Vox Populi
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John Clare: Autumn
The thistledown’s flying, though the winds are all still,
On the green grass now lying, now mounting the hill,
The spring from the fountain now boils like a pot;
Through stones past the counting it bubbles red-hot.
The ground parched and cracked is like overbaked bread,
The greensward all wracked is, bents dried up and dead.
The fallow fields glitter like water indeed,
And gossamers twitter, flung from weed unto weed.
Hill-tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun,
And the rivers we’re eying burn to gold as they run;
Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air;
Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.
Public Domain
John Clare is “the quintessential Romantic poet,” according to William Howard writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. With an admiration of nature and an understanding of the oral tradition, but with little formal education, Clare penned numerous poems and prose pieces, many of which were only published posthumously. His works gorgeously illuminate the natural world and rural life, and depict his love for his wife Patty and for his childhood sweetheart Mary Joyce. Though his first book, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820), was popular with readers and critics alike, Clare struggled professionally for much of his life. His work only became widely read some hundred years after his death.
Clare was born into a peasant family in the small English village of Helpston in 1793. Despite his disadvantaged background—both of his parents were virtually illiterate…[continue reading]
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Thank you for offering me more extensive information about Clare than I’ve seen before, and I poem I hadn’t heretofore seen.
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Yes, John Clare was a fascinating man who led a difficult life. After two hundred years of obscurity, he’s come to be recognized as a major Romantic poet.
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The fallow fields glitter like water indeed,
And gossamers twitter, flung from weed unto weed.
Hill-tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun,
And the rivers we’re eying burn to gold as they run;
What simple delight to read these 4 lines over & over!
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I love those lines as well, Laure-Anne.
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The fall and melancholy, the fall and poetry and the richness and the fear rolled into longings for closeness at the same time as pulling away.
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Lovely, Barbara. Thank you.
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This appeals to me. Why is autumn, October, more specifically, my favorite time of year and not spring? I’ve wonder about this many times but a simple answer won’t come. Perhaps it is, as he suggest, the light offering a peak at Eternity. Whatever that may be!
final sweet release
dry tick-tock fluttering down
rasping amber light
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