John Clare: I Love to See the Summer Beaming Forth
Sonnet
I love to see the summer beaming forth
And white wool sack clouds sailing to the north
I love to see the wild flowers come again
And mare blobs stain with gold the meadow drain
And water lilies whiten on the floods
Where reed clumps rustle like a wind shook wood
Where from her hiding place the Moor Hen pushes
And seeks her flag nest floating in bull rushes
I like the willow leaning half way o’er
The clear deep lake to stand upon its shore
I love the hay grass when the flower head swings
To summer winds and insects happy wings
That sport about the meadow the bright day
And see bright beetles in the clear lake play
—
John Clare (1793-1864) was born in the Northamptonshire village of Helpston and attended school there until he was around eleven years old after which he was largely self-taught. Clare’s first book of poetry, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820), was well-received, and his work was extremely popular with the public. In the 1830s, however, his popularity faded — a problem his publishers tried to correct by standardizing his verses into what they considered to be more contemporary poetic conventions. Clare wrote this Sonnet in 1841, the year before he was confined in the Northampton County Asylum where he spent the rest of his life.
A familiar figure to my life ever since he and I went on a journey together… in my last book. Asylum: Improvisations on John Clare, U Pitt Press 2019.
Lola Haskins
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Thanks, Lola!
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