#John Clare

[dabiconcordia]

What is Life?

"And what is Life? — An hour-glass on the run, A mist retreating from the morning sun." – John Clare

[derangedrhythms]

John Clare, The New Faber Book of Love Poems; from ‘Song’, ed. James Fenton

TEXT ID: And even silence found a tongue To haunt me all the summer long

[julesofnature]

The summer-flower has run to seed, And yellow is the woodland bough; And every leaf of bush and weed Is tipt with autumn's pencil now. And I do love the varied hue, And I do love the browning plain; And I do love each scene to view, That's mark'd with beauties of her reign. The woodbine-trees red berries bear, That clustering hang upon the bower; While, fondly lingering here and there, Peeps out a dwindling sickly flower. The trees' gay leaves are turned brown, By every little wind undress'd; And as they flap and whistle down, We see the birds' deserted nest. No thrush or blackbird meets the eye, Or fills the ear with summer's strain; They but dart out for worm and fly, Then silent seek their rest again. Beside the brook, in misty blue, Bilberries glow on tendrils weak, Where many a bare-foot splashes through, The pulpy, juicy prize to seek: For 'tis the rustic boy's delight, Now autumn's sun so warmly gleams, And these ripe berries tempt his sight, To dabble in the shallow streams. And oft his rambles we may trace, Delv'd in the mud his printing feet, And oft we meet a chubby face All stained with the berries sweet.

Autumn by John Clare

[ombre-originelle]

I've never found myself in a fictional character as much as in this one.

[stayuntilthefoglifts]

So dull and dark are the November days. The lazy mist high up the evening curled, and now the morn quite hides in the smoke and haze; the place we occupy seems all the world.

John Clare

[rey-jake-therapist]

I really want to ship Vanessa and Ethan but except for the height difference, there's not much there for me, not when there's literally Lucifer obsessed with her...

I hoped Vanessa and Ethan would remain platonic tbh, but I got spoiled and duh, so disappointing.

I can't with Frankenstein. Sorry but he's a creep 😭 The way he dolled up "Lily" to make her his perfect woman while pretending that he wants her to have her own life.... Don't get me started with how he's screwing up poor John Clare over.... I really hope it will soon all come back to bite him in the ass !

Dorian Gray's an asshole with every woman but what's new here...

[notwiselybuttoowell]

Using the poetry of 'peasant poet' John Clare, Martha Kearney visits Helpston and Fen Edge to understand how the landscape has changed since his day. The sounds Clare would have heard in the early 1800s before the Enclosures Act would have been very different from what we hear today. Aside from the obvious sounds of modern technology, cars and aircraft, Martha learns how the draining of the fens changed species habitats and meant some birds and animals have disappeared from the landscape. The bittern, corncrake and 'whaddon organ' frog have all gone, but in their place other species have made this unique part of the countryside home.

Dr Francesca Mackenny from the Cardiff University Sound of Nature project uses Clare's poetry to help us listen to the landscape. Richard Astle from the Langdyke Trust takes Martha to Swardywell Pit - a piece of land Clare knew well that has been restored from being a landfill site and transformed into a thriving nature reserve, but now populated with different flora and fauna than Clare would have encountered.

Martha then travels further into the fens to meet Rex Sly in Crowland whose family have farmed in the area for more than 500 years. As well as farming, Rex has also written books and poetry about the area in the style of John Clare. His great-grandniece Lucy tells Martha why she felt drawn back to the Fens to help preserve the landscape after leaving to study at university in Edinburgh.

[sictransitgloriamvndi]

Triumph of Death

Why should man's high aspiring mind Burn in him with so proud a breath, When all his haughty views can find In this world yields to death? The fair, the brave, the vain, the wise, The rich, the poor, the great, and small, Are each but worm's anatomies To strew his quiet hall.

Power may make many earthly gods, Where gold and bribery's guilt prevails, But death's unwelcome, honest odds Kick o'er the unequal scales. The flattered great may clamours raise Of power, and their own weakness hide, But death shall find unlooked-for ways To end the farce of pride.

An arrow hurtled eer so high, From een a giant's sinewy strength, In Time's untraced eternity Goes but a pigmy length; Nay, whirring from the tortured string, With all its pomp of hurried flight, Tis by the skylark's little wing Outmeasured in its height.

Just so man's boasted strength and power Shall fade before death's lightest stroke, Laid lower than the meanest flower, Whose pride oer-topt the oak; And he who, like a blighting blast, Dispeopled worlds with war's alarms Shall be himself destroyed at last By poor despised worms.

Tyrants in vain their powers secure, And awe slaves' murmurs with a frown, For unawed death at last is sure To sap the babels down. A stone thrown upward to the sky Will quickly meet the ground agen; So men-gods of earth's vanity Shall drop at last to men;

And Power and Pomp their all resign, Blood-purchased thrones and banquet halls. Fate waits to sack Ambition's shrine As bare as prison walls, Where the poor suffering wretch bows down To laws a lawless power hath passed; And pride, and power, and king, and clown Shall be Death's slaves at last.

Time, the prime minister of Death! There's nought can bribe his honest will. He stops the richest tyrant's breath And lays his mischief still. Each wicked scheme for power all stops, With grandeurs false and mock display, As eve's shades from high mountain tops Fade with the rest away.

Death levels all things in his march,  Nought can resist his mighty strength; The palace proud, triumphal arch, Shall mete its shadow's length. The rich, the poor, one common bed Shall find in the unhonoured grave, Where weeds shall crown alike the head Of tyrant and of slave. 

- John Clare

[alliwanttodoiscollectpoetry]

I am by John Clare

[litandlifequotes]

I am the self-consumer of my woes―

"I Am!" by John Clare

[leehallfae]

“from bank to bank the waterstrife is spread / strange birds like snow spots o’er the huzzing sea / hang where the wild duck hurried past and fled / on roars the flood—all restless to be free / like trouble wandering to eternity”

— john clare, “the flood”

[dabiconcordia]

Summer

Come we to the summer, to the summer we will come, For the woods are full of bluebells and the hedges full of bloom, And the crow is on the oak a-building of her nest, And love is burning diamonds in my true lover's breast; She sits beneath the whitethorn a-plaiting of her hair, And I will to my true lover with a fond request repair; I will look upon her face, I will in her beauty rest, And lay my aching weariness upon her lovely breast.

The clock-a-clay is creeping on the open bloom of July, The merry bee is trampling the pinky threads all day, And the chaffinch it is brooding on its grey mossy nest In the whitethorn bush where I will lean upon my lover's breast; I'll lean upon her breast and I'll whisper in her ear That I cannot get a wink o'sleep for thinking of my dear; I hunger at my meat and I daily fade away Like the hedge rose that is broken in the heat of the day. by John Clare

[shinehalley]

The way in which Vanessa and John Clare's relationship is built along the lines of the relationship between the old blind man and the original creature, using as a parallel the subplot of the girl who is physically blind to say how compassion is not really the result of blindness, but about seeing beauty with the eyes of the soul and that's exactly what Vanessa does even though she's not physically blind is very special to me.

[julesofnature]

The summer-flower has run to seed, And yellow is the woodland bough; And every leaf of bush and weed Is tipt with autumn’s pencil now. And I do love the varied hue, And I do love the browning plain; And I do love each scene to view, That’s mark’d with beauties of her reign. The woodbine-trees red berries bear, That clustering hang upon the bower; While, fondly lingering here and there, Peeps out a dwindling sickly flower. The trees’ gay leaves are turned brown, By every little wind undress’d; And as they flap and whistle down, We see the birds’ deserted nest. No thrush or blackbird meets the eye, Or fills the ear with summer’s strain; They but dart out for worm and fly, Then silent seek their rest again. Beside the brook, in misty blue, Bilberries glow on tendrils weak, Where many a bare-foot splashes through, The pulpy, juicy prize to seek: For ’tis the rustic boy’s delight, Now autumn’s sun so warmly gleams, And these ripe berries tempt his sight, To dabble in the shallow streams. And oft his rambles we may trace, Delv’d in the mud his printing feet, And oft we meet a chubby face All stained with the berries sweet.

-Autumn by John Clare

[majestativa]

We’re wed to [...] eternity.

— John Clare, My Gothic Heart, (2023)

[annariadne]

‘Like to a painted map the landscape lies

And wild above shine the cloud-thronged skies

The flying clouds urged on in swiftest pace

Like living things as if they runned a race’

-from The Shepherd’s Calendar: October by John Clare