Country Life in the Poetry of John Clare

by Mildred M. Coen

I strive to please her morning, noon, and night.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
For her in harvest when the nuts are brown,
I take my crook to pull the branches down.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
The garland and the wreath for her I bind
Compos’d of all the fairest flowers I find.

And finally, a few lines showing the simplicity of the peasant’s imagery and comparisons.—

’Tis Spring, my Love, ’tis Spring,
And the birds begin to sing;
If it were winter, left alone with you,
Your bonny form and face,
Would make a Summer place,
And be the fairest flower that ever grew.

Besides the sweet and simple love-life of the peasants, the poet expresses their thoughts about the beauties of nature. Nature must have afforded delights that did much to make up for the poverty of the peasant’s lack of material comfort. Clare expresses these delights of the inarticulate peasants when he describes their sentiments, as well as the beauties of their native scenes.

O Native endearments! I would not forsake thee,
I would not forsake thee for sweetest of scenes.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Your skies may be gloomy, and misty your mornings,
Your flat swampy vallies unwholesome may be;
Still, refuse of nature without her adornings,
Thou art dear as this heart in my bosom to me.

The poet finds beauty in the common, ordinary, natural objects of the low fen and the marshy country of his birth. But in these scenes he saw only the less gloomy and oppressive aspects. The commons may have been brown and barren, but Clare remembers them when they were green and dotted with wild flowers. He wrote with fancy, feeling, and reflection about these simple objects of nature. In his fancy he lived the life of insects, which to many are simply annoyances, but which to him are fairies, with colored hoods and burnished wings, disguised in a sort of splendid masquerade, rocked to sleep in the smooth velvet of the hedge-rose, or slumbering like princes in the heath’s purple hood, secure from rain, from dropping dews, in their beds and painted walls. A jolly and royal life this seems, this life of a hand of play-fellows mocking the sunshine with their glittering wings, or drinking golden wine and metheglin from the cup of the honey flower. In a reflective mood, he sees into the eternal mysteries of nature, beneath the forms and symbols of outward appearances. Cowslips of golden blooms will come and go as fresh two thousand years from now as they are today. Brooks, bees, birds, from age to age, these will sing when all the ambitious things of earth have passed away.

There are two characteristics in the nature poems of Clare: truth in the painting of the objects, and tenderness in his sentiments toward them. The poet is both truthful and tender when he paints a bird’s nest, a nest often seen but never disturbed. The nest of the pettichaps, close to the rut-galled wagon-road, so snugly contrived, although without a clump of grass to keep it warm or a shielding thistle spreading its spear in protection, is built like an oven. . . .

Scarcely admitting two fingers in,
Hard to discern the bird’s snug entrance win:
’Tis lined with feathers warm as silken stole,
Softer than seats of down for painless ease,
And full of eggs, scarce bigger e’en than peas;
Here’s one that’s delicate, with spots so small
As dust, and of a faint and pinky red;
Well, let them be, and Safety guard them well—
A green grasshopper’s jump might break the shell.

The other objects of nature that delighted the peasants, and were poetised by Clare were ants, clover blossoms, and perhaps an early butterfly. Again, we find an intimacy with the furry animals of the commons.—

And the little clumbling mouse
Gnarls the dead leaves for her house.