recover exactly what Clare wrote?in effect, to free him from the impositions and constraints of well-intentioned nineteenth-century editors? are restoring the idiosyncrasies but, in the process, are constructing a poet who is so full of what we would normally call mistakes as to be, for all practical purposes, inaccessible to the general reader. (For example, the manuscripts have 'were' for 'where,' 'your' for 'you're,' 'anker' for 'hanker,' 'hugh' for 'huge.') The texts printed below, which are presented as 'reading' versions of Clare's own words, are the product of a principled modernization by the editors of this anthology. They are based, where the materials are available, on authoritative manuscript versions recovered and now made standard by Eric Robinson and his associates in a succession of editions published by Oxford University Press.
The Nightingale's Nest
Up this green woodland ride? let's softly rove, riding path And list? the nightingale?she dwelleth here. listen to Hush! let the wood gate softly clap, for fear The noise may drive her from her home of love; s For here I've heard her many a merry year? At morn and eve, nay, all the livelong day, As though she lived on song. This very spot, Just where that old man's beard1 all wildly trails Rude arbours o'er the road and stops the way ? io And where that child its blue-bell flowers hath got, Laughing and creeping through the mossy rails0 ? fence rails There have I hunted like a very boy, Creeping on hands and knees through matted thorns To find her nest and see her feed her young. 15 And vainly did I many hours employ:
1. Clematis vitalba, a vine.
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85 2 / JOHN CLARE
All seemed as hidden as a thought unborn. And where these crimping0 fern leaves ramp0 among curling / shoot up The hazel's under-boughs, I've nestled down And watched her while she sung; and her renown
20 Hath made me marvel that so famed a bird2 Should have no better dress than russet brown. Her wings would tremble in her ecstasy, And feathers stand on end, as 'twere with joy, And mouth wide open to release her heart
25 Of its out-sobbing songs. The happiest part Of summer's fame she shared, for so to me Did happy fancies shapen her employ;3 But if I touched a bush or scarcely stirred, All in a moment stopt. I watched in vain:
30 The timid bird had left the hazel bush, And at a distance hid to sing again. Lost in a wilderness of listening leaves, Rich ecstasy would pour its luscious strain, Till envy spurred the emulating thrush
35 To start less wild and scarce inferior songs; For cares with him for half the year remain, To damp the ardour of his speckled breast, While nightingales to summer's life belongs, And naked trees and winter's nipping wrongs
40 Are strangers to her music and her rest. Her joys are evergreen, her world is wide? Hark! there she is as usual?let's be hush? For in this black-thorn clump, if rightly guessed, Her curious house is hidden. Part aside
45 These hazel branches in a gentle way,
And stoop right cautious 'neath the rustling boughs, For we will have another search to-day, And hunt this fern-strewn thorn clump round and round; And where this seeded wood grass idly bows,
so We'll wade right through, it is a likely nook: In such like spots, and often on the ground, They'll build where rude boys never think to look? Aye, as I live! her secret nest is here, Upon this whitethorn stulp!? I've searched about stump
55 For hours in vain. There! put that bramble by? Nay, trample on its branches and get near. How subtle is the bird! she started out And raised a plaintive note of danger nigh, Ere we were past the brambles; and now, near
60 Her nest, she sudden stops?as choking fear That might betray her home. So even now We'll leave it as we found it: safety's guard Of pathless solitude shall keep it still. See, there she's sitting on the old oak bough,
2. The nightingale had been celebrated by, among echoes lines 57?58 of Keats's 'Ode to a Nightinothers, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, gale.' and, closer to Clare's time, William Cowper, Char-3. Give shape to her (the nightingale's) regular lotte Smith, Mary Robinson, Coleridge, Words-activities. worth, and Keats. In lines 22, 24?25, and 33, Clare
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PASTORAL POESY / 85 3
65 Mute in her fears; our presence doth retard Her joys, and doubt turns all her rapture chill.
Sing on, sweet bird! may no worse hap? befall fate Thy visions, than the fear that now deceives. We will not plunder music of its dower,0 dowry, gift
70 Nor turn this spot of happiness to thrall;0 misery For melody seems hid in every flower, That blossoms near thy home. These harebells all Seems bowing with the beautiful in song; And gaping cuckoo0 with its spotted leaves a spring flower
75 Seems blushing of the singing it has heard. How curious is the nest; no other bird Uses such loose materials, or weaves Their dwellings in such spots: dead oaken leaves Are placed without, and velvet moss within,
so And little scraps of grass, and, scant and spare, Of what seems scarce materials, down and hair; For from man's haunts she seemeth nought to win. Yet nature is the builder and contrives Homes for her children's comfort even here;
85 Where solitude's disciples spend their lives Unseen save when a wanderer passes near That loves such pleasant places. Deep adown, The nest is made an hermit's mossy cell. Snug lie her curious eggs, in number five,
90 Of deadened green, or rather olive brown; And the old prickly thorn-bush guards them well. And here we'll leave them, still unknown to wrong, As the old woodland's legacy of song.
1825-30 1835
Pastoral Poesy
True poesy is not in words, But images that thoughts express, By which the simplest hearts are stirred To
