#john clare poems

[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

[adventuresofalgy]

Algy struggled up to a higher point on the steep hillside, in the hope of obtaining a wider view of the surrounding landscape and the extent of the woodland, but the dense Scotch mist remained as thick as ever, so it was impossible to see anything much at all, except the lush ferns and bracken which surrounded his perch, and a few trees which marked the beginning of the boundless woods.

Resigning himself to patience, although he was keen to continue his quest, Algy decided that he would just have to wait until the weather cleared sufficiently for him to gain some idea of which direction he ought to take, comforted in the meantime by the continuing glow of his magical pumpkin lantern, which even at noon provided extra light and warmth on a day which "seems turn'd to night"…For at present the landscape was indeed asleep in the mist and Algy could not "mark a patch of sky", nor did there seem any chance at all of the sun looking through…

The landscape sleeps in mist from morn till noon; And, if the sun looks through, 'tis with a face Beamless and pale and round, as if the moon, When done the journey of her nightly race, Had found him sleeping, and supplied his place. For days the shepherds in the fields may be, Nor mark a patch of sky— blindfold they trace, The plains, that seem without a bush or tree, Whistling aloud by guess, to flocks they cannot see. The timid hare seems half its fears to lose, Crouching and sleeping 'neath its grassy lair, And scarcely startles, tho' the shepherd goes Close by its home, and dogs are barking there; The wild colt only turns around to stare At passer by, then knaps his hide again; And moody crows beside the road forbear To fly, tho' pelted by the passing swain; Thus day seems turn'd to night, and tries to wake in vain.

[Algy is quoting the opening of the long poem November from The Shepherd's Calendar by the 19th century English poet 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

[alliwanttodoiscollectpoetry]

I am by John Clare

[dabiconcordia]

Sudden Shower

Black grows the southern sky, betokening rain, And humming hive-bees homeward hurry bye: They feel the change; so let us shun the grain, And take the broad road while our feet are dry. Ay, there some dropples moistened on my face, And pattered on my hat—tis coming nigh! Let's look about, and find a sheltering place. The little things around, like you and I, Are hurrying through the grass to shun the shower. Here stoops an ash-tree—hark! the wind gets high, But never mind; this ivy, for an hour, Rain as it may, will keep us dryly here: That little wren knows well his sheltering bower, Nor leaves his dry house though we come so near. by John Clare

[litandlifequotes]

I am the self-consumer of my woes―

"I Am!" by John Clare

[poemoftheday]

Poem of the Day 11 October 2024

I Hid my Love BY Clare, John (1793 - 1864)

I hid my love when young till I

Couldn't bear the buzzing of a fly;

I hid my love to my despite

Till I could not bear to look at light:

I dare not gaze upon her face

But left her memory in each place;

Where'er I saw a wild flower lie

I kissed and bade my love good-bye.

I met her in the greenest dells,

Where dewdrops pearl the wood bluebells;

The lost breeze kissed her bright blue eye,

The bee kissed and went singing by,

A sunbeam found a passage there,

A gold chain round her neck so fair;

As secret as the wild bee's song

She lay there all the summer long.

I hid my love in field and town

Till e'en the breeze would knock me down;

The bees seemed singing ballads o'er,

The fly's bass turned a lion's roar;

And even silence found a tongue,

To haunt me all the summer long;

The riddle nature could not prove

Was nothing else but secret love.

[thequietabsolute]

John Clare, from April [1821]

[loveindeeair]

That voice is gone with every pleasing tone

Loved but one moment and the next alone

[p-isforpoetry]

"I Am!" by John Clare ‖ Tom Hiddleston (12/02) [without music]

This is a re-upload of Tom reading poetry for Ximalaya FM from 2019 without the background music.

"I Am!" by John Clare I am—yet 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’s frenzied stifled throes And yet I am, and live—like 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’s esteems; Even the dearest that I loved the best Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest. 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—above the vaulted sky.

Source: Ximalaya FM

[peaceofheartt]

Morning, John Clare

[kaleidescopicmind]

"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—above the vaulted sky."

Poem: I am! by John Clare, as featured in Penny Dreadful | Above The Vaulted Sky S2EP5

Gif: @penydreadful

[adventuresofalgy]

Then, all of a sudden, light and colour returned to the world, and when Algy woke up the next morning he found that it had been completely transformed once again.

Algy realised that in his long sleep he must have missed much of the gradual changing of the seasons, for the sun was now surprisingly low in the sky, imparting a distinctive autumnal hue to the overgrown grasses and drying leaves, and the shadows were deep and long. But there was still some warmth to be found in a sheltered spot, providing one kept close to the ground and away from the chilly north-east wind, which kept trying to blow Algy's hair and feathers into his eyes in a most annoying manner.

As he looked around he could see that even the bell heather was fading now, but there were still a few bright flowers peeping out from the untamed mass of grasses and seedheads, and as Algy leaned back among the crazy tangle of the late summer meadow, he did indeed feel happily "beguiled by the last lingering of the flowery kind":

And down the hay-fields, wading ‘bove the knees Through seas of waving grass, what days I’ve gone, Cheating the hopes of many labouring bees By cropping blossoms they were perch’d upon; As thyme along the hills, and lambtoe knots, And the wild stalking Canterbury bell, By hedge-row side or bushy bordering spots, That loves in shade and solitude to dwell. And when the summer’s swarms, half-nameless, fled, And autumn’s landscape faded bleak and wild, When leaves ‘gan fall and show their berries red, Still with the season would I be beguil’d Lone spots to seek, home leaving far behind,– Where wildness rears her lings and teazle-burs, And where, last lingering of the flowery kind, Blue heath-bells tremble ‘neath the shelt’ring furze.

[Algy is quoting two verses from the poem The Wildflower Nosegay by the early 19th century English Romantic poet John Clare.]

[symphonyoflovenet]

I never saw so sweet a face As that I stood before. My heart has left its dwelling-place And can return no more

John Clare

[lifesshort-imshorter]

“The gates of hell are open night and day; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this the task and mighty labor lies.” - Virgil, The Aeneid, as translated by John Dryden

-or-

"The descent into hell is easy." - Cassandra Clare, City of Bones

cruelty is so easy. youre not special for choosing it

[wordsofanunknownauthor]

First Love

I ne’er was struck before that hour With love so sudden and so sweet, Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower And stole my heart away complete. My face turned pale as 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 noonday. 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.

Are flowers the winter’s choice? Is love’s bed always snow? She seemed to hear my silent voice, Not love's appeals to know. I never saw so sweet a face As that I stood before. My heart has left its dwelling-place And can return no more.

— John Clare