10 Where dewdrops pearl the wood bluebells; The lost breeze kissed her bright blue eye, The bee kissed and went singing by. A sunbeam found a passage there, A gold chain round her neck so fair;
15 As secret as the wild bee's song She lay there all the summer long.
I hid my love in field and town Till e'en the breeze would knock me down. The bees seemed singing ballads o'er
20 The fly's buzz turned a lion's roar; And even silence found a tongue To haunt me all the summer long: The riddle nature could not prove Was nothing else but secret love.
1842-64 1920
Song
I peeled bits o' straws and I got switches too From the grey peeling willow as idlers do, And I switched at the flies as I sat all alone Till my flesh, blood, and marrow wasted to dry bone.
5 My illness was love, though I knew not the smart, But the beauty o' love was the blood o' my heart.
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AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FRAGMENTS / 861
Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rude
And flew to the silence of sweet solitude,
Where the flower in green darkness buds, blossoms, and fades,
10 Unseen of a' shepherds and flower-loving maids.
The hermit bees find them but once and away;
There I'll bury alive and in silence decay.
I looked on the eyes o' fair woman too long,
Till silence and shame stole the use o' my tongue;
15 When I tried to speak to her I'd nothing to say,
So I turned myself round, and she wandered away.
When she got too far off?why, I'd something to tell,
So I sent sighs behind her and talked to mysel'.
Willow switches I broke, and I peeled bits o' straws,
20 Ever lonely in crowds, in nature's own laws?
My ballroom the pasture, my music the bees,
My drink was the fountain, my church the tall trees.
Who ever would love or be tied to a wife
When it makes a man mad a' the days o' his life?
1842-64 1920
Autobiographical Fragments1
[BOOKS]
My acquantance of books is not so good as later oppertunitys might have made it for I cannot and never coud plod thro every a book in a regular mecanical way as I meet with [it] I dip in to it here and there and if it does not suit I lay it down and seldom take it up again but in the same manner I read Thompsons Seasons and Miltons Paradise Lost thro when I was a boy and they are the only books of Poetry that I have reguraly read thro yet as to history I never met with the chance of getting at [it] yet and in novels my taste is very limited Tom Jones Robinson Crusoe and the Vicar of Wakefield are all that I am acquainted with they are old acquantan[ces] and I care not to make new ones tho I have often been offered the perusal of the Waverly Novels I declind it and [though] the readily remaining in ignorance of them is no trouble yet my taste may be doubted for I hear much in their praise and believe them good?I read the vicar of Wakefield over every Winter and am delighted tho I always feel disappointed at the end[ing] of it happily with the partings my mind cannot feel that it ends happily with [the] reader I usd to be uncommonly fond of looking over catalogues of books and am so still they [are] some of the earliest readings that oppertunitys allowd me to come at if ever I bought a penny worth of slate pencils or Wafers or a few sheets of Paper at Drakards they were sure to be lapt2 in a catalogue and
1. These fragments are parts of an incomplete son and David Powell in John Clare b}1 Himself manuscript autobiography that Clare undertook in (1996). We take our selections from the more the 1820s for his publisher, John Taylor. They recent collection. were published by Eric Robinson in John Clare's 2. Wrapped, folded up. Drakard was a bookseller Autobiographical Writings (1983), and a second at Stamford, half a dozen miles west of Clare's time, with slightly more accurate texts, by Robin-native village of Helpston.
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86 2 / JOHN CLARE
I considered them as the most va[l]uable parts of my purchase and greedily lookd over their contents and now in cutting open a new book or Magazine31 always naturaly turn to the end first to read the book list and take the rest as a secondary pleasure
Anticipation is the sweetest of earthly pleasures it is smiling hope standing on tiptoes to look for pleasure?the cutting open a new book the watching the opening of a new planted flower at spring etc
* # # The first books I got hold of beside the bible and prayer book was an old book of Essays with no title and then a large one on Farming Robin hoods Garland and the Scotch Rogue?The old book of Farming and Essays
