lay — though danger comes
It dares and tries and cannot reach their homes
And so they hatch their eggs and sweetly dream
On their shelfed nests that bridge the gulphy stream
And soon the sutty brood from fear elopes
Where bulrush-forrests give them sweeter hopes
Their hanging nest that aids their wishes well
Each leaves for water as it leaves the shell
And dive and dare and every gambol trie
Till they themselves to other scenes can fly

THE ETERNITY OF NATURE

Leaves from eternity are simple things
To the world’s gaze — whereto a spirit clings
Sublime and lasting - trampled underfoot
The daisy lives and strikes its little root
Into the lap of time — centurys may come
And pass away into the silent tomb
And still the child hid in the womb of time
Shall smile and pluck them when this simple rhyme
Shall be forgotten like a churchyard-stone
Or lingering lie unnoticed and alone
When eighteen hundred years our common date
Grows many thousands in their marching state
Aye still the child with pleasure in his eye
Shall cry ‘The daisy!’ - a familiar cry —
And run to pluck it - in the self-same state
As when time found it in his infant date
And like a child himself when all was new
Wonder might smile and make him notice too
- Its little golden bosom frilled with snow
Might win e‘en Eve to stoop adown and show
Her partner Adam in the silky grass
This little gem that smiled where pleasure was
And loving Eve from Eden followed ill
And bloomed with sorrow and lives smiling still
As once in Eden under Heaven’s breath
So now on blighted earth and on the lap of death
It smiles for ever — cowslaps’ golden blooms
That in the closen and the meadow comes
Shall come when kings and empires fade and die
And in the meadows as time’s partners lie
As fresh two thousand years to come as now
With those five crimson spots upon its brow
And little brooks that hum a simple lay
In green unnoticed spots from praise away
Shall sing when poets in time’s darkness hid
Shall lie like memory in a pyramid
Forgetting yet not all forgot - tho’ lost
Like a thread’s end in ravelled windings crost
And the small bumble bee shall hum as long
As nightingales, for time protects the song
And nature is their soul to whom all clings
Of fair or beautiful in lasting things
The little robin in the quiet glen
Hidden from fame and all the strife of men
Sings unto time a pastoral and gives
A music that lives on and ever lives
Both spring and autumn, years rich bloom and fade
Longer then songs that poets ever made
And think ye these time’s playthings - pass, proud skill,
Time loves them like a child and ever will
And so I worship them in bushy spots
And sing with them when all else notice not
And feel the music of their mirth agree
With that sooth quiet that bestirreth me
And if I touch aright that quiet tone
That soothing truth that shadows forth their own
Then many a year shall grow in after days
And still find hearts to love my quiet lays
Yet cheering mirth with thoughts sung not for fame
But for the joy that with their utterance came
That inward breath of rapture urged not loud
— Birds singing lone flie silent past the crowd
So in these pastoral spots which childish time
Makes dear to me I wander out and ryhme
What time the dewy morning’s infancy
Hangs on each blade of grass and every tree
And sprents the red thighs of the bumble bee
Who ’gins by times unwearied minstrelsy
Who breakfasts, dines, and most divinely sups
With every flower save golden buttercups
On their proud bosoms he will never go
And passes by with scarcely ‘How do ye do’
So in their showy gaudy shining cells
Maybe the summer’s honey never dwells
— Her ways are mysterys all, yet endless youth
Lives in them all unchangable as truth
With the odd number five. Strange nature’s laws
Plays many freaks nor once mistakes the cause
And in the cowslap-peeps this very day
Five spots appear which time ne’er wears away
Nor once mistakes the counting — look within
Each peep and five nor more nor less is seen
And trailing bindweed with its pinky cup
Five lines of paler hue goes streaking up
And birds a many keep the rule alive
And lay five eggs nor more nor less than five
And flowers how many own that mystic power
With five leaves ever making up the flower
The five-leaved grass trailing its golden cup
Of flowers - five leaves make all for which I stoop
And briony in the hedge that now adorns
The tree to which it clings and now the thorns
Own five star-pointed leaves of dingy white
Count which I will all make the number right
And spreading goosegrass trailing all abroad
In leaves of silver green about the road
Five leaves make every blossom all along
I stoop for many, none are counted wrong
’Tis nature’s wonder and her maker’s will
Who bade earth be and order owns him still
As that superior power who keeps the key
Of wisdom, power, and might through all eternity

SONG’S ETERNITY

What is song’s eternity?
Come and see
Can it noise and bustle be?
Come and see
Praises sung or praises said,
Can it be?
Wait awhile and these are dead
Sigh sigh
Be they high or lowly bred
They die

What is song’s eternity?
Come and see
Melodys of earth and sky
Here they be
Songs once sung to Adam’s ears
Can it be?
- Ballads of six thousand years
Thrive thrive
Songs awakened with the spheres
Alive

Mighty songs that miss decay
What are they?
Crowds and citys pass away
Like a day
Books are writ and books are read
What are they?
Years will lay them with the dead
Sigh sigh
Trifles unto nothing wed
They die

Dreamers list’ the honey bee
Mark the tree
Where the blue cap, tootle tee,
Sings a glee
Sung to Adam and to Eve
Here they be
When floods covered every bough
Noah’s ark
Heard that ballad singing now
Hark hark

Tootle tootle tootle tee
Can it be
Pride and fame must shadows be?
Come and see
Every season own her own
Bird and bee
Sing creation’s music on
Nature’s glee
Is in every mood and tone
Eternity

The eternity of song
Liveth here
Nature’s universal tongue
Singeth here
Songs I’ve heard and felt and seen
Everywhere
Songs like the grass are evergreen
The giver
Said live and be, and they have been
For ever

PASTORAL POESY

True poesy is not in words
But images that thoughts express
By which the simplest hearts are stirred
To elevated happiness

Mere books would be but useless things
Where none had taste or mind to read
Like unknown lands where beauty springs
And none are there to heed

But poesy is a language meet
And fields are everyone’s employ
The wild flower neath the shepherd’s feet
Looks up and gives him joy

A language that is ever green
That feelings unto all impart
As awthorn blossoms soon as seen
Give May to every heart

The pictures that our summer minds
In summer’s dwellings meet
The fancys that the shepherd finds
To make his leisure sweet

The dustmills that the cowboy delves
In banks for dust to run
Creates a summer in ourselves
He does as we have done

An image to the mind is brought
Where happiness enjoys
An easy thoughtlessness of thought
And meets excess of joys

The world is in that little spot
With him — and all beside
Is nothing. All a life forgot
In feelings satisfied

And such is poesy. Its power
May varied lights employ
Yet to all minds* it gives the dower
Of self-creating joy

And whether it be hill or moor
I feel where e’er I go
A silence that discourses more
Then any tongue can do

Unruffled quietness hath made
A peace in every place
And woods are resting in their shade
Of social loneliness

The storm from which the shepherd turns
To pull his beaver down
While he upon the heath sojourns
Which autumn bleaches brown

Is music aye and more indeed
To those of musing mind
Who through the yellow woods proceed
And listen to the wind

The poet in his fitful glee
And fancy’s many moods
Meets it as some strange melody
And poem of the woods

It sings and whistles in his mind
And then it talks aloud
While by some leaning tree reclined
He shuns a coming cloud

That sails its bulk against the sun
A mountain in the light
He heeds not for the storm begun
But dallys with delight

And now a harp that flings around
The music of the wind
The poet often hears the sound
When beauty fills the mind

The morn with saffron stripes* and grey
Or blushing to the view
Like summer fields when run away
In weeds of crimson hue

Will simple shepherds’ hearts imbue
With nature’s poesy
Who inly fancy while they view
How grand must heaven be

With every musing mind she steals
Attendance on their way
The simplest thing her heart reveals
Is seldom thrown away

The old man full of leisure hours
Sits cutting at his door
Rude fancy sticks to tye his flowers
— They’re sticks and nothing more

With many passing by his door,
But pleasure has its bent
With him ’tis happiness and more
Heart-satisfied content

Those box-edged borders that imprint
Their fragrance near his door
Hath been the comfort of his heart
For sixty years and more

That mossy thatch above his head
In winter’s drifting showers
To him and his old partner made
A music many hours

It patted to their hearts a joy
That humble comfort made
A little fire to keep them dry
And shelter over head

And such no matter what they call
Each, all are nothing less
Then poesy’s power that gives to all
A cheerful blessedness

So would I my own mind employ
And my own heart impress
That poesy’s self’s a dwelling joy
Of humble quietness

So would I for the biding joy
That to such thoughts belong
That I life’s errand may employ
As harmless as a song

THE FALLEN ELM

Old elm that murmured in our chimney top
The sweetest anthem autumn ever made
And into mellow whispering calms would drop
When showers fell on thy many-coloured shade
And when dark tempests mimic thunder made
While darkness came as it would strangle light
With the black tempest of a winter night
That rocked thee like a cradle to thy root
How did I love to hear the winds upbraid
Thy strength without - while all within was mute
It seasoned comfort to our hearts’ desire
We felt thy kind protection like a friend
And edged our chairs up closer to the fire
Enjoying comforts that was never penned
Old favourite tree thou‘st seen time’s changes lower
Though change till now did never injure thee
For time beheld thee as her sacred dower
And nature claimed thee her domestic tree
Storms came and shook thee many a weary hour
Yet stedfast to thy home thy roots hath been
Summers of thirst parched round thy homely bower
Till earth grew iron - still thy leaves was green
The childern sought thee in thy summer shade
And made their play-house rings of sticks and stone
The mavis sang and felt himself alone
While in thy leaves his early nest was made
And I did feel his happiness mine own
Nought heeding that our friendship was betrayed
Friend not inanimate - though stocks and stones
There are and many formed of flesh and bones -
Thou owned a language by which hearts are stirred
Deeper than by a feeling cloathed in words
And speakest now what’s known of every tongue
Language of pity and the force of wrong
What cant assumes, what hypocrites will dare
Speaks home to truth and shows it what they are
I see a picture which thy fate displays
And learn a lesson from thy destiny
Self-interest saw thee stand in freedom’s ways
So thy old shadow must a tyrant be
Thou’st heard the knave abusing those in power
Bawl freedom loud and then opress the free
Thou‘st sheltered hypocrites in many a shower
That when in power would never shelter thee
Thou’st heard the knave supply his canting powers
With wrong’s illusions when he wanted friends
That bawled for shelter when he lived in showers
And when clouds vanished made thy shade amends
With axe at root he felled thee to the ground
And barked of freedom — O I hate the sound
Time hears its visions speak and age sublime
Had made thee a deciple unto time
— It grows the cant term of enslaving tools
To wrong another by the name of right
It grows the liscence of o‘erbearing fools
To cheat plain honesty by force of might
Thus came enclosure — ruin was its guide
But freedom’s clapping hands enjoyed the sight
Though comfort’s cottage soon was thrust aside
And workhouse prisons raised upon the site
E’en nature’s dwellings far away from men,
The common heath, became the spoilers’ prey
The rabbit had not where to make his den
And labour’s only cow was drove away
No matter - wrong was right and right was wrong
And freedom’s bawl was sanction to the song
— Such was thy ruin, music-making elm
The rights of freedom was to injure thine
As thou wert served, so would they overwhelm
In freedom’s name the little that is mine
And there are knaves that brawl for better laws
And cant of tyranny in stronger powers
Who glut their vile unsatiated maws
And freedom’s birthright from the weak devours

THE MORES

Far spread the moorey ground a level scene
Bespread with rush and one eternal green
That never felt the rage of blundering plough
Though centurys wreathed spring’s blossoms on its
brow
Still meeting plains that stretched them far away
In uncheckt shadows of green, brown, and grey
Unbounded freedom ruled the wandering scene
Nor fence of ownership crept in between
To hide the prospect of the following eye
Its only bondage was the circling sky
One mighty flat undwarfed by bush and tree
Spread its faint shadow of immensity
And lost itself, which seemed to eke its bounds
In the blue mist the horizon’s edge surrounds
Now this sweet vision of my boyish hours
Free as spring clouds and wild as summer flowers
Is faded all- a hope that blossomed free,
And hath been once, no more shall ever be
Inclosure came and trampled on the grave
Of labour’s rights and left the poor a slave
And memory’s pride ere want to wealth did bow
Is both the shadow and the substance now
The sheep and cows were free to range as then
Where change might prompt nor felt the bonds of men
Cows went and came, with evening morn and night,
To the wild pasture as their common right
And sheep, unfolded with the rising sun,
Heard the swains shout and felt their freedom won
Tracked the red fallow field and heath and plain
Then met the brook and drank and roamed again
The brook that dribbled on as clear as glass
Beneath the roots they hid among the grass
While the glad shepherd traced their tracks along
Free as the lark and happy as her song
But now all’s fled and flats of many a dye
That seemed to lengthen with the following eye
Moors, loosing from the sight, far, smooth, and blea,
Where swopt the plover in its pleasure free
Are vanished now with commons wild and gay
As poet’s visions of life’s early day
Mulberry-bushes where the boy would run
To fill his hands with fruit are grubbed and done
And hedgrow-briars - flower-lovers overjoyed
Came and got flower-pots - these are all destroyed
And sky-bound mores in mangled garbs are left
Like mighty giants of their limbs bereft
Fence now meets fence in owners’ little bounds
Of field and meadow large as garden grounds
In little parcels little minds to please
With men and flocks imprisoned ill at ease
Each little path that led its pleasant way
As sweet as morning leading night astray
Where little flowers bloomed round a varied host
That travel felt delighted to be lost
Nor grudged the steps that he had ta‘en as vain
When right roads traced his journeys and again —
Nay, on a broken tree he’d sit awhile
To see the mores and fields and meadows smile
Sometimes with cowslaps smothered - then all white
With daiseys - then the summer’s splendid sight
Of cornfields crimson o’er the headache bloomd
Like splendid armys for the battle plumed
He gazed upon them with wild fancy’s eye
As fallen landscapes from an evening sky
These paths are stopt — the rude philistine’s thrall
Is laid upon them and destroyed them all
Each little tyrant with his little sign
Shows where man claims earth glows no more divine
But paths to freedom and to childhood dear
A board sticks up to notice ‘no road here’
And on the tree with ivy overhung
The hated sign by vulgar taste is hung*
As tho’ the very birds should learn to know
When they go there they must no further go
Thus, with the poor, scared freedom bade goodbye
And much they feel it in the smothered sigh
And birds and trees and flowers without a name
All sighed when lawless law’s enclosure came
And dreams of plunder in such rebel schemes
Have found too truly that they were but dreams

THE LAMENT OF SWORDY WELL

Petitioners are full of prayers
To fall in pity’s way
But if her hand the gift forbears
They’ll sooner swear than pray
They’re not the worst to want who lurch
On plenty with complaints
No more then those who go to church
Are e’er the better saints

I hold no hat to beg a mite
Nor pick it up when thrown
Nor limping leg I hold in sight
But pray to keep my own
Where profit gets his clutches in
There’s little he will leave
Gain stooping for a single pin
Will stick it on his sleeve

For passers-by I never pin
No troubles to my breast
Nor carry round some names to win*
More money from the rest
I’m Swordy Well a piece of land
That’s fell upon the town
Who worked me till I couldn’t stand
And crush me now I’m down

In parish bonds I well may wail
Reduced to every shift
Pity may grieve at trouble’s tale
But cunning shares the gift
Harvests with plenty on his brow
Leaves losses’ taunts with me
Yet gain comes yearly with the plough
And will not let me be

Alas dependance thou’rt a brute
Want only understands
His feelings wither branch and root
That falls in parish hands.
The muck that clouts the ploughman’s shoe
The moss that hides the stone,
Now I’m become the parish due,
Is more then I can own

Though I’m no man yet any wrong
Some sort of right may seek
And I am glad if e’en a song
Gives me the room to speak
I’ve got among such grubbling geer
And such a hungry pack
If I brought harvests twice a year
They’d bring me nothing back

When war their tyrant-prices got
I trembled with alarms
They fell and saved my little spot
Or towns had turned to farms
Let profit keep an humble place
That gentry may be known
Let pedigrees their honours trace
And toil enjoy its own

The silver springs grown naked dykes
Scarce own a bunch of rushes
When grain got high the tasteless tykes
Grubbed up trees, banks, and bushes
And me, they turned me inside out
For sand and grit and stones
And turned my old green hills about
And pickt my very bones

These things that claim my own as theirs
Were born by yesterday
But ere I fell to town affairs
I were as proud as they
I kept my horses, cows, and sheep
And built the town below
Ere they had cat or dog to keep
And then to use me so

Parish allowance gaunt and dread
Had it the earth to keep
Would even pine the bees to dead
To save an extra keep
Pride’s workhouse is a place that yields
From poverty its gains
And mines a workhouse for the fields
A-starving the remains

The bees flye round in feeble rings
And find no blossom bye
Then thrum their almost weary wings
Upon the moss and die
Rabbits that find my hills turned o’er
Forsake my poor abode
They dread a workhouse like the poor
And nibble on the road

If with a clover bottle now
Spring dares to lift her head
The next day brings the hasty plough
And makes me misery’s bed
The butterflyes may wir and come
I cannot keep ’em now
Nor can they bear my parish home
That withers on my brow

No, now not e‘en a stone can lie
I’m just what e’er they like
My hedges like the winter flye
And leave me but the dyke
My gates are thrown from off the hooks
The parish thoroughfare
Lord he that’s in the parish books
Has little wealth to spare

I couldn’t keep a dust of grit
Nor scarce a grain of sand
But bags and carts claimed every bit
And now they’ve got the land
I used to bring the summer’s life
To many a butterflye
But in oppression’s iron strife
Dead tussocks bow and sigh

I’ve scarce a nook to call my own
For things that creep or flye
The beetle hiding ‘neath a stone
Does well to hurry bye
Stock eats my struggles every day
As bare as any road
He’s sure to be in something’s way
If e’er he stirs abroad

I am no man to whine and beg
But fond of freedom still
I hang no lies on pity’s peg
To bring a grist to mill
On pity’s back I needn’t jump
My looks speak loud alone
My only tree they’ve left a stump
And nought remains my own

My mossy hills gain’s greedy hand
And more then greedy mind
Levels into a russet land
Nor leaves a bent behind
In summers gone I bloomed in pride
Folks came for miles to prize
My flowers that bloomed nowhere beside
And scarce believed their eyes

Yet worried with a greedy pack
They rend and delve and tear
The very grass from off my back
I’ve scarce a rag to wear
Gain takes my freedom all away
Since its dull suit I wore
And yet scorn vows I never pay
And hurts me more and more

And should the price of grain get high -
Lord help and keep it low -
I shan’t possess a single flye
Or get a weed to grow
I shan’t possess a yard of ground
To bid a mouse to thrive
For gain has put me in a pound
I scarce can keep alive

I own I’m poor like many more
But then the poor mun live
And many came for miles before
For what I had to give
But since I fell upon the town
They pass me with a sigh
I’ve scarce the room to say ‘Sit down’
And so they wander bye

Though now I seem so full of clack
Yet when ye’re riding bye
The very birds upon my back
Are not more fain to flye
I feel so lorn in this disgrace
God send the grain to fall
I am the oldest in the place
And the worst-served of all

Lord bless ye I was kind to all
And poverty in me
Could always find a humble stall
A rest and lodging free
Poor bodys with an hungry ass
I welcomed many a day
And gave him tether-room and grass
And never said him nay

There was a time my bit of ground
Made freemen of the slave
The ass no pindar’d dare to pound
When I his supper gave
The gipsey’s camp was not affraid
I made his dwelling free
Till vile enclosure came and made
A parish slave of me

The gipseys further on sojourn
No parish bounds they like
No sticks I own and would earth burn
I shouldn’t own a dyke
I am no friend to lawless work
Nor would a rebel be
And why I call a Christian turk
Is they are turks to me

And if I could but find a friend
With no deciet to sham
Who’d send me some few sheep to tend
And leave me as I am
To keep my hills from cart and plough
And strife of mongerel men
And as spring found me find me now
I should look up agen

And save his Lordship’s woods, that past
The day of danger dwell,
Of all the fields I am the last
That my own face can tell
Yet what with stone pits’ delving holes
And strife to buy and sell
My name will quickly be the whole
That’s left of Swordy Well

DECAY

Amidst the happiest joy a shade of grief
Will come - to mark in summer’s prime a leaf
Tinged with the autumn’s visible decay
As pining to forgetfulness away
Aye blank forgetfulness that coldest lot
To be - and to have been - and then be not
E’en beauty’s self, love’s essence, heaven’s prime —
Mate for eternity in joys sublime,
Earth’s most divinest, is a mortal thing
And nurses time’s sick autumn from its spring
And fades and fades till wonder knows it not
And admiration hath all praise forgot
Coldly forsaking an unheeding past
To fade and fall and die like common things at last

OBSCURITY

Old tree, oblivion doth thy life condemn
Blank and recordless as that summer wind
That fanned the first few leaves on thy young stem
When thou wert one year’s shoot — and who can find
Their homes of rest or paths of wandering now?
So seems thy history to a thinking mind
As now I gaze upon thy sheltering bough
Thou grew unnoticed up to flourish now
And leave thy past as nothing all behind
Where many years and doubtless centurys lie
That ewe beneath thy shadow - nay that flie
Just settled on a leaf — can know with time
Almost as much of thy blank past as I
Thus blank oblivion reigns as earth’s sublime

NOTHINGNESS OF LIFE

I never pass a venerable tree
Pining away to nothingness and dust
Ruin’s vain shades of power I never see
Once dedicated to time’s cheating trust
But warm reflection makes the saddest thought
And views life’s vanity in cheerless light
And sees earth’s bubbles youth so eager sought
Burst into emptiness of lost delight
And all the pictures of life’s early day
Like evening’s striding shadows haste away
Yet there’s a glimmering of pleasure springs
From such reflections of earth’s vanity
That pines and sickens o’er life’s mortal things
And leaves a relish for eternity

CHILDHOOD

The past it is a majic word
Too beautiful to last
It looks back like a lovely face
Who can forget the past?
There’s music in its childhood
That’s known in every tongue
Like the music of the wildwood
All chorus to the song

The happy dream the joyous play
The life without a sigh
The beauty thoughts can ne‘er pourtray
In those four letters lye
The painters’ beauty-breathing arts
The poets’ speaking pens
Can ne’er call back a thousand part
Of what that word contains

And fancy at its sweetest hour
What e’er may come to pass
Shall find that majic thrill no more
Time broke it like his glass
The sweetest joy the fairest face
The treasure most preferred
Have left the honours of their place
Locked in that silent word

When we look back on what we were
And feel what we are now
A fading leaf is not so drear
Upon a broken bough
A winter seat without a fire
A cold world without friends
Doth not such chilly glooms impart
As that one word portends

Like withered wreaths in banquet halls
When all the rout is past
Like sunshine that on ruins falls
Our pleasures are at last
The joy is fled the love is cold
And beauty’s splendour too
Our first believings all are old
And faith itself untrue

When beauty met love’s budding spring
In artless witcherys
It were not then an earthly thing
But an angel in disguise
Where are they now of youth’s esteems?
All shadows passed away
Flowers blooming but in summer dreams
And thoughts of yesterday

Our childhood soon a trifle gets
Yet like a broken toy
Grown out of date it reccolects
Our memorys into joy
The simple catalogue of things
That reason would despise
Starts in the heart a thousand springs
Of half-forgotten joys

When we review that place of prime
That childhood’s joys endow
That seemed more green in winter time
Than summer grass does now
Where oft the task of skill was put
For other boys to match
To run along the churchyard wall
Or balls to cuck and catch

How oft we clomb the porch to cut
Our names upon the leads
Though fame nor anything akin
Was never in our heads
Where hands and feet were rudely drawn
And names we could not spell
And thought no artist in the world
Could ever do as well

We twirled our tops that spun so well
They scarce could tumble down
And thought they twirled as well again
When riddled on the crown
And bee-spell marbles bound to win
As by a potent charm
Was often wetted in the mouth
To show the dotted swarm

We pelted at the weathercock
And he who pelted o‘er
Was reckoned as a mighty man
And even somthing more
We leapt accross ‘cat gallows sticks’
And mighty proud was he
Who overshot the famous nicks
That reached above his knee

And then each other’s tasks we did
And great ambition grew
We ran so swift, so strong we leaped
We almost thought we flew
We ran across the broken brig
Whose wooden rail was lost
And loud the victor’s feat was hailed
Who dared the danger most

And hopskotch too a spur to joy
We thought the task divine
To hop and kick the stone right out
And never touch a line
And then we walked on mighty stilts
Scarce seven inches high
Yet on we stalked and thought ourselves
Already at the sky

Our pride to reason would not shrink
In these exalted hours
A jiant’s was a pigmy link
To statures such as ours
We even fancied we could flye
And fancy then was true
So with the clouds upon the sky
In dreams at night we flew

We shot our arrows from our bows
Like any archers proud
And thought when lost they went so high
To lodge upon a cloud
And these seemed feats that none before
Ourselves could e’er attain
And Wellington with all his feats
Felt never half so vain

And oft we urged the barking dog
For mischief was our glee
To chace the cat up weed-green walls
And mossy apple-tree
When her tail stood like a bottle-brush
With fear — we laughed again
Like tyrants we could purchase mirth
And ne’er alow for pain

And then our playpots sought and won
For uses and for show
That Wedgewood’s self with all his skill
Might guess in vain to know
And pallaces of stone and stick
In which we could not creep
Which Nash himself ne’er made so quick
And never half so cheap

Our fancys made us great and rich
No bounds our wealth could fix
A stool drawn round the room was soon
A splendid coach and six
The majic of our minds was great
And even pebbles they
Soon as we chose to call them gold
Grew guineas in our play

And carriages of oyster-shells
Though filled with nought but stones
Grew instant ministers of state
While clay kings filled their thrones
Like Cinderella’s fairey queen
Joy would our wants bewitch
If wealth was sought the dust and stones
Turned wealth and made us rich

The mallow-seed became a cheese
The henbanes loaves of bread
A burdock leaf our table cloth
On a table stone was spread
The bindweed flower that climbs the hedge
Made us a drinking-glass
And there we spread our merry feast
Upon the summer grass

A henbane root could scarcely grow
A mallow shake its seeds
The insects that might feed thereon
Found famine in the weeds
But like the pomp of princely taste
That humbler life anoys
We thought not of our neighbours’ wants
While we were wasting joys

We often tried to force the snail
To leave his harvest horn
By singing that the beggarman
Was coming for his corn
We thought we forced the lady-cow
To tell the time of day
‘Twas one o’clock and two o’clock
And then she flew away

We bawled to beetles as they ran
That their childern were all gone
Their houses down and door-key hid
Beneath the golden stone
They seemed to haste as fast again
While we shouted as they passed
With mirth half-mad to think our tale
Had urged their speed so fast

The stonecrop that on ruins comes
And hangs like golden balls
How oft to reach its shining blooms
We scaled the mossy walls
And weeds - we gathered weeds as well
Of all that bore a flower
And tied our little poseys up
Beneath the eldern bower

Our little gardens there we made
Of blossoms all arow
And though they had no roots at all
We hoped to see them grow
And in the cart rutt after showers
Of sudden summer rain
We filled our tiney waterpots
And cherished them in vain

We pulled the moss from apple trees
And gathered bits of straws
When weary twirling of our tops
And shooting of our taws
We made birds’ nests and thought that birds
Would like them ready-made
And went full twenty times a day
To see if eggs were laid

The long and swaily willow-row
Where we for whips would climb
How sweet their shadows used to grow
In merry harvest time
We pulled boughs down and made a swee
Snug hid from toil and sun
And up we tossed right merrily
Till weary with the fun

On summer eves with wild delight
We bawled the bat to spy
Who in the ‘I spy’ dusky light
Shrieked loud and flickered bye
And up we tossed our shuttlecocks
And tried to hit the moon
And wondered bats should flye so long
And they come down so soon

We sought for nutts in secret nook
We thought none else could find
And listened to the laughing brook
And mocked the singing wind
We gathered acorns ripe and brown
That hung too high to pull
Which friendly winds would shake adown
Till all had pockets full

Then loading home at day’s decline
Each sought his corner stool
Then went to bed till morning came
And crept again to school
Yet there by pleasure unforsook
In nature’s happy moods
The cuts in Fenning’s Spelling Book
Made up for fields and woods

Each noise that breathed around us then
Was majic all and song
Where ever pastime found us then
Joy never led us wrong
The wild bees in the blossom hung
The coy bird’s startled call
To find its home in danger — there
Was music in them all

And o’er the first bumbarrel’s nest
We wondered at the spell
That birds who served no prenticeship
Could build their nests so well
And finding linnets’ moss was green
And finches chusing grey
And every finches’ nest alike
Our wits was all away

Then blackbirds lining theirs with grass
And thrushes theirs with dung -
So for our lives we could not tell
From whence the wisdom sprung
We marvelled much how little birds
Should ever be so wise
And so we guessed some angel came
To teach them from the skys

In winter too we traced the fields
And still felt summer joys
We sought our hips and felt no cold
Cold never came to boys
The sloes appeared as choice as plumbs
When bitten by the frost
And crabs grew honey in the mouth
When apple time was past

We rolled in sunshine lumps of snow
And called them mighty men
And tired of pelting Bouneparte
We ran to slide again
And ponds for glibbest ice we sought
With shouting and delight
And tasks of spelling all were left
To get by heart at night

And when it came — and round the fire
We sat - what joy was there
The kitten dancing round the cork
That dangled from a chair
While we our scraps of paper burnt
To watch the flitting sparks
And Collect books were often torn
For parsons and for clerks

Nought seemed too hard for us to do
But the sums upon our slates
Nought seemed too hard for us to win
But the master’s chair of state
The ‘Town of Troy’ we tried and made
When our sums we could not try
While we envied e’en the sparrows wings
From our prison house to flye

When twelve o’clock was counted out
The joy and strife began
The shut of books the hearty shout
As out of doors we ran
Sunshine and showers who could withstand
Our food and rapture they
We took our dinners in our hands
To loose no time in play

The morn when first we went to school
Who can forget the morn
When the birchwhip lay upon the stool
And our hornbook it was torn
We tore the little pictures out
Less fond of books than play
And only took one letter home
And that the letter ‘A’

I love in childhood’s little book
To read its lessons through
And o’r each pictured page to look
Because they read so true
And there my heart creates anew
Love for each trifling thing
- Who can disdain the meanest weed
That shows its face at spring

The daisey looks up in my face
As long ago it smiled
It knows no change but keeps its place
And takes me for a child
The chaffinch in the hedgerow thorn
Cries ‘pink pink pink’ to hear
My footsteps in the early morn
As though a boy was near

I seek no more the finches’ nest
Nor stoop for daisey-flowers
I grow a stranger to myself
In these delightful hours
Yet when I hear the voice of spring
I can but call to mind
The pleasures which they used to bring
The joys I used to find

The firetail on the orchard wall
Keeps at its startled cry
Of ‘tweet tut tut’ nor sees the morn
Of boyhood’s mischief bye
It knows no change of changing time
By sickness never stung
It feeds on hope’s eternal prime
Around its brooded young

Ponds where we played at ‘Duck and Drake
Where the ash with ivy grew
Where we robbed the owl of all her eggs
And mocked her as she flew
The broad tree in the spinney-hedge
’Neath which the gipseys lay
Where we our fine oak apples got
On the twenty-ninth of May*

These all remain as then they were
And are not changed a day
And the Ivy’s crown’s as near to green
As mine is to the grey
It shades the pond, o’erhangs the stile
And the oak is in the glen
But the paths of joy are so worn out
I can’t find one agen

The merry wind still sings the song
As if no change had been
The birds build nests the summer long
The trees look full as green
As e’er they did in childhood’s joy
Though that hath long been bye
When I a happy roving boy
In the fields had used to lye

To tend the restless roving sheep
Or lead the quiet cow
Toils that seemed more than slavery then
How more then freedom now
Could we but feel as then we did
When joy too fond to flye
Would flutter round as soon as bid
And drive all troubles bye

But rainbows on an April cloud
And blossoms pluckt in May
And painted eves that summer brings
Fade not so fast away
Tho’ grass is green though flowers are gay
And everywhere they be
What are the leaves on branches hung
Unto the withered tree?

Life’s happiest gifts, and what are they?
Pearls by the morning strung
Which ere the noon are swept away -
Short as a cuckoo’s song
A nightingale’s the summer is
Can pleasure make us proud
To think when swallows fly away
They leave her in her shroud?

Youth revels at his rising hour
With more than summer joys
And rapture holds the fairey flower
Which reason soon destroys
O sweet the bliss which fancy feigns
To hide the eyes of truth
And beautious still the charm remains
Of faces loved in youth

And spring returns the blooming year
Just as it used to be
And joys in youthful smiles appear
To mock the change in me
Each sight leaves memory ill at ease
And stirs an aching bosom
To think that seasons sweet as these
With me are out of blossom

The fairest summer sinks in shade
The sweetest blossom dies
And age finds every beauty fade
That youth esteemed a prize
The play breaks up, the blossom fades,
And childhood dissapears
For higher dooms ambitions aims
And care grows into years

But time we often blame him wrong
That rude destroying time
And follow him with sorrow’s song
When he hath done no crime
Our joys in youth are often sold
In folly’s thoughtless fray
And many feel their hearts grow old
Before their heads are grey

The past - there lyes in that one word
Joys more than wealth can crown
Nor could a million call them back
Though muses wrote them down
The sweetest joys imagined yet
The beautys that surpast
All life or fancy ever met
Are there among the past

THE OLD MAN’S SONG*

Youth has no fear of ill by no cloudy days anoyed

But the old man’s all hath fled and his hopes have met their doom

The bud hath burst to bloom and the flower been long destroyed

The root too is withered and no more can look for bloom

So I have said my say and I have had my day

And sorrow like a young storm creeps dark upon my brow

Hopes like to summer winds they have all blown away
And the world’s sunny side is turned over with me now
And left me like a lame bird upon a withered bough
I look upon the past, ‘tis as black as winter days
But the worst it is not over there is blacker days to come

O would I had but known of the wide world’s many ways

But futurity is blind so I e’en must share my doom
Joy once reflected brightly of prospects overcast
But now like a looking-glass that’s turned to the wall
Life is nothing but a blank and the sunny shining past
Is overspread with glooms that doth every hope enthrall
While troubles daily thicken in the wind ere they fall

Life smiled upon me once as the sun upon the rose

My heart so free and open guessed every face a friend

Though the sweetest flower must fade and the sweetest season close

Yet I never gave it thought that my happiness would end

Till the warmest-seeming friends grew the coldest at the close

As the sun from lonely night hides its haughty shining face

Yet I could not think them gone for they turned not open foes

While memory fondly mused, former favours to retrace,

And I turned but only found that my shadow kept its place

And this is nought but common life, what everybody finds

As well as I, or more’s the luck of those that better speed

I’ll mete my lot to bear with the lot of kindred minds

And grudge not those who say they for sorrow have no need

Why should I when I know that it will not aid a nay?

For summer is the season, even then the little flye

Finds friends enew indeed, both for leisure and for play

But on the winter window, why they crawl alone to die

Such is life and such am I, a wounded and a winter-stricken flie

REMEMBRANCES*

Summer’s pleasures they are gone like to visions every one

And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on

I tried to call them back but unbidden they are gone

Far away from heart and eye and for ever far away

Dear heart and can it be that such raptures meet decay

I thought them all eternal when by Langley Bush I lay

I thought them joys eternal when I used to shout and play

On its banks at clink and bandy chock and taw and ducking stone

Where silence sitteth now on the wild heath as her own

Like a ruin of the past all alone

When I used to lye and sing by old Eastwell’s boiling spring

When I used to tie the willow boughs together for a swing

And fish with crooked pins and thread and never catch a thing

With heart just like a feather — now as heavy as a stone —

When beneath old Lea Close Oak I the bottom branches broke

To make our harvest cart like so many working folk

And then to cut a straw at the brook to have a soak

O I never dreamed of parting or that trouble had a sting

Or that pleasures like a flock of birds would ever take to wing

Leaving nothing but a little naked spring

When jumping time away on old Crossberry Way

And eating awes like sugar plumbs ere they had lost the may

And skipping like a leveret before the peep of day

On the rolly-poly up and down of pleasant Swordy Well

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

We sought the hollow ash that was shelter from the rain

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

How delicious was the dinner-time on such a showery day

O words are poor reciepts for what time hath stole away

The ancient pulpit-trees and the play

When for school o’er little field with its brook and wooden brig

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

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

And drove my team along made of nothing but a name

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

Those pleasant names of places but I leave a sigh behind

While I see the little mouldiwarps* hang sweeing to the wind

On the only aged willow that in all the field remains

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

And in a silent murmuring complains

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

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

The little homeless miners - O it turns my bosom chill

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

Where bramble bushes grew and the daisey gemmed in dew

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

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

All leveled like a desert by the never-weary plough

All banished like the sun where that cloud is passing now

And settled here for ever on its brow

O I never thought that joys would run away from boys

Or that boys should change their minds and forsake mid-summer joys

But alack I never dreamed that the world had other toys

To petrify first feelings, like the fable, into stone

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

Then the fields were sudden bare and the sky got overcast

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

Was shrivelled to a withered weed and trampled down and done

Till vanished was the morning spring and set the summer sun

And winter fought her battle-strife and won

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

On Cowper Green I stray, ’tis a desert strange and chill

And spreading Lea Close Oak ere decay had penned its will

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

And Crossberry Way and old Round Oak’s narrow lane

With its hollow trees like pulpits I shall never see again

Inclosure like a Buonaparte let not a thing remain

It levelled every bush and tree and levelled every hill

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

It runs a naked stream cold and chill

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

I had watched her night and day, besure, and never slept agen

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

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

Aye, knelt and worshiped on, as love in beauty’s bower

And clung upon her smiles as a bee upon a flower

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

As keepsakes and pledges all to never fade away

But love never heeded to treasure up the may

So it went the common road to decay

THE FLITTING*

I’ve left mine own old home of homes
Green fields and every pleasant place
The summer like a stranger comes
I pause and hardly know her face
I miss the hazel’s happy green
The bluebell’s quiet hanging blooms
Where envy’s sneer was never seen
Where staring malice never comes

I miss the heath its yellow furze
Molehills and rabbit-tracks* that lead
Through beesom ling and teazle burrs
That spread a wilderness indeed
The woodland oaks and all below
That their white-powdered branches shield
The mossy paths - the very crow
Croaks music in my native field

I sit me in my corner chair
That seems to feel itself from home
And hear bird-music here and there
From awthorn hedge and orchard come
I hear, but all is strange and new
- I sat on my old bench in June
The sailing puddock’s shrill ‘peelew’
O’er Royce Wood seemed a sweeter tune

I walk adown the narrow lane
The nightingale is singing now
But like to me she seems at loss
For Royce Wood and its shielding bough
I lean upon the window sill
The trees and summer happy seem
Green, sunny green, they shine - but still
My heart goes far away, to dream

Of happiness, and thoughts arise
With home-bred pictures many a one
Green lanes that shut out burning skies
And old crooked stiles to rest upon
Above them hangs the maple tree
Below grass swells a velvet hill
And little footpaths sweet to see
Goes seeking sweeter places still

With bye and bye a brook to cross
O’er which a little arch is thrown
No brook is here I feel the loss
From home and friends and all alone
— The stone pit with its shelvy sides
Seemed hanging rocks in my esteem
I miss the prospect far and wide
From Langley Bush, and so I seem

Alone and in a stranger scene
Far far from spots my heart esteems
The closen with their ancient green
Heaths woods and pastures’ sunny streams
The awthorns here were hung with may
But still they seem in deader green
The sun e’en seems to loose its way
Nor knows the quarter it is in

I dwell on trifles like a child
I feel as ill becomes a man
And still my thoughts like weedlings wild
Grow up to blossom where they can
They turn to places known so long
And feel that joy was dwelling there
So home-fed pleasures fill the song
That has no present joys to heir

I read in books for happiness
But books are like the sea to joy
They change — as well give age the glass
To hunt its visage when a boy
For books they follow fashions new
And throw all old esteems away
In crowded streets flowers never grew
But many there hath died away

Some sing the pomps of chivalry
As legends of the ancient time
Where gold and pearls and mystery
Are shadows painted for sublime
But passions of sublimity
Belong to plain and simpler things
And David underneath a tree
Sought, when a shepherd, Salem’s springs

Where moss did into cushions spring
Forming a seat of velvet hue
A small unnoticed trifling thing
To all but heaven’s hailing dew
And David’s crown hath passed away
Yet poesy breathes his shepherd skill
His palace lost — and to this day
The little moss is blooming still

Strange scenes mere shadows are to me
Vague unpersonifying things
I love with my old home to be
By quiet woods and gravel springs
Where little pebbles wear as smooth
As hermit’s beads by gentle floods
Whose noises doth my spirits soothe
And warms them into singing moods

Here every tree is strange to me
All foreign things where e’er I go
There’s none where boyhood made a swee
Or clambered up to rob a crow
No hollow tree or woodland bower
Well-known when joy was beating high
Where beauty ran to shun a shower
And love took pains to keep her dry

And laid the shoaf upon the ground
To keep her from the dripping grass
And ran for stowks and set them round
Till scarce a drop of rain could pass
Through — where the maidens they reclined
And sung sweet ballads now forgot
Which brought sweet memorys to the mind
But here no memory knows them not

There have I sat by many a tree
And leaned o‘er many a rural stile
And conned my thoughts as joys to me
Nought heeding who might frown or smile
’Twas nature’s beauty that inspired
My heart with raptures not its own
And she’s a fame that never tires
How could I feel myself alone?

No - pasture molehills used to lie
And talk to me of sunny days
And then the glad sheep resting bye
All still in ruminating praise
Of summer, and the pleasant place
And every weed and blossom too
Was looking upward in my face
With friendship’s welcome ‘How do ye do’

All tennants of an ancient place
And heirs of noble heritage
Coeval they with Adam’s race
And blest with more substantial age
For when the world first saw the sun
There little flowers beheld him too
And when his love for earth begun
They were the first his smiles to woo

There little lambtoe bunches springs
In red-tinged and begolden dye
For ever, and like China kings
They come but never seem to die
There may-blooms with its little threads
Still comes upon the thorny bowers
And ne’er forgets those pinky threads
Like fairy pins amid the flowers

And still they bloom as on the day
They first crowned wilderness and rock
When Abel haply crowned with may
The firstlings of his little flock
And Eve might from the matted thorn
To deck her lone and lovely brow
Reach that same rose that heedless scorn
Misnames as the dog-rosey now

Give me no highflown fangled things
No haughty pomp in marching chime
Where muses play on golden strings
And splendour passes for sublime
Where citys stretch as far as fame
And fancy’s straining eye can go
And piled untill the sky for shame
Is stooping far away below

I love the verse that mild and bland
Breathes of green fields and open sky
I love the muse that in her hand
Bears wreaths of native poesy
Who walks nor skips the pasture brook
In scorn - but by the drinking horse
Leans o’er its little brig to look
How far the sallows lean accross

And feels a rapture in her breast
Upon their root-fringed grains to mark
A hermit morehen’s sedgy nest
Just like a naiad’s summer bark
She counts the eggs she cannot reach
Admires the spot and loves it well
And yearns, so nature’s lessons teach,
Amid such neighbourhoods to dwell

I love the muse who sits her down
Upon the molehill’s little lap
Who feels no fear to stain her gown
And pauses by the hedgrow gap
Not with that affectation, praise
Of song to sing, and never see
A field flower grow in all her days
Or e’en a forest’s aged tree

E‘en here my simple feelings nurse
A love for every simple weed
And e’en this little ‘shepherd’s purse’
Grieves me to cut it up - Indeed
I feel at times a love and joy
For every weed and every thing
A feeling kindred from a boy
A feeling brought with every spring

And why - this ‘shepherd’s purse’ that grows
In this strange spot — In days gone bye
Grew in the little garden rows
Of my old home now left — And I
Feel what I never felt before
This weed an ancient neighbour here
And though I own the spot no more
Its every trifle makes it dear

The Ivy at the parlour end
The woodbine at the garden gate
Are all and each affection’s friend
That rendered parting desolate
But times will change and friends must part
And nature still can make amends
Their memory lingers round the heart
Like life whose essence is its friends

Time looks on pomp with careless moods
Or killing apathy’s disdain
- So where old marble citys stood
Poor persecuted weeds remain
She feels a love for little things
That very few can feel beside
And still the grass eternal springs
Where castles stood and grandeur died

DECAY

O poesy is on the wane
For fancy’s visions all unfitting
I hardly know her face again
Nature herself seems on the flitting
The fields grow old and common things
The grass, the sky, the winds a-blowing
And spots where still a beauty clings
Are sighing ‘Going, all a-going’
O poesy is on the wane
I hardly know her face again

The bank with brambles overspread
And little molehills round about it
Was more to me than laurel shades
With paths and gravel finely clouted
And streaking here and streaking there
Through shaven grass and many a border
With rutty lanes had no compare
And heaths were in a richer order
But poesy is in its wane
I hardly know her face again

I sat with love by pasture stream
Aye beauty’s self was sitting by
Till fields did more than Edens seem
Nor could I tell the reason why
I often drank when not a-dry
To pledge her health in draughts divine
Smiles made it nectar from the sky
Love turned e’en water into wine
O poesy is on the wane
I cannot find her face again

The sun those mornings used to find
When clouds were other-country-mountains
And heaven looked upon the mind
With groves and rocks and mottled fountains
These heavens are gone - the mountains grey
Turned mist — the sun a homeless ranger
Pursues a naked weary way
Unnoticed like a very stranger
O poesy is on its wane
Nor love nor joy is mine again

Love’s sun went down without a frown
For every joy it used to grieve us
I often think that West is gone
Ah cruel time to undeceive us
The stream it is a naked stream
Where we on Sundays used to ramble
The sky hangs o’er a broken dream
The bramble’s dwindled to a bramble
O poesy is on its wane
I cannot find her haunts again

Mere withered stalks and fading trees
And pastures spread with hills and rushes
Are all my fading vision sees
Gone gone is rapture’s flooding gushes
When mushrooms they were fairy bowers
Their marble pillars overswelling
And danger paused to pluck the flowers
That in their swathy rings were dwelling
But poesy’s spells are on the wane
Nor joy nor fear is mine again

Aye poesy hath passed away
And fancy’s visions undecieve us
The night hath ta’en the place of day
And why should passing shadows grieve us?
I thought the flowers upon the hills
Were flowers from Adam’s open gardens
And I have had my summer thrills
And I have had my heart’s rewardings
So poesy is on the wane
I hardly know her face again

And friendship it hath burned away
Just like a very ember cooling
A make-believe on April-day*
That sent the simple heart a-fooling
Mere jesting in an earnest way
Decieving on and still decieving
And hope is but a fancy play
And joy the art of true believing
For poesy is on the wane
O could I feel her faith again

‘MADHOUSES, PRISONS, WHORESHOPS ...’

I myself left many Byron Poems behind me but I did not stay to know or hear what became of them, and I have written some since I returned, with an account of my escape from Essex.

November 1841, Letters, p.