LANDSCAPES WITH FIGURES

Clare’s landscape was not at all a conventionally pretty one: curious visitors who came to see the ‘peasant poet’ were astonished that so rich a poetry could have been inspired by so grudging a landscape, for it yielded satisfactions only to those with an unhurried and intimate knowledge.

For Clare, the landscape of his childhood was to remain throughout his life an emblem of Paradise, of Eden, and the poetry of his early and middle years-up to about 1835 — displays a clarity and acuity of observation, rooted in a preternaturally intense bond of love and an unusually vivid sense of belonging, of affinity, of sympathy and - one must add - dependency. It is as if his relationship with particular trees, streams, prospects was a very close friendship, or a love-affair.

When people figure in his landscape, they offer the possibility of an intimate social meaning: the scene need no longer offer merely picturesque spectacle but may become socially significant, encompassing a distinctive culture waiting to be interpreted. As his independence of spirit grew, such figures change from being simply appropriate human elements within a composition, and come to represent some of the strains and contradictions of English society. Clare’s allegiances evolve quite clearly: he is more attuned to the company of the ‘vulgar’ - shepherd boys and gypsies - than to the squirearchy or the parsonage. In his mature poetry, the hierarchical conventions of taste, rooted in traditions of cultural subordination, are quietly subverted, so that ‘common’ is endowed with positive force, and the term ‘vulgar’ is applied not to the rural poor-his own social class-but to those who would use the land simply for economic gain.

His own status was paradoxical: he was both of the common people and also detached from them by his vocation: the term bestowed on him by the polite literary world — ‘peasant poet’ — expresses this contradiction. In freeing himself from this categorization he became what some few wise spirits recognized — the ‘green man’; and evolved a descriptive language perfectly attuned to his own landscapes, a language that achieved a delicate marriage of ‘literature’ and of folk poetry - a green language, in which the term ‘poetry’ speaks of two sides of the same coin — both the natural world and the text committed to a loving mediation of that world. In the elegies of his middle years he discovered a world that could fail him, in which he felt adrift, alienated, even lost; what more characteristic than that of such a place he should use the adjective ‘vague’?

PLEASANT PLACES

Old stone pits with veined ivy overhung
Wild crooked brooks o‘er which was rudely flung
A rail and plank that bends beneath the tread
Old narrow lanes where trees meet overhead
Path stiles on which a steeple we espy
Peeping and stretching in the distant sky
And heaths o’erspread with furze blooms’ sunny shine
Where wonder pauses to exclaim ‘divine’
Old ponds dim-shadowed with a broken tree -
These are the picturesque of taste to me
While painting winds to make compleat the scene
In rich confusion mingles every green
Waving the sketching pencil^* in their hands
Shading the living scenes to fairey lands

PLEASANT SPOTS

There is a wild and beautiful neglect
About the fields that so delights and cheers
Where nature her own feelings to effect
Is left at her own silent work for years
The simplest thing thrown in our way delights
From the wild careless feature that it wears
The very road that wanders out of sight
Crooked and free is pleasant to behold
And such the very weeds left free to flower
Corn poppys red and carlock gleaming gold
That makes the cornfields shine in summer’s hour
Like painted skys - and fancy’s distant eye
May well imagine armys marching bye
In all the grand array of pomp and power

THE HOLLOW TREE

How oft a summer shower hath started me
To seek for shelter in a hollow tree
Old hugh ash-dotterel wasted to a shell
Whose vigorous head still grew and flourished well
Where ten might sit upon the battered floor
And still look round discovering room for more
And he who chose a hermit life to share
Might have a door and make a cabin there
They seemed so like a house that our desires
Would call them so and make our gipsey fires
And eat field dinners of the juicey peas
Till we were wet and drabbled to the knees
But in our old tree-house rain as it might
Not one drop fell although it rained till night

THE CRAB TREE

Spring comes anew and brings each little pledge
That still as wont my childish heart decieves
I stoop again for violets in the hedge
Among the ivy and old withered leaves
And often mark amid the clumps of sedge
The pooty shells I gathered when a boy
But cares have claimed me many an evil day
And chilled the relish which I had for joy
Yet when crab-blossoms blush among the may
As wont in years gone bye I scramble now
Up mid the bramble for my old esteems
Filling my hands with many a blooming bough
Till the heart-stirring past as present seems
Save the bright sunshine of those fairy dreams

SWORDY WELL

I’ve loved thee Swordy Well and love thee still
Long was I with thee tending sheep and cow
In boyhood ramping up each steepy hill
To play at ‘roly poly’ down - and now
A man I trifle o’er thee cares to kill
Haunting thy mossy steeps to botanize
And hunt the orchis tribes where nature’s skill
Doth like my thoughts run into phantasys
Spider and Bee all mimicking at will
Displaying powers that fools the proudly wise
Showing the wonders of great nature’s plan
In trifles insignificant and small
Puzzling the power of that great trifle man
Who finds no reason to be proud at all^*

STRAY WALKS*

How pleasant are the fields to roam and think
Whole sabbaths through, unnoticed and alone
Beside the little molehill-skirted brink
Of the small brook that skips o‘er many a stone
Or green woodside where many a squatting oak
Far o’er grass screeds their white-stained branches hing
Forming in pleasant close a happy seat
To nestle in while small birds chirp and sing
And the loud blackbird will its mate provoke
More louder yet its chorus to repeat
How pleasant is it thus to think and roam
The many paths, scarce knowing which to chuse
All full of pleasant scenes - then wander home
And o‘er the beautys we have met to muse
’Tis Sunday and the little paths that wind
Through closen green by hedges and wood sides
And like a brook corn-crowded slope divides
Of pleasant fields - their frequent passers find
From early morn to mellow close of day
On different errands climbing many stiles
O’erhung with awthorn tempting haste to stay
And cool some moments of the road away
When hot and high the uncheckt summer smiles
Some journeying to the little hamlet hid
In dark surrounding trees to see their friends
While some sweet leisure’s aimless road pursue
Wherever fancy’s musing pleasure wends
To woods or lakes or church that’s never out of view

EMMONSALES HEATH

In thy wild garb of other times
I find thee lingering still
Furze o’er each lazy summit climbs
At nature’s easy will

 

Grasses that never knew a scythe
Waves all the summer long
And wild weed blossoms waken blythe
That ploughshares never wrong

 

Stern industry with stubborn toil
And wants unsatisfied
Still leaves untouched thy maiden soil
In its unsullied pride

 

The birds still find their summer shade
To build their nests again
And the poor hare its rushy glade
To hide from savage men

 

Nature its family protects
In thy security
And blooms that love what man neglects
Find peaceful homes in thee

 

The wild rose scents thy summer air
And woodbines weave in bowers
To glad the swain sojourning there
And maidens gathering flowers

 

Creation’s steps one’s wandering meets
Untouched by those of man
Things seem the same in such retreats
As when the world began

 

Furze ling and brake all mingling free
And grass forever green
All seem the same old things to be
As they have ever been

 

The brook o’er such neglected ground
One’s weariness to soothe
Still wildly threads its lawless bounds
And chafes the pebble smooth

 

Crooked and rude as when at first
Its waters learned to stray
And from their mossy fountain burst
It washed itself a way

 

O who can pass such lovely spots
Without a wish to stray
And leave life’s cares a while forgot
To muse an hour away

 

I’ve often met with places rude
Nor failed their sweet to share
But passed an hour with solitude
And left my blessing there

 

He that can meet the morning wind
And o’er such places roam
Nor leave a lingering wish behind
To make their peace his home -

 

His heart is dead to quiet hours
No love his mind employs
Poesy with him ne’er shares its flowers
Nor solitude its joys

 

O there are spots amid thy bowers
Which nature loves to find
Where spring drops round her earliest flowers
Uncheckt by winter’s wind

 

Where cowslips wake the child’s supprise
Sweet peeping ere their time
Ere April spreads her dappled skyes
Mid morning’s powdered rime

 

I’ve stretched my boyish walks to thee
When Mayday’s paths were dry
When leaves had nearly hid each tree
And grass greened ancle-high

 

And mused the sunny hours away
And thought of little things
That children mutter o’er their play
When fancy trys its wings

 

Joy nursed me in her happy moods
And all life’s little crowd
That haunt the waters fields and woods
Would sing their joys aloud

 

I thought how kind that mighty power
Must in his splendour be
Who spread around my boyish hour
Such gleams of harmony

 

Who did with joyous rapture fill
The low as well as high
And make the pismires round the hill
Seem full as blest as I

 

Hope’s sun is seen of every eye
The halo that it gives
In nature’s wide and common sky
Cheers every thing that lives

WOOD RIDES

Who hath not felt the influence that so calms
The weary mind in summer’s sultry hours
When wandering thickest woods beneath the arms
Of ancient oaks and brushing nameless flowers
That verge the little ride? Who hath not made
A minute’s waste of time and sat him down
Upon a pleasant swell to gaze awhile
On crowding ferns bluebells and hazel leaves
And showers of lady smocks so called by toil
When boys sprote-gathering sit on stulps and weave
Garlands while barkmen pill the fallen tree
- Then mid the green variety to start?
Who hath not met that mood from turmoil free
And felt a placid joy refreshed at heart?

STEPPING-STONES

The stepping-stones that stride the meadow streams
Look picturesque amid spring’s golden gleams
Where steps the traveller with a wary pace
And boy with laughing leisure in his face
Sits on the midmost stone in very whim
To catch the struttles that beneath him swim
While those accross the hollow lakes are bare
And winter floods no more rave dangers there
But mid the scum left where it roared and fell
The schoolboy hunts to find the pooty shell
Yet there the boisterous geese with golden broods
Hiss fierce and daring in their summer moods
The boys pull off their hats while passing bye
In vain to fright - themselves being forced to fly

WINTER FIELDS

O for a pleasant book to cheat the sway
Of winter — where rich mirth with hearty laugh
Listens and rubs his legs on corner seat
For fields are mire and sludge — and badly off
Are those who on their pudgy paths delay
There striding shepherd seeking driest way
Fearing night’s wetshod feet and hacking cough
That keeps him waken till the peep of day
Goes shouldering onward and with ready hook
Progs oft to ford the sloughs that nearly meet
Accross the lands - croodling and thin to view
His loath dog follows - stops and quakes and looks
For better roads - till whistled to pursue
Then on with frequent jump he hirkles through

SNOW STORM

What a night the wind howls hisses and but stops
To howl more loud while the snow volly keeps
Insessant batter at the window pane
Making our comfort feel as sweet again
And in the morning when the tempest drops
At every cottage-door mountainious heaps
Of snow lies drifted that all entrance stops
Untill the beesom and the shovel gains
The path - and leaves a wall on either side -
The shepherd rambling valleys white and wide
With new sensations his old memorys fills
When hedges left at night, no more descried,
Are turned to one white sweep of curving hills
And trees, turned bushes, half their bodys hide

 

The boy that goes to fodder with supprise
Walks o‘er the gate he opened yesternight
The hedges all have vanished from his eyes
E’en some tree tops the sheep could reach to bite
The novel scene emboldens new delight
And though with cautious steps his sports begin
He bolder shuffles the hugh hills of snow
Till down he drops and plunges to the chin
And struggles much and oft escape to win
Then turns and laughs but dare not further go
For deep the grass and bushes lie below
Where little birds that soon at eve went in
With heads tucked in their wings now pine for day
And little feel boys o’er their heads can stray

EVENING SCHOOLBOYS

Harken that happy shout — the school-house door
Is open thrown and out the younkers teem
Some run to leapfrog on the rushy moor
And others dabble in the shallow stream
Catching young fish and turning pebbles o‘er
For mussel clams - Look in that mellow gleam
Where the retiring sun that rests the while
Streams through the broken hedge - How happy seem
Those schoolboy friendships leaning o’er the stile
Both reading in one book — anon a dream
Rich with new joys doth their young hearts beguile
And the book’s pocketed most hastily
Ah happy boys well may ye turn and smile
When joys are yours that never cost a sigh

THE FODDERING BOY

The foddering boy along the crumping snows
With strawband-belted legs and folded arm
Hastens and on the blast that keenly blows
Oft turns for breath and beats his fingers warm
And shakes the lodging snows from off his cloaths
Buttoning his doublet closer from the storm
And slouching his brown beaver o’er his nose
Then faces it agen - and seeks the stack
Within its circling fence — where hungry lows
Expecting cattle making many a track
About the snows - impatient for the sound
When in hugh forkfulls trailing at his back
He litters the sweet hay about the ground
And brawls to call the staring cattle round

THE SHEPHERD BOY

Pleased in his loneliness he often lies
Telling glad stories to his dog — and e‘en
His very shadow that the loss supplies
Of living company. Full oft he’ll lean
By pebbled brooks and dream with happy eyes
Upon the fairey pictures spread below
Thinking the shadowed prospect real skies
And happy heavens where his kindred go
Oft we may track his haunts where he hath been
To spend the leisure which his toils bestow
By ’nine peg morris’ nicked upon the green
Or flower-stuck gardens never meant to grow
Or figures cut on trees his skill to show
Where he a prisoner from a shower hath been

THE VILLAGE BOY

Free from the cottage corner see how wild
The village boy along the pastures hies
With every smell and sound and sight beguiled
That round the prospect meets his wondering eyes
Now stooping eager for the cowslip peeps
As though he’d get them all - now tired of these
Accross the flaggy brook he eager leaps
For some new flower his happy rapture sees
Now tearing mid the bushes on his knees
Or woodland banks for bluebell flowers he creeps
And now while looking up among the trees
He spies a nest and down he throws his flowers
And up he climbs with new-fed extacies
The happiest object in the summer hours

THE WOODMAN

Now evening comes and from the new-laid hedge
The woodman rustles in his leathern guise
Hiding in dyke, ylined with brustling sedge,
His bill and mattock from theft’s meddling eyes
And in his wallets storing many a pledge
Of flowers and boughs from early-sprouting trees
And painted pootys from the ivied hedge
About its mossy roots, his boys to please,
Who wait with merry joy his coming home
Anticipating presents such as these
Gained far afield where they nor night nor morn
Find no school leisure long enough to go
Where flowers but rarely from their stalks are torn
And birds scarce loose a nest the season through

THE SHEPHERD’S FIRE

On the rude heath yclad in furze and ling
And oddling thorns that thick and prickly grows
Shielding the shepherd when the rude wind blows
And boys that sit right merry in a ring
Round fires upon a molehill toasting sloes
And crabs that froth and frizzle on the coals
Loud is the gabble and the laughter loud
The rabbits scarce dare peep from out their holes
Unwont to mix with such a noisey crowd
Some run to eke the fire — while many a cloud
Of smoke curls up, some on their haunches squat
With mouth for bellows puffing till it flares
Or if that fail one fans his napless hat
And when the feast is done they squabble for their
shares

THE SHEPHERD’S HUT

The shepherd’s hut propt by the double ash
Hugh in its bulk and old in mossy age
Shadowing the dammed-up brook where plash and
plash
The little mills did younkers’ ears engage
Delightful hut rude as romances old
Where hugh old stones make each an easy chair
And brakes and ferns for luxurys manifold
And flint and steel, the all want needeth there
— The light was struck and then the happy ring
Crouched round the blaze - O these were happy times
Some telling tales and others urged to sing
Themes of old things in rude yet feeling rhymes
That raised the laugh or stirred the stifled sigh
Till pity listened in each vacant eye

 

Those rude old tales — man’s memory augurs ill
Thus to forget the fragments of old days
Those long old songs — their sweetness haunts me still
Nor did they perish for my lack of praise
But old desciples of the pasture sward
Rude chroniclers of ancient minstrelsy
The shepherds vanished all, and disregard
Left their old music like a vagrant bee
For summer’s breeze to murmur o‘er and die
And in these ancient spots mind ear and eye
Turn listeners - till the very wind prolongs
The theme as wishing in its depths of joy
To reccolect the music of old songs
And meet the hut that blessed me when a boy

A SUNDAY WITH SHEPHERDS AND HERDBOYS^*

The shepherds and the herding swains
Keep their sabbath on the plains
They know no difference in its cares
Save that all toil has ceasd but theirs
For them the church bells vainly call
Fields are their church and house and all
Till night returns their homeward track
When soon morn’s suns recall them back
Yet still they love the day’s repose
And feel its peace as sweet as those
That have their freedom — and maid and clown
To walk the meadows or the town
They’ll lye and catch the humming sound
That comes from steeples shining round
Enjoying in the service-time
The happy bells’ delightfull chime
And oft they sit on rising ground
To view the landscap spreading round
Swimming from the following eye
In greens and stems of every dye
O‘er wood and vale and fen’s smooth lap
Like a richly colourd map
Square platts of clover red and white
Scented wi’ summer’s warm delight
And sinkfoil of a fresher stain
And different greens of varied grain
Wheat spindles bursted into ear
And browning faintly — grasses sere
In swathy seed-pods dryd by heat
Rustling when brushd by passing feet
And beans and peas of deadening green
And corn lands ribbon stripes between
And checkering villages that lye
Like light spots in a deeper sky
And woods’ black greens that crowding spots
The lanscape in leaf-bearing grots
Where mingling hid lapt up to lare
The panting fox lyes cooly there
And willow grove that idly sweas
And checkering shines mid other trees
As if the morning’s misty vail
Yet lingerd in their shadows pale
While from the village foliage pops
The popples tapering to their tops
That in the blue sky thinly wires
Like so many leafy spires
Thus the shepherd as he lyes
Where the heath’s furze-swellings rise
Dreams o’er the scene in visions sweet
Stretching from his hawthorn seat
And passes many an hour away
Thus musing on the sabbath day
And from the fields they’ll often steal
The green peas for a Sunday meal
When ne‘er a farmer’s on the lurch
Safe nodding o’er their books a-church
Or on their benches by the door
Telling their market profits o‘er
And in snug nooks their huts beside
The gipsey blazes they provide
Braking the rotten from the trees
While some sit round to shell the peas
Or pick from hedges pilferd wood
To boil on props their stolen food
Sitting on stones or heaps of brakes
Each of the wild repast partakes
Telling to pass the hours along
Tales that to fitter days belong
While one within his scrip contains
A shatterd Bible’s thumbd remains
On whose blank leaf wi’ pious care
A host of names is scribbld there
Names by whom ’twas once possest
Or those in kindred bonds carresst
Childern for generations back
That doubtful memory should not lack
Their dates -‘tis there wi’ care applyd
When they were born and when they dyd
From sire to son link after link
All scribbld wi’ unsparing ink
This he will oft pull out and read
That takes of Sunday better heed
Then they who laugh at tale and jest
And oft he’ll read it to the rest
Whose ignorance in weary mood
Pays more regard to Robin Hood
And Giant Blue Beard and such tales
That live like flowers in rural vales
Natural as last year’s faded blooms
Anew wi’ the fresh season comes
So these old tales from old to young
Take root and blossom where they sprung
Till age and winter bids them wane
Then fond youth takes them up again
The herdboys anxious after play
Find sports to pass the time away
Fishing for struttles in the brooks
Wi’ thread for lines and pins for hooks
And stripping ’neath the willow shade
In warm and muddy ponds to bathe
And pelting wi’ unerring eye
The heedless swallows starting bye
Oft breaking boughs from trees to kill
The nest of whasps beside a hill
Till one gets stung then they resort
And follow to less dangerous sport
Leaving to chance their sheep and cows
To thread the brakes and forest boughs
And scare the squirrel’s lively joys
Wi’ stones and sticks and shouting noise
That sat wi’ in its secret place
Upon its tail to clean its face
When found they shout wi’ joy to see
It hurly burly round a tree
And as they turn in sight again
It peeps and squats behind a grain
And oft they’ll cut up sticks to trye
The holes where badgers darkly lye
Looking for footmark-prints about
The fresh moulds not long rooted out
And peep in burrows newly done
Where rabbits from their noses run
Where oft in terror’s wild affright
They spy and startle at the sight
Rolld like a whip-thong round and round
Asleep upon the sunny ground
A snake that wakens at their play
And starts as full of fear as they
And knewt-shapd swifts that nimbly pass
And rustle in the brown heath-grass
From these in terror’s fears they haste
And seek agen the scrubby waste
Where grass is pincered short by sheep
And venom creatures rarely creep
Playing at taw in sheep-beat tracks
Or leap frog o‘er each other’s backs
Or hump o’er hills wi’ thime o‘ergrown
Or mere mark’s ancient mossey stone
Or run down hollows in the plain
Where steps are cut to climb again
Stone-pits that years have clothd in green
And slopd in narrow vales between
Or history’s uncrowded ground
A Cromwell-trench^* or Roman mound
Thus will the boys wi’ makeshift joy
Their toil-taskd sabbath hours employ
And feed on fancys sweet as they
That in the town at freedom play
And pinder too is peeping round
To find a tennant for his pound
Heedless of rest or parson’s prayers
He seldom to the church repairs
But thinks religion hath its due
In paying yearly for his pew
Soon as the morn puts night away
And hastening on her mantle grey
Before one sunbeam o’er the ground
Spindles its light and shadow round
He’s o’er the fields as soon as morn
To see what stock are in the corn
And find what chances sheep may win
Thro’ gaps the gipseys pilfer thin
Or if they’ve found a restless way
By rubbing at a loosend tray
Or neighing colt that trys to catch
A gate at night left off the latch
By traveller seeking home in haste
Or the clown by fancys chasd
That lasting while he made a stand
Opens each gate wi’ fearful hand
Fearing a minute to remain
And put it on the latch again
And cows who often wi’ their horns
Toss from the gaps the stuffing thorns
These like a fox upon the watch
He in the morning tryes to catch
And drives them to the pound for pay
Careless about the sabbath day