John Clare (1793–1864) was a poet who wrote little prose but depicted the natural world with such vivid, intimate brilliance that he continues to be a major influence on prose writers today. He remains a relatively rare example of a truly working-class writer who could never – for better and for worse – escape his roots. He was born in Helpston, a village between the Northamptonshire wolds and the fens, the son of a farm labourer. Clare left school at twelve and worked as a gardener, camped with Gypsies, and began to write poems and sonnets. When his parents were faced with eviction Clare took his poems to a local bookseller, who sent them to his cousin, John Taylor, who had published John Keats. Clare’s Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820) was highly praised; so was Village Minstrel, and Other Poems (1821). Clare became torn between his Northamptonshire heartland – which was being transformed by the Enclosures – and the glamour of literary London. He suffered severe depression, drank heavily; his poetry sold less well and he struggled to support his wife, Patty, and seven children. Between 1837 and 1841 he was treated in a private asylum in Epping Forest, where he suffered delusions and claimed to have once been Byron and Shakespeare. In 1841, he absconded and walked nearly 100 miles home, believing he was married to his first love, Mary Joyce, as well as Patty. After five months living at home, he returned to an asylum in Northampton where he was encouraged and continued to write poetry, including ‘I Am’. An appreciation of Clare’s poetry was revived in the later twentieth century. His biographer, Jonathan Bate, judged Clare to be England’s greatest working-class poet. ‘No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self,’ he wrote. The following extract is taken from Clare’s autobiography.
I know not what made me write poetry but these journeys & my toiling in the fields by myself gave me such a habit for thinking that I never forgot it & always mutterd & talkd to myself afterwards I have often felt ashamed at being overheard by people that overtook me it made my thoughts so active that they became troublesome to me in company & I felt the most happy to be alone
with such merry company I heard the black & brown beetle sing their evening song with rapture & lovd to see the black snail steal out upon the dewy baulks I saw the nimble horse bee at noon spinning on wanton wing I lovd to meet the woodman whistling away to his toils & to see the shepherd bending over his hook on the thistly greens chattering love storys to the listening milkmaid while she milkd her brindld cow
The first primrose in spring was as delightful as if seen for the first time & how the copper colord clouds of the morning was watchd
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On Sundays I usd to feel a pleasure to hide in the woods instead of going to Church to nestle among the leaves & lye upon a mossy bank where the fir-like fern its under forest keeps
In a strange stillness
watching for hours the little insects climb up & down the tall stems of the wood grass o’er the smooth plantain leaf a spacious plain or reading the often-thumbd books which I possessd till fancy ‘made them living things’ I lovd the lonely nooks in the fields & woods & my favourite spots had lasting places in my memory that bough that when a schoolboy screened my head before enclosure destroyed them
I lovd to employ leisure when a boy wandering about the fields watching the habits of birds to see the woodpecker sweeing away in its ups & downs & the jaybird chattering by the woodside its restless warnings to passing clowns & the travels of insects were the black beetle mumbld along & the opening of field flowers such amusements gave me the greatest of pleasures but I coud not account for the reason they did so a lonely book a rude bridge or woodland style with ivy growing round the posts delighted me & made lasting impressions on my feelings but I knew nothing of poetry then yet I noticd everything as anxious as I do now & everything pleasd me as much I thought the gipseys camp by the green wood side a picturesque & an adoring object of nature & I lovd the gipseys for the beautys which they added to the landscape I heard the cuckoos wandering voice & the restless song of the Nightingale & was delighted while I paused & [it] utterd its sweet jug-jug as I passd its blackthorn bower I often pulld my hat over my eyes to watch the rising of the lark or to see the hawk hang in the summer sky & the kite take its circles round the wood I often lingered a minute on the woodland stile to hear the woodpigeons clapping their wings among the dark oaks I hunted curious flowers in rapture & muttered thoughts in their praise I lovd the pasture with its rushes & thistles & sheep tracks I adored the wild marshy fen with its solitary hernshaw sweeing along in its mellancholy sky I wandered the heath in raptures among the rabbit burrows & golden blossomd furze I dropt down on the thymy molehill or mossy eminence to survey the summer landscape as full of rapture as now I markd the varied colors in flat spreading fields checkerd with closes of different tinted grain like the colors in a map the copper tinted colors of clover in blossom the sun-tannd green of the ripening hay the lighter hues of wheat & barley intermixd with the sunny glare of the yellow carlock & the sunset imitation of the scarlet headaches with the blue cornbottles crowding their splendid colors in large sheets over the land & troubling the cornfields with destroying beauty the different greens of the woodland trees the dark oak the paler ash the mellow lime the white poplar peeping above the rest like leafy steeples the grey willow shining chilly in the sun as if the morning mist still lingered on its cool green I felt the beauty of these with eager delight the gadflys noonday hum the fainter murmur of the beefly ‘spinning in the evening ray’ the dragonflys in spangled coats darting like winged arrows down the thin stream the swallow darting through its one archd brig the shepherd hiding from the thunder shower in a hollow dotterel the wild geese skudding along & making all the letters of the alphabet as they flew the motley clouds the whispering wind that muttered to the leaves & summer grasses as it flitted among them like things at play I observd all this with the same raptures as I have done since but I knew nothing of poetry it was felt & not uttered Most of my Sundays was spent in this manner about the fields
I noticd the cracking of the stubbs in the increasing sun while I gazed among them I lovd to see the heaving grasshopper in his coat of delicate green bounce from stub to stub I listend the hedgecricket with raptures
the evening call of the partridge the misterious spring sound of the landrail that cometh with the green corn.
I lovd the meadow lake with its flags & long purples crowding the waters edge I listend with delight to hear the wind whisper among the feather-topt reeds & to see the taper bulrush nodding in gentle curves to the rippling water & I watchd with delight on haymaking evenings the setting sun drop behind the brigs & peep agen through the half circle of the arches as if he longd to stay.