John Clare

I wish I was what I have beenAnd what I was could beAs when I roved in shadows greenAnd loved my willow treeTo gaze upon the starry skyAnd higher fancies buildAnd make in solitary joyLoves temple in the field

O lead me onward to the loneliest shade, The darkest place that quiet ever made, Where kingcups grow most beauteous to behold And shut up green and open into gold.

Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rude And fled to the silence of sweet solitude. Where the flower in green darkness buds, blossoms, and fades, Unseen of all shepherds and flower-loving maids_ The hermit bees find them but once and away. There I'll bury alive and in silence decay.

A maidenhead, the virgin's troubleIs well-compare-d to a bubbleon a navigable riverSoon 'tis touched t'is gone forever

He could not die when trees were green, for he loved the time too well.

If life had a second edition, how I would correct the proofs.

O I never thought that joys would run away from boys,Or that boys would change their minds and forsake such summer joys;But alack I never dreamed that the world had other toys

Hill tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun, And the rivers we're eying burn to gold as they run; Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air; Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.

Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rudeAnd fled to the silence of sweet solitude.

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, Into the living sea of waking dreams, Where there is neither sense of life or joys, But the vast shipwreck of my life__ esteems; Even the dearest that I loved the best Are strange__ay, rather, stranger than the rest.

Language has not the power to speak what love inditesThe soul lies buried in the Ink that writes

I long for scenes where man hath never trod A place where woman never smiled or wept There to abide with my Creator, God, And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, Untroubling and untroubled where I lie The grass below__bove the vaulted sky.

I sleep with thee, and wake with thee,And yet thou are not there;I fill my arms with thoughts of thee,And press the common air.

I am__et what I am none cares or knows; My friends forsake me like a memory lost: I am the self-consumer of my woes_ They rise and vanish in oblivious host, Like shadows in love__ frenzied stifled throes And yet I am, and live__ike vapours tossed Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, Into the living sea of waking dreams, Where there is neither sense of life or joys, But the vast shipwreck of my life__ esteems; Even the dearest that I loved the best Are strange__ay, rather, stranger than the rest.

O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away

I found the poems in the fields,And only wrote them down.

I am__et what I am none cares or knows; My friends forsake me like a memory lost: I am the self-consumer of my woes_ They rise and vanish in oblivious host, Like shadows in love__ frenzied stifled throes And yet I am, and live__ike vapours tossed

In crime and enmity they lie Who sin and tell us love can die, Who say to us in slander's breath That love belongs to sin and death.