



Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Chuck Greif and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)











                                 POEMS

                                  BY

                              JOHN CLARE




                          PUBLISHER’S NOTICE.


The Publisher desires to express his regret that, owing to an oversight,
the proofs of the Introduction were not submitted to the Editor, who is
in no way responsible for the following

                   ERRATA (corrected in this etext)

Page xvii., line 6, for “been” read “being”; page xxii., first line, for
“Reynerdson” read “Reynardson”; page xxiv., for “tête-á-tête” read
“tête-à-tête”; page xxviii., 2nd line, for “compliments.” read
“compliments,”; page xxx., line 11, for “Dick Suivelles” read “Dick
Swiveller”; page xxxi., in the last line but two, for “to” read “of”;
page xxxix., in line 6 of second paragraph for “widey” read “widely.”




                         POEMS _by_ JOHN CLARE

                      SELECTED AND INTRODUCED BY
                       NORMAN GALE (AUTHOR OF “A
                    COUNTRY MUSE,” &C. &C.) WITH A
                    BIBLIOGRAPHY BY C. ERNEST SMITH

                      RUGBY: GEORGE E. OVER, 1901

                      Printed at The Rugby Press




CONTENTS


                                                                    Page

A Spring Morning                                                     138

A World for Love                                                     120

Address to Plenty                                                      3

Approach of Spring, The                                               76

Autumn                                                                99

Autumn Robin, The                                                    132

Ballad                                                                42

Crab Tree, The                                                       139

Decay                                                                125

December                                                              70

Effusion                                                              39

Gipsy Camp, The                                                       45

Graves of Infants                                                    144

Harvest Morning, The                                                  18

Home Yearnings                                                       145

I am! Yet what I am                                                  157

June                                                                  65

Love                                                                 123

Love Lives beyond the Tomb                                           147

Meeting, The                                                          37

Milton, To John                                                      154

My Early Home                                                        149

My Love, thou art a Nosegay Sweet                                     36

Nightingale’s Nest, The                                              114

Noon                                                                  14

Pastoral Fancies                                                     129

Patty                                                                 32

Patty of the Vale                                                     34

Old Poesy                                                            141

On an Infant’s Grave                                                  22

Rural Evening                                                         55

Rustic Fishing                                                        61

Song                                                                  44

Song                                                                 122

Summer Evening                                                        25

Summer Images                                                         89

Tell-Tale Flowers, The                                               150

Thoughts in a Churchyard                                             112

’Tis Spring, my Love, ’Tis Spring                                    142

To an April Daisy                                                     23

To P * * * *                                                         118

To the Clouds                                                         47

To the Rural Muse                                                     82

Universal Epitaph, The                                                17

Vanities of Life, The                                                105

What is Life?                                                          1

Winter                                                               140

Woodman, The                                                          48




BIOGRAPHY AND COMMENT


In tracing the origin of JOHN CLARE it is not necessary to go very far
back, reference to his grandfather and grandmother being a sufficient
acknowledgement of the claims of genealogy. Following the road at
haphazard, trusting himself entirely to the guidance of fortune, and
relying for provender upon his skill in drawing from a violin tunes of
the battle and the dance, about thirty years before Helpstone heard the
first wail of its infant poet, there arrived at the village the vagabond
and truculent Parker. Born under a wandering star, this man had footed
it through many a country of Europe, careless whether daily necessity
required from him an act of bloodshed or the scraping of a harum-scarum
reel designed to set frolic in the toes of man and maid. At the time of
his reaching Helpstone, a Northamptonshire village, destined to come
into prominence because of the lyrics of its chief son, it happened that
the children were without a schoolmaster. In his time the adventurer
had played many parts. Why should he not add to the list? Effrontery,
backed up by an uncertain amount of superficial attainment, won the day,
and this fiddling Odysseus obtained the vacant position. Of his
bo