ne, ne « / +•

In That So Gentle Skys A Study of John Clare’s Sonnets

Richard L. Gillin

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

December 1971

í» © 1972

Richard Lewis Gillin

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii

ABSTRACT

In 1820 John Clare became the most popular literary figure in London following the appearance of his Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery. By 1827, after the publication of three subse­ quent volumes of poetry, he was virtually ignored even though his poetic abilities had increased significantly. In this study the nature of John Clare’s achievement as a poet was analyzed in con­ junction with his sonnets.

Clare’s best work appears in his short poems. The sonnets he wrote indicate his concerns and suggest the degree of his maturity as a lyric poet. The significant biographical and historical influences on Clare have been delineated in association with his poetry. An examination of the poems in each volume of poetry published during his lifetime revealed that the sonnets reflect the major impetus of each volume as well as suggesting the direction his later work would take.

Experiments with sonnet forms such as the Shakespearian and regular innovative forms of Clare’s own creation are traced and analyzed. As a fledgling poet Clare's greatest problem was to reconcile the various elements of his perception and verse. Often, it has been shown, there is a cleavage between the subject matter and the speaker’s response to the subject in the early sonnets. The different sonnet forms indicate his attempts to come to grips with his experience in verse.

As his abilities as a poet matured so did the degree of his experimentation with the sonnet form. In The Rural Muse Clare achieved control of his subjects and form in his sonnets. As opposed to the regularity of the traditional forms of the sonnet, the sonnets in The Rural Muse have been shown to be unique fourteen line verse units of precisely rendered perceptions of the natural world. Clare suppressed himself and nature is objectively and truthfully depicted. Clare began his literary career as an imitative descriptive poet and he developed into a lyric poet of acute sensibility and singularly distinctive perception. Ill

PREFACE

In writing about the poetry of John Clare at this time several unique problems arise. Punctuation, spelling, dating, and proper texts are subject to dispute since a complete edition of Clare's poetry has yet to be produced. The matters of punctuation and spelling in

Clare's work have been a special point of discussion since the publi­ cation in 1820 of Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery. In the editions of selected works that have appeared over the years the spelling and punctuation of the poems and prose have varied. Clare's prose has been punctuated and corrected in Edmund Blunden's edition,

Sketches in the Life of John Clare by Himself, but the Tibbles', The

Prose of John Clare, and Robinson and Summerfield's, Selected Poems and Prose of John Clare, are printed with few emendations and correc­ tions, The selections of poetry by James Reeves, Selected Poems of

John Clare. Geoffrey Grigson, Poems of John Clare's Madness. Edmund

KLunden and Alan Porter, Poems Chiefly From Manuscript, are punctu­ ated and corrected. Eric Robinson and Geoffrey Summerfield Clare's most recent editors, however, have presented Clare's verse largely as they found it in manuscripts: The Shepherd's Calendar. The Later Poems of John Clare, and Selected Poems and Prose of John Clare. Since the Tibbles' two volume edition, The Poems of John Clare, represents the most complete collection of Clare's poetry to date, I have used it throughout this study as the basis for my discussion of the poems unless I note otherwise, I have dealt with Clare's biography XV

to some extent and wherever possible I have let Clare speak for himself by quoting him from his autobiographical notes. Because various sections of Clare’s prose appear in different editions, and since no definitive solution is readily available, his prose appears as various editors have presented it.

Many reasons bring one to the writing of a dissertation but only a few influences maintain the motivation and persistence necessary to complete the task. I am most grateful for my parents’ faith in me, for Dr. Ralph Wolfe’s guidance, and to my wife Barbara for her sustaining spirit. V

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page

One Fancy's Sleepless Eye ...... 1

Two The Bliss of Life ...... 44

Three There Lonely I Whisper...... 80

Four Endless Labor All in Vain ...... 121

Five Where Fewer Paths Intrude ...... 140

Six Invitation to Eternity ...... 169 Notes ...... 188 List of Works Consulted...... 200

Appendix I ...... 204

Appendix II ...... 205

Appendix HI...... 207 CHAPTER I

Fancy* s Sleepless Eye

Youth and School-time: 1793-1806

"My love remains constant to me"

In January, 1820, John Clare was introduced to English readers as "A Northamptonshire Peasant" and the author of Poems Descriptive

of Rural Life and Scenery. The associations of "Northamptonshire" and "peasant" at first served to catapult the name John Clare into widespread popularity, but as time progressed the linking of Clare’s name with these labels became an obstacle to an objective and appre­ ciative reading of his poetry. Clare’s most recent editors, Robinson and Summerfield, suggest that because Clare came to be known as the

"Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" he was doubly damned»

. . . damned because he was associated with one locality at a time when railways were breaking down regional boundaries and regional consciousness; and damned because he was a peasant at a time when the national imagination was being captured by the immensity of industrialism. 1

In retrospect, it is true that the appellation "peasant poet" obscured the value of Clare’s poetry to some extent, but the facts remain that Clare was a peasant and that he spent almost the whole of his life within his native county of Northamptonshire. In view of his back­ ground and the circumstances of his life, the existence of Clare as a poet, according to James Reeves, is a miracle» "The miracle is that 2

a man of such tender sensibility should have been so continuously

articulate, and possessed of natural taste never to stray for long

outside his true poetic milieu." The significance of Clare’s artis­

tic achievement as a poet is enhanced by an understanding of the man

and it is therefore useful to know something of those influences that

shaped Clare’s intellectual and emotional growth. In one of his autobiographical notes John Clare states that he was born on "July 13, 1793» at Helpstone, a gloomy village in North- 3 amptonshire, on the brink of the Lincolnshire fens." He was the son of Parker Clare, "one of fate’s chancelings, who drop into the world without the honor of matrimony," and a shepherd's daughter from if. Caistore, Ann Stimson. The Clare family was a relatively small one;

John was the eldest of four, two of whom died in their infancy,

Family history was of little concern to Clare as he records in his Autobiography:

I cannot trace my name to any remote period a Century & a half is the utmost & I have found no great ancestors to boast in the breed All I can make out is that they were gardeners parish clerks & fiddlers & from these has sprung a large family of the name still increasing where kindred has forgotten its claims & 2nd & 3rd cousins are worn out. Clare described himself as a child of "waukly constitution while his twin sister "was much to the contrary, a fine bonny wench, whose turn 7 it was to die first." Since the Clare family was always faced with poverty it was good fortune that Parker and Ann had a small family.

On the whole Clare’s childhood was a happy one as the bulk of his later poetry indicates. Though much has been made of the poor econ­ omic circumstances of Clare’s youth, the conditions of poverty in 3

rural England seem to have been tempered by understanding and love

within the family. His mother was a prudent woman, illiterate, but

devoted to her family. Her strength of character was enhanced by the

great courage and relentless endurance she displayed while suffering

from dropsy, which afflicted her a few years after John’s birth. Her

devotion and love created a bond of understanding between her and her 8 only son, a bond which was strong and lasting. His father was a hard

working field laborer and though many men in his position would find reason enough for bitterness against the world at large, Parker Clare

remained a basically cheerful and kind person. During village feasts and holidays he would show off his great strength by competing in

wrestling matches, and his prestige among his fellow villagers was

further magnified by his ability to sing and recite old ballads and

songs. His conversation was "like that of most men who work close to 9 the soil, full of pith, virility, and aptly coloured phrases.John

Clare's love for his father and his mother and the esteem which he

felt for them is reflected in his remembrance of them:

. . . for he was a tender father to his children, and I have every reason to turn to their memories with the warmest feelings of gratitude, and satisfaction; and if doing well to their children be an addition to rightous- ness, I am certain, God cannot forget to bless them with a portion of felicity in the other world, when souls are called to judgment, and receive the reward due to their actions committed below. It would seem highly unlikely that a child born into the poverty- stricken Clare family, loving as the family might be, would have the opportunity to cultivate his intellect and give vent to his imagina­ 4

tion, John Clare, however, was twice blessed: blessed with his parents’

affectionate and loving care and blessed with a native poetic genius.

Though Clare did attend school, his education to a large extent came from close observation of the natural world. One of the first records of his inquisitive mind and his fascination with nature is recorded by Clare in his Autobiography:

I had often seen the large heath calld Emmonsales stretching its yellow furze from my eye into unknown solitudes ... & my curiousity urged me to steal an opportunity to explore it that morning I had imagind that the world's end was at the orizon & that a day's journey was able to find it so I went on with my heart full of hope’s pleasures & discoverys ex­ pecting when I got to the brink of the world that I coud look down like looking into a large pit & see into its secrets the same as I believd I coud see heaven by looking into the water So I eagerly wanderd on & rambled along the furze the whole day till I got out of my knowledge when the very wild flowers seemd to forget me & I imagind they were the inhabi­ tants of new countrys the very sun seemd to be a new one & shining in a different quarter of the sky still I felt no fear my wonder-seeking happiness had no room for it I was finding new wonders every minute & was walking in a new world & expecting the world's end bye & bye but it never came often wondering to myself that I had not found the edge of the old one the sky still touchd the ground in the distance & my childish wisdom was puzzled in perplexitys ... I knew not which way to turn out but chance put me in the right track & when I got back into my own fields I did not know them everything lookd so different. 1

Clare’s love of solitude grew more evident as he became older but in his early youth he was an accepted companion of the other country children and much a part of the village social scene. With his friends he played games, hunted along the hedges for snail shells, and searched for birds' and rabbits' nests:

. . . poking sticks into the rabbit holes & carefully observing when I took it out if there was down on the end which was a sign of a nest with young then in went the arm up to the shoulder; & then fear came upon us that 5

a snake might be concealed in the hole our blood ran cold within us & started us off to other sports.-^

Belief in haunted houses, witches, fairies, wood and water elves,

shagged foals, will-o'-wisps, and good and evil spirits of many kinds prevailed among the villagers in Northamptonshire. 13 All that Celtic and Northern fairy-tale lore to which Burns, Coleridge, Shelley, and

Scott were exposed in their early youth was supplied to Clare's imagination by his mother on winter evenings as she was busy sewing or knitting in the firelight. During the summer when he was tending sheep or horses in the fields, the monotony of his labor was lightened by the delightful stories that were recounted: "... the old woman's memories never failed of tales to smoothen our labor; for as every day came, new Giants, Hobgoblins, and faries was ready to pass it 14 away." Though Ann Clare believed higher learning to be related to witchcraft, she respected it and she committed herself to providing her son John with the best education possible even under the adverse economic circumstances surrounding the family, Clare himself alludes to his "mother’s hopeful ambition" of making him "a good scholar" as well as her dedication to get him through*school: "she never lost the opportunity when she was able to send me."^ Parker Clare was loyal to Ann's desire to make a scholar out of John, and three months of every year, even in the worst of times, John attended school until he was twelve years old.^

Clare first went to dame school, to "an old woman in the village,"^ where he learned how to spell and read a little in the Bible. Follow­ ing this, from about the age of seven through the age of twelve, he 6

attended, though irregularly, a school at Glinton where a man named 18 Seaton was master. Since the wages for eight weeks' work were

required to pay for one month's schooling, it became necessary for

Clare to leave school periodically in order to earn money by helping

his father at threshing. Clare made good use of his absence from

school though, and he surprised Seaton upon each return to school by the progress he made during his absence. Seaton in return, as Clare

notes, "never failed to give me tokens of encouragement." Under

the direction of Seaton, Clare learned how to read and write as well

as the rudiments of arithmetic. In comparison to the Wiltshire

thresher and tasker, Stephen Duck, who taught himself to read by

scanning Paradise Lost with the aid of Bailey's dictionary, as well

as other poorly educated peasant poets such as James Hogg and George

Crabbe, Clare was well educated. Clare later developed a higher degree of seriousness toward his studies but at this age, even though

he benefited greatly from Seaton, and he delighted in spending his evenings engrossed in arithmetic, he preferred to spend his time out of doors occasionally hunting for snail shells or listening to a bird's song in favor of going to school. When Clare approached puberty he began to turn from boyish escapades, and he fast became a solitary, preferring a single intimate companion, or a book, to the company of a crowd. The break from his childhood companions became apparent as

Clare began to spend Sundays walking through the woods and across the fields alone. Soon enough Clare was singled out for ridicules "I grew so fond of being alone at last that my mother was feign to force 7

me into company for the neighbors had assurd her mind into the fact 21 that I was no better than crazy." The village gossips noted Clare's

eccentricities, which in conjunction with Clare's desire for reading,

only served to confirm the suspicion held by many that higher learning was associated with deviltry of all sorts,

Clare’s preference for strolling through the countryside with one

intimate companion became more evident as he left boyhood and approached

adolescence and his relationships with his friends became more intense.

The memories associated with that period of his life and his friend­

ship with Richard Turnhill are recorded by Clares

Among all the friendships I have made in life those of school friends & childish acquaintances are the sweetest to remember there is no regret in them but the loss they are the sunniest pages memory ever doubles down in the checkered volume of life to refer to there are no blotches upon them they are not found[ed] like bargains upon matters of interest nor broken for selfish ends . . . one of my first friendships was with Richard the brother of John Turnhill . , . what numberless hopes of success did we whisper over as we hunted among the short snubby bushes of the heath & hedgerows . . . what happy discourses of planning pleasures did we talk over as we lay on the soft summer grass gazing into the blue sky . . . dreaming of the days to come when we should mix with the world.

The bond that developed between the two boys was broken rather sudden­ ly when Richard died from typhus fever in 1805. The grief of having

lost such a close friend was as long lasting as it was sincere for in the 23 Clare manuscripts there are at least three poems on Richard Turnhill.

Of even greater significance to Clare's childhood emotions and his

later poetry is the affection he developed for Mary Joyce, the daugter

of a Glinton farmer, following the death of Richard Turnhill. In his

Autobiography Clare confesses his affection for Marys 8

I was a lover very early in life my first attachment being a schoolboy affection was for Mary who cost me more ballads than sighs & was belovd with a romantic or Platonic sort of feeling if I coud but gaze on her face or fancy a smile on her countenance it was sufficient I went away satisfyd we played with each other but named nothing of love yet I fancyd her eyes told me her affections we walked together as school-companions in leisure hours but our talk was of play & our actions the wanton nonsense of children yet young as my heart was it woud chill when I touchd her hand & trembled & I fancyd her feelings were the same for as I gazd earnestly in her face a tear woud hang in her smiling eye & she woud turn to wipe it away her heart was as tender as a birds24

It was during the time when John and Mary Joyce were together that

dare "enjoyed the most absolute happiness of being in unison with nature."25 his later poetry Mary Joyce was to become Clare’s ideal

wife, and the influence of the childhood relationship between the two

left a permanent mark on Clare. All the time he spent with Mary, as

they rambled over the countryside, Clare was becoming more deeply

charmed with nature. Along with his solitary walks and his growing attachment to Mary, Clare was eagerly reading whatever books came his

way. He avidly devoured the six-penny romances sold by hawkers s

Cinderella. Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk. Zig Zag. o A and Prince Cherry. Clare’s desire for reading went beyond the stand­ ard classroom fare and he endeavored to broaden his experience with

literature by obtaining additional books: The first books I got hold of besides the Bible & the Prayer Book were an old book of Essay's with no title & another large one on Farming Robin Hoods Garland & The Scotch Rogue ... I became acquainted with Robinson Crusoe very early in life , . . yet I had it a sufficient time to fill my fancys.2?

About this same time Clare became aware of poetry. One of his mother’s brothers, a drover, brought Pomfret's Poems back from London, and Clare 9

was haunted by the rhythms of "Love Triumphant Over Reason" after his Q Q father read some stanzas to him. In addition, Wordsworth's "We are

Seven"wasa particular favorite, though the traditional ballads such

as "Barbara Allen," "Fare Thee Well," and "Peggy Band," which were

sung by both his parents during the long night in the peasant cottage

stirred his fancy. 29

Ann Clare's fond hope of having her son educated was crushed when

it became clear that Parker Clare could not earn enough money from his labors. James Merrishaw, who succeeded Seaton after his death in

1806, was reluctant to dismiss Clare from school and he urged Clare

to continue his studies at the Glinton night school. Both Seaton and

Merrishaw helped to instill a love of reading in Clare, whom they both regarded as the boy with the extraordinary memory, since at the age of eight or nine Clare could repeat from memory whole chapters of

Job. Clare’s separation from school was by no means the end of his education. His solitary musing went on and his desire for books greatly increased. Leaving school meant separation from Mary Joyce, but Clare’s mind was stimulated by the close friendship that developed between him and Richard Turnhill's older brother, John. John Turnhill had been educated at a boarding school, and his interests, which were quite varied, made him an interesting and congenial companion for Clare, who had "an itching after everything,"-' and with Turnhill as his mentor he attempted to master arithmetic and algebra. When Turn­ hill left for London Clare was left alone in his thirst for intellectual stimulation. Fortunately, dare made the acquaintance of Tom Porter, 10

who possessed a few old books arti shared a fondness for nature. Porter provided the needed companionship, and together both Clare and Porter

read and re-read Sandy’s Travels and Parkinson's Herbal. Clare's

fascination with the natural world and his love of learning remained

constant with him as he passed from boyhood to adolescence.

II Adolescences 1806-1813

"Into a Landscape that might breathe and live"

Though Clare was engrossed in reading everything he could, he did

not actually own a single volume of his own until 1806, From his own

account he acquired Hymns and Spiritual Songs of Dr. Watts and, more 33 importantly, Thomson's Seasons. Clare's experience with poetry up to the age of thirteen was largely haphazard and undirected. Because

of the dullness of his labor Clare had dabbled in verse primarily to

keep his mind occupied, or to bolster his courage as he passed by

certain places said,by the superstitious villagers, to be haunted: on these journeys I muttered over tales of my own fancy, contriving them into rhymes as well as my abilities was able. They was always romantic wanderings ... as I had only myself to please. I always contrived that my taste should be suited in such matters ... as I pass'd these awful places ... I generally kept looking on the ground, and have been so taken with my story that I have gone muttering it over into the town, before I knew I got there. This has often embarrassed me by being overheard by someone who has asked me who I was talking to?3^

A more pronounced and profound effect on Clare's attempts at poetry came as a result of his reading in Thomson's Seasons. It was during 11

the summer of 1806 that an acquaintance of Clare’s showed him a frag­ ment of Thomson’s Seasons. Clare gives an account of the event in one of his autobiographical notes:

I knew nothing of blank verse, nor rhyme either, otherwise than by the trash of Ballad Singers, but I still remember my sensations in reading the opening of Spring. I can’t say the reason, but the following lines made my heart twitter with joy:

Come gentle Spring, ethereal mildness come And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud, While music wakes around, veil’d in a shower Of shadowing roses on our plain descend,

I greedily read over all I could before I returned it and resolved to possess one myself,35

The great impact made on Clare by Thomson's Seasons had a direct effect on Clare's poetic output. Possessed with a desire to own a copy of

"such a fine poem," Clare "teazed" out of his father the one shilling six pence needed to purchase a copy of the poem, and he set out to nearby Stamford, after bribing another boy to cover his work for him, 36 to buy it. On his return, since it was a beautiful day, and because he was extremely anxious to read the volume, he left the road, sat behind a wall in Burghley Park so no one could see him, and read. The significance of the experience is recorded by Clare:

The scenery around me was uncommonly beautiful at that time of year, and what with reading the book, and beholding the beauties of artful nature in the park, I got into a strain of descriptive rhyming on my journey home. This was "The Morning Walk," the first thing I committed to paper,37

Thomson's poem may have been the catalyst in getting Clare to write his own poetry, but his poem is in many ways different, and the differ­ ences indicate the direction Clare's poetry would take, "The Morning 12

Walk" remains unpublished and a full transcription, which is taken from Ms 4 on file at The Northampton Public Library, is included here since it is available nowhere else:

"Morning Walk, a Fragment"

Come lovely Lucy let’s away Sweet morning calls and we’ll obey Look yonder see the rising sun His daily course has just begun Lets lightly beat the dewy grass And mark each object as we pass There the unheeded daisy grows There the golden kingcup blows There the stinking bryony weaves Round the hazel her scallopt leaves Here the woodbine and the rose All their blushing sweets disclose Ah lovely Lucy to describe The different flowrets tribe by tribe Would be too much for me or you Or any shepherd lad to do Nay had I Darwins prying thought Or all the learning Ray has taught How soon description would exhaust And in sweet floras lap be lost Then let us leave this flowery nook And hasten down to yonder brook Behold how clear the dimpling stream (Illuminated by the beam Of glare-ey'd sol whose piercing rays Along the babbling water plays) Murmuring winds along the mead O'er grown with sedgy rush and read 0 Lucy see how swift it flows Continually—nor stillness knows Just so is mortal man I ween Toss'd along from scene to scene He does no rest nor pleasure know Until he' laid at rest below Aye I Lucy why so wan and pale Dost thou dislike xay mortal tale Or does some wrankling thought molest The peaceful harbor of thy breast If so the lurking fiend disarms Drive away this magic charm All thy meek beauties reasume Let the soft flush thy face illume 13

Let all be gentle all be gay Like yon skipping lambs at play See how they chase along the rill Now they scale the thymy hill Now sporting backwards now advance Now they join in merry dance There they frisk it round and round Till weariness their limbs confound Contented then they sink to rest In tranquil ease and plenty blest Learn then from these thy mind to form And no weak thought or passion storm They tender breast — let all be calm None but the foolish dream of harm These trifles which thy mind surprise Are counted blessings by the wise Hark how the birds in yonder lawn Fly forth their notes to hail the morn Then let us haste their songs to hear Melodious sweet divinely clear First I list the woodlarks song Now the linnet joins the throng Next the cuckoo's well known tale Echo's responsive through the vale Now the thrush and black birds sing While the air with music rings Now the Hedge—chat on the spray Warbles forth her feeble lay Nay e'en the meanest birds that fly The rook the day and chattering pie Join their harsh notes intent to praise The god who all their wants repays What thankful songs these creatures give For the small morsals they receive While we who all his bounties share Scarce offer up a single prayer Now we'll thro' the coppice stray Behold this riding points the way. delightful walk enchanting shade For nymphs and dryades only made Here the albion muses dwell - In oaken bower and primrose cell Here heartfelt peace is only found Sitting on the leaf strew'd ground And every nymph and goddess slim Lives here unseen in gaily trim Hail rural shades retirement sweet We once more tread with willing feet Thy briery wood-bound paths among 14

(Where nature dwells in ample throng) Intent on every charm to gaze And prey along thy leafy maze How pleasant------.3°

Unlike the blank verse of The Seasons Clare’s poem is in open couplets,

and his apprehension of nature is direct and personal» it is not copied

from Thomson. There are echoes of older poets, as Tibble indicates,

"The metre might be copied directly from Watt's hymns, and the poem

reminds us of Parnell's 'Hymn to Contentment ,„39 and the tone is

Augustan, but the particularity and attention to detail in nature,

from the "unheeded daisy" and "stinking broyony" to "the meanest birds

that fly," is essentially Clare.

Clare's awareness of poetry hastened his aspirations to write.

Because he was embarrassed Clare kept secret from his family his desire

to write, but he confided in his friend Tom Porter. On Porter's advice

Clare set out to learn the principles of grammar, but after many dis­

couraging encounters with syntax and spelling he concluded that if he 40 could make himself understood without grammar it would be sufficient.

Clare's first attempts at writing poetry were imitations of his father's

songs and, he continues:

I made a many things before I ventured to commit them to writing for I felt ashamed to expose them to paper & after I ventured to write them down my second thoughts blushed over them & I burnt them for a long time but as my feelings grew into song I felt a desire to preserve some & usd to correct them over & over until the last copy had lost all kindred to the first even in the title.

Clare’s account of his initial attempts to write poetry is significant in at least two ways which bear relation to his later success and poetry. First, under the economic circumstances in which he lived the 15

fact that Clare would write poetry made his work valuable in the sense

of a social oddity. Clare’s worth in this sense was capitalized on by

Taylor when he published Clare’s first edition of poems, and Clare’s

public image as a literate rustic made him a popular figure. The im­

portance of the story of Clare’s first written work is best summed up

by Jack’s statement that "If Clare had never lived it would have been

tempting to invent him, for he conforms to the romantic stereotype of

The Poet. " 42 Secondly, Clare's attention to nature and his respon­ siveness to the objects around him is uniquely his own, and his ex­

pression is related to Read's statement that "the impulsive expression 43 of an emotion" gives rise to pure poetry. Clare's desire to excel

in his attempts at poetry is indicated by his selectivity, and his

continual revisions of what he wrote suggests that he was conscious of

a design or purpose in each of his poems. , The similarity of his own

experience in nature to what Thomson, whom he much admired and read, recorded in his verse, stimulated Clare to write, but it was Clare's unique sensitivity to detail in nature that inspired his special per­ ception of the world around him.

Against many odds, not the least of which was the need for him to work, Clare launched himself into poetry. Since he showed great ineptitude for any specific trade, it was to be expected that his efforts to become a poet should be highly distrusted by his patient parents, so he went on writing for several years without revealing what he was writing. By means of a deception, dare substituted his own verse in a book from which he read to his parents, and he asked them their opinion 16

as to the merits of particular poems, and thereby gained the first critical response to his work. The poems most highly praised by his

parents were hidden away in a hole in the cottage wall but all of the

poems saved in this manner were accidently destroyed by Ann Clare

since, not knowing that what was on the scraps of paper had value, she 45 used the papers to start fires in the cottage hearth. ' Distrustful as she was of poetry, Ann Clare nevertheless gave in to her son’s

peculiarity and while at Deeping May Fair she purchased a picture pocket-handkerchief of Chatterton printed with some of his verses.

For several months Clare continued writing verses and attending Merri- shaw’s night school at Glinton while he worked with his father in the fields or worked for John Turnhill’s father. The problem of a suitable trade for Clare still remained, however, and because of a decrease in the family fortunes it was urgent that Clare be fully employed, Since he was small and frail Clare was unfit for heavy work. In a rural English village the alternatives to heavy work were few, and Clare showed no special aptitude to pursue a particular line. When Clare was fourteen he left night school once and for all, and it was proposed that he be apprenticed to a shoe-maker. The suggestion was promptly declined by Clare. Soon thereafter Clare turned down an offer to become a stone-mason under the pretence of his not liking to climb.

Clare "turned a sullen eye" upon all suggestions by his parents until: my parents hopes were almost gone as they thought I had been born with a dislike to work & a view to have my liberty & remain idle but the fact was I felt timid & fearful of undertaking the first trial in everything they woud not urge me to anything against my will as I livd on at home taking work as it fell,2*® 17

For the time being, however, Clare could continue to wander freely

over the meadows and through the woods enjoying nature in all its

variety. The pursuit of his interests was gratifying to Clare but he

became more aware of the need to do something meaningful with his life:

Thus I livd a season spending the intervals of play along with shepherders or herdboys in lone spots out of sight for I had grown big enough to be ashamed of it & I felt a sort of hopeless prospect around me of not being able to meet manhood as I coud wish, ?

In another effort to become fully employed dare was sent to Woodcroft

Castle where he was paid for plowing the fields. His employer, Mrs,

Bellars, was kind but too many other things were disagreeable to Clare,

and after a month’s time he departed. When he arrived home his parents

could not persuade him to return to Woodcroft Castle, and, as Clare

states, "They now gave up all hopes of doing anything with me & fancyd ho that I should make nothing but a soldier."^0 Very soon after his return

from Woodcroft Castle, dare’s uncle, Morris Stirason, who was working

for a lawyer named Bellamy at Wisbech, offered to do what he could to

get the boy a position as a clerk, dare was "scholar good enough for 49 it," but his overwhelming timidity and shyness in the presence of

strangers caused him to lose any chance of winning a position. Clare failed to gain a position with Bellamy, but the journey from Helpstone to Wisbech, which was the first one for Clare, was significant to the growth of his imagination. While in transit Clare felt as though he was entering a foreign land, and his imagination was stirred by the differences he observed, Bellamy’s rejection came as a relief to the bashful dare, and he looked forward to "once more seeing home & its snug fireside."5® When dare arrived home, Francis Gregory, owner of 18

the Blue Bell inn, offered Clare a job for one year. Since the Blue Bell was only a few yards from the Clare household, Clare immediately accepted. Clare’s dealings with Gregory were good and Clare recalled

his relationship with Gregory as "one of the pleasantest occurrences

in my existence ... I believe this usage and this place to have been the nursery for fostering my rustic Song,"^-

Clare was sixteen when he went to work for Gregory, and he had not

as yet shed his belief in local superstitions. It was part of his job to undertake many solitary errands at night and the sounds of

vixen or badgers at night on the heath terrified him. Nature took on

an even greater significance, and he became intensely affected by every

creature as well as every plant his senses came in contact with. Clare’s

powers of sensitive observation and perception were sharpened by his

nocturnal experiences on the heath, and the increase in the intensity

of his sensual perception had a direct bearing on his poetry as he 52 indicates in a lengthy account of this part of his life. While his

sensibilities were becoming more animated from his experience in rural

Helpstone, Clare continued to read and study with the approval and

indulgence of Gregory, Unfortunately, however, Clare had no one with whom to converse and discuss poetry; but he continued to study and he

added to his small store of books.

When Clare left day-school at Glinton his relationship with Mary

Joyce was broken off, but in the fall of 1809, when Clare was seven­

teen, the relationship was renewed with a greater intensity. The added charm of Mary’s companionship enriched Clare's imagination, and as he and Mary met during the winter and early sparing in a renewal of their 19 enthusiasm, for nature, Clare enjoyed a fulfillment of his emotional and intellectual needs. Soon enough however, it became clear that

Clare was without prospects for permanent employment when he became restless and refused to rehire himself with Gregory. Sensing that

Clare was a bad risk, Mary separated from his company: "She felt her station above mine at least I felt that she thought so for her parents were farmers, & farmers had great pretentions to something then."53 The remembrance of Mary Joyce and his love for her was to have a life long effect on Clare and his poetry. The immediate effect on Clare, as a result of Mary’s separation in 1810, was a heighten­ ing of his sense of isolation since Mary was the only remaining person with whom he shared his early childhood pleasure.

On the advice of Tom Porter, Clare, accompanied by his father, set out to fill a vacancy as an apprentice gardener for the Marquis of

Exeter at Burghley House. For a while Clare was able to study Aber­ crombie’s Gardening, which was the only book he had with him at the time, but his peace was rudely shattered by the harsh temper of the head gardener.54 Clare stayed at Burghley House for nine months but during that time he was completely out of the mood for poetry. George

Cousins, who was a foreman, was the only person Clare had anything in common with; he was literate and he was fond of the Bible, and together they decided to run away from their employer. For some months they stayed at Newark and later at Stamford, but eventually they each went their separate ways, and Clare travelled back to Helpstone, When Clare returned home jobless once again he was almost eighteen 20

and his prospects of gaining any sort of employment were even less

than before he left for Burghley House because "by Act of Parliament the lands surrounding Helpstone were fully enclosed, "33 About this

time the very landscape of England, as well as the social structure,

particularly in the rural areas, was undergoing a great change. During the first half of the eighteenth century the open fields of England were enclosed slowly, but from the middle of the century to the middle of the nineteenth century the process was accelerated rapidly,3^ When

Clare was still young the process of enclosing all the open land around his village was begun. The enclosure of the land he loved had a great and long lasting effect on his temperament. The disruption of the social structure and the resulting economic difficulties that ensued were the most immediate problems faced by Clare and others of his classs

To the poorer classes in the country enclosures were a disaster .... The living conditions of the new class of wage-earners appears to have been far less comfortable than those of the cottagers under the old system, "37

The customs and freedom with which Clare grew up were obliterated completely and forever. Upon his return dare was something more than an outcast; he was a stranger in his home. The scenes of his happy boyhood were destroyed, and Clare was cut-off from the land that he had come to love so dearly. As a result of what Clare saw as an unredeemable disaster he strayed from poetry and took up drinking and carousing with local ruffians. With little hope of work Clare offered himself to the local militia along with runaway youths and unemployable laborers like himself. Just as Coleridge, twenty years 21

earlier at the beginning of the same war, enlisted in the 15th Light Dragoons as Silas Tomkin Comberback, and showed a remarkable awkward­ ness in learning how to ride, so too did Clare immediately show his

singular ineptitude at being a soldier. Clare was the shortest of the recruits and he was assigned to a mixed multitude nicknamed "bum- tools. After being harassed by a "louse looking corporal"^ to

the point of distraction, Clare seized him by the throat and beat

him in retaliation, which only served to bring him into disfavor with

the military. Fortunately for Clare his military career was brief,

but upon his exit from the military he was faced with the burden of

finding employment once again. About this time, 1813, the economic

situation was as dismal as ever but he began writing again, and he gave

full vent to his imaginative powers so that he could transform the

world around him "Into a landscape that might breathe and live."

Ill Manhood: 1813-1821

"Clos'd illusions~fare ye well"

Now twenty years old, Clare had no greater prospect in life before him than occasional labor in the fields. In an unpublished poem written at this time his mood is clearly evident:

Written on a Birth Day. 20th Tear

Luckless day the sorriest tiding Thy last folded pages tell Youth from manhood thou'st dividing Youth and pleasure fare ye well~ Twenty years and this thy blessing 22

Much did hopes on manhood dwell Much to morrow was expressing Better prospects fare ye well Birth dayl smiles thy youth attended Manhoods broke thy hopefull spell The curtains dropt hopes dramas ended Clos’d illusions—fare ye well—

Despondent though he might have been, Clare did not stray from poetry

and his studies as he had done earlier in the face of depressing

prospects. His experience at Burghley and Newark helped him to get

part-time employment at haytime and harvest, and the remainder of the time was spent writing verses and reading. As he labored in the fields

Clare made use of his imagination: "I coud not stop my thoughts & often faild to keep them till night so when I fancyd I had hit upon a good image or natural description I usd to steal into a corner and clap it down." Clare continued working and writing in the fields between 1814 and 1817. The long hours spent in the open gave him the opportunity to meditate and record his thoughts without outside inter­ ference. He worked steadily but poetry came first, as indicated by his description of his method of composition at this time: "I usd to drop down behind a hedge bush or dyke & write down my things upon the crown of my hat & when I was more in a kip for thinking than usual I usd to stop later at night to make up my lost time in the day." The late night wanderings and failure to attend church, coupled with his continual reading, were giving dare an even worse reputation among the church goers. Some believed him crazy, while others thought that Clare was involved in some sort of criminal activity. Clare's association with the Gypsies during this time did little to lessen the villagers' 23

sinister interpretations of his actions.

Indeed, Clare’s reputation among his fellow villagers declined

rather steadily between 1814 and 1818, not only because he was considered

a dreamer, but because of the associations he formed. Langly Bush was

the traditional camping grounds of the Gypsies, and as Clare’s reputa­

tion came under closer scrutiny by the village gossips, he showed a 64 greater preference for the company of the Gypsies. Clare was readily

accepted by the Gypsy community where he was taught "to learn the fiddle." The Gypsy life was stimulating for Clare but their longing

after new horizons was antithetical to Clare’s sensibilities. During

the summers he spent much time with the Gypsies, but during the winters

dare joined other young men of the village at a neighbor's house named

Billings. Called "Bachelors Hall" because two unmarried brothers

occupied the cottage, it was "a sort of meeting-house for the young

fellows of the town where they usd to join for ale & tobacco & sing zz and drink the night away." The conviviality of "Bachelors Hall" provided both solace for Clare's loneliness and a means of overcoming his shyness. Just as Lamb had difficulty maintaining his sobriety even after a short exposure to drink, so too did Clare become unsteady and talkative. While he was drinking with his companions Clare became freer and more willing to expose his more serious ambition: I had got the fame of being a good scholar & in fact I had vanity enough to fancy I was far from a bad one myself while I coud puzzle the village schoolmaster over my quart (for I had no tongue to bray with till I was inspired with ale) with solving algebra questions ... I made enough of it to astonish their ignorance,"°7 24

Clare’s activities at "Bachelors Hall" came to an end. some years before 1817 as a result of a new love affair involving Elizabeth Newbon.

Though Elizabeth "was no beauty," she provided a diversion for Clare, and her father, a wheelwright by trade, who was well-read in the Bible,

proved to be stimulating to Clare: "He was always trying my wisdom, where such and such passage might be found, The courtship, about which Clare has nothing much to say, "went on for years with petty jealousys on both sides at length giving ear to the world she ehargd me with sins of changing affection," Elizabeth Newbon’s accusations regarding the diversity of Clare’s affections appear to be justified, but other circumstances at this time contributed to his restlessness,

Parker Clare's rheumatism grew worse so that he was "now totally drove from hard labour , . , and forced to the last shifts of standing out against poverty,"7° As a result of the elder Clare's incapacitation, and since Ann Clare could not do any extra work because she suffered from dropsy, the whole weight of the family's problems fell upon John,

Dissatisfaction and restlessness characterized Clare at this period in his life yet he devoted himself more intensely to his poetry.

Gradually, from 1814 onwards, Clare’s life centered on poetry, and he gave up other fields of study:

I considered walking in the track of others, and copying and dinging at things that had been found out some hundreds of years ago, had as little merit in it as a child walking in leading strings ere it can walk by itself.

As Clare became more engrossed in the creative experience, the number of his poems increased. He did not as yet have a poetic theory but in one of his notes, written several years later, Clare describes his 25

method of writing poetry at this time, and it is valuable as an indi­ cation of his aim:

I usd to drop down under a bush & scribble the fresh thoughts on the crown of my hat as I found nature then so I made her if an old pond with its pendant swallows fringing its mossy sides happened to be in the pleasant nook where I sat concealed among the blackthorns drawing its picture I calld it a pond & so my feelings were stirred into praise & my praises were muttered in prose or rhyme as the mood might suit at the moment then these moods often repeated grew unperceived into quantity on paper & then I indulged my fancy in thinking how they woud look in print I selected what I thought best & hid the others out of shames way as laughing-stocks for the crowd who think it a childs occupation to indulge in such feelings & inexcusable in a man,?*

In order to preserve what he had written, Clare decided to mark his

twenty-first birthday in 1814 by purchasing a blank book at Deeping

from the bookseller and printer Henson, The price for the book was

rather steep; eight shillings, or one week's wages. 73 Clare’s shame

about being known as a poet bothered him less, and, as Clare relates,

"on getting flusht with ale I dropt some loose hints about dabbling 74 in rhyme to Henson. Henson made some inquiries and dare showed

him some of his early work including a sonnet to the "Setting Sun."

Henson wanted to print "On the Death of Chatterton" in a penny book,

but Clare was doubtful of the poem's merits. The matter was pursued

by Henson, and he proposed that a subscription be raised in order to

publish a volume of poems. One hundred subscribers were needed, and

for one pound Henson would print three hundred prospectuses. 75 For the time being, however, hopes of publication had to be put aside, Clare’s last tie with his happy childhood was broken in I8l6 when he saw Mary Joyce for the last time, and the responsibilities of maturity 26

in a rural village began to accumulate. Henceforward, Mary and the

joyous years they spent together would live only in Clare's memory, and

the implications of maturity, in view of his happy and irretrievable

childhood, became apparent to Clare»

There is nothing but poetry about the existence of childhood real simple sould-moving poetry laughter and joy of poetry & not its philosophy & there is nothing of poetry about manhood but the reflection & the rememberance of what has been,7°

All of Clare's experiences in his adult life appeared to him as basical ly unpoetical; but through the creative experience in writing poetry he was able to recreate and relive his happy childhood in his memory.

Money was needed by the family and employment in Helpstone was im­ possible to secure; therefore, Clare and a friend named Gordon left for Bridge Casterton in Rutlandshire in the spring of 181? where they were to work as lime burners for a man named Wilders. 77 For the next two years Clare wrote as he wandered along the shores of the Gwash and the area surrounding Casterton where he felt the primeval spirit of nature. The village and ancient woods were quite a change from the flat fen country for Clare and each day, as he experienced new scenes he recorded his reactions in verse. It was during one of his walks in the autumn of 1817, as he made his way across the fields of Walkherd Lodge on his way to Casterton, that he received another source of inspiration when he met Patty, sometimes called Martha, the daughter of a local farmer named William Turner. Patty was eighteen and since Clare had recently broken off from Elizabeth Newbon and was away from his beloved Helpstone he fell in love quite rapidly» 27

I first saw Patty going across the fields toward her home I was in love at first sight & not knowing who she was or where she came from I felt very ill at rest I clomb on the top of a dotterel to see which way she went till she was out of sight but chance quickly thru her again in my way a few weeks when I was going to fiddle at Stamford I then ventured to her & succeeded so far as to have the liberty to go home with her to her cottage about four miles off & it became the introduction to some of the happiest & unhappiest days my life has met with/

The seclusion of Patty’s home in addition to her affection were a great source of joy for Clare at this time. When he was not with her

he would wander alone and note the actions of the animals and insects living in the woods and fields.

As autumn turned to winter in 1817 Clare was still working at

Pickworth, but his newly initiated romance with Patty made him anxious more than ever to improve his station in the world. At Pickworth "by hard working nearly day ani night" Clare saved the one pound needed for the printing of the proposals which he "never lost sight of." 79 He wrote to Henson at Market Deeping immediately, telling him to proceed with the printing of the proposals and asking him to write the address to the public. Henson declined the request to write the address, and in his reply he stated that Clare must write it. Clare made several attempts to write the pròse address, but because he was living in a On public house "and pester’d with many other inconveniences," u he kept putting it off until it became such a personal annoyance to him that he decided, good or bad, to produce something. On his way to work at the lime kiln at Ryhall, about three miles from Pickworth, he "dropped Si down 5 or 6 times to plan this troublesome task of An Address."

Thoughts of his parent’s situation and of their endless labor to rid 28

themselves of debt filled his mind. Some years later another Romantic

poet, Shelley, under analogous circumstances and thinking about the

nature and value of life, "which he had now had more time to study,

and which in Trelawny's company he had been induced to watch in its Oo most unlovely and seemingly undirected confusion," according to

HLunden, produced a fragment entitled "The Triumph of Life" which ends

Oq as the poet cries out "What is life?" J Seized by the same problem

that Shelley dealt with in his poem, and unable to remedy his dilemma, Clare recalls:

I burst out in an exclamation of distress, "What is Life?" and instantly recollecting such a subject would be a good one for a poem, I hastely scattered down the 2 first verses of it, as it stands as a beginning of the plan which I intended to adopt; and continued my journey to work. But when-at the kiln, I could not work for thinking about what I had so long been trying at; so I set me down on a lime- skuttle, and out with my pencil for an address of some sort, which, good or bad, I determined to send off that day. And for that purpose when finished, I accordingly started to Stamford, about three miles from me.®^

Clare was plagued by uncertainty and he was doubtful of the outcome of

his project, yet he proceeded methodically and orderly with his plan. He specified quite explicitly that "the book was to cost three shillings

and sixpence, and be printed on a superfine yellow wove foolscap paper, 85 in octavo size." J The attention to detail is an essential trait of Clare’s personality, and the particularity with which he approached

the matter of publication indicates that he had given it a great deal of deliberate thought. After much labor and emotional turmoil the

"Proposals for Publishing by subscription a Collection of Original Trifles, on miscellaneous subjects, religious and moral, in Verse, by 29

John Clare, of Helpstone" was ready for the subscribers:

The public are requested to observe, that the Trifles humbly offered for their candid perusal can lay no claim to eloquence of composition, (whoever thinks so will be deceived,) the greater part of them being Juvenile productions; and those of a later date offsprings of those leisure intervals which the short remittance from hard and manual labour sparingly afforded to compose them. It is hoped that the humble situation which distinguishes their author will be some excuse in their favour, and serve to make an atonement for the many inaccuracies and imperfections that will be found in them. The least touch from the iron hand of Criticism is able to crush them to nothing, and sink them at once to utter oblivion. May they be allowed to live their little day, and give satisfaction to those who may choose to honour them with a perusal, they will gain the end for which they were designed, and their author's wishes will be gratified. Meeting with this encouragement, it till induce him to publish a similar collection, of which this is offered as a specimen.

In one week's time Clare received a letter from Henson requesting that Clare meet with him at The Dolphin in Stamford where he would give Clare one hundred printed prospectuses and arrange other matters relating to publication. When Clare met Henson he found that the publisher's enthusiasm had dampened, and that instead of one pound he wanted an additional five shillings. At this embarrassing moment for Clare, the Reverend Thomas Mounsey, after overhearing the conversation between Clare and Henson, asked if he might be the first subscriber.

Henson showed Mounsey Clare's "Sonnet to the Setting Sun." Mounsey was much impressed and he praised Clare rather highly. Hopes soared and his dreams seemed likely to be realized as Clare envisioned the success of his proposed publication. Clare's confidence was shaken soon afterwards, however, when Henson demanded fifteen pounds prior to actual publication. When Clare informed Henson that he was unable to borrow fifteen pounds, Henson then proposed ten pounds, which for 30

Clare was as equally unattainable. In addition to the bad news from

Henson, it became increasingly clear that the one hundred subscribers would not materialize since the list of seven names remained at that 87 number. The demolition of his hopes depressed Clare and he gave up, at least for the moment, all hopes of publication. Besides the dis­ appointment of not fulfilling his plan, Clare felt terribly ashamed:

I wishd then that I had never engaged in the matter & felt ashamd as I went down the street scarcely daring to look anybody in the face for the prospectuses had filld everybodys mouth with my name & prospects most of which was Jobs comforters & the cry was against me. °

Humiliated before his fellow villagers and frustrated in what was to him his greatest undertaking up to this point in his life Clare resolved to continue on with poetry and went on writing poems in the hope of eventually bringing them to print.

What at first appeared to be just another small addition to Clare’s woes actually served to bring about a change in his fortunes. Thompson, a bookseller from Stamford, notified Clare that he must immediately clear a debt of fifteen shillings. Clare wrote a letter to Thompson in which he promised to make his payment in full as soon as he was able. Tom Porter agreed to take the message to the bookseller, as well as a few prospectuses. Porter was treated rather badly by Thompson, but at this somewhat dramatic moment Edward Drury, the cousin of John Taylor, the London publisher, came into the bookshop and read one of Clare’s prospectuses, Drury was intrigued by what he read and he paid off

Clare’s debt to the Stamford bookseller. As a businessman Drury was clever and the possible discovery of a genius poet in rural England had 31

interesting implications for him since he had a strong connection with

his relative’s publishing house. Accompanied by Robert Newcomb, the

owner of the Stamford Mercury. Drury, interested in knowing more about

the personal character of his find, according to dare, "calld at a

farmer of the name of dark to dine & enquire into ny character & merits as a poet,"89 Soon afterwards dare met with Drury and Newcomb and dare was assured by Drury that he would not only have Clare’s poems printed but that he would pay him for the transaction,

In order to obtain an objective literary evaluation of dare's work,

Drury showed dare’s poems to "the Revd Mr. Twopenny of Little Casterton who sent them back with a cold note stating that he had no objection to assist in raising the poor man a subscription "tho the poems appeared to him to possess no merit to be worthy of publication,"^ Clare was upset by Twopenny’s criticism, but after Drury showed the same poems to Sir English Dolben "who expressed a different opinion & his name as a subscriber" 91 Clare was heartened again.

In the spring of 1819 dare returned to his work at Casterton filled with optimism and'a desire to write. Patty Turner awaited his return, and during the year Clare became further enamoured with her. Once looked upon with disfavor, and his visits treated more like in­ trusions, dare now became somewhat of a minor celebrity and he was courted by the villagers. His pride had been injured by these same people in the past so, when visits were requested, Clare "neglected to go or but slightly heeded their urgent invitations."7 In the winter dare returned to Helpstone and while he was home he renewed an acquaintance with a girl from Southorp whom he had met at Stamford 32

Fair. The relationship would have continued except that "Patty was then in a situation that marriage only could remedy, . . . She had revealed her situation to her parents when she was unable to conceal it any longer." J Much like Burns in his involvement with Jean Amour, and the subsequent reaction of her family, dare, in reaction to the

Turner’s upbraidings, "felt stubbornly disposed to leave them the risk 94 of her misfortune." Loyalty and compassion prevailed, however, when it became known to dare that Patty was being mistreated as a result of her failing and he committed himself to a definite course of action»

"I gave her money till we shoud be married This behaviour pacifyd them

& left her at peace.In addition to his conflicting emotions and attitudes toward Patty, two years' rent was due on the dare cottage.

Parker dare was disabled by rheumatism and as a last resort the family decided to apply for the parish allowance of five shillings per week.

The parish brand was applied to the family's goods and a list of the dare holdings was recorded in the parish books, dare was incensed by the degradation and the indignity of the proceedings but amid all the turmoil the old family home was salvaged and the family was pre­ served from the parish house when Drury settled the matter of the rent due on the cottage since dare's prospects as a valuable commodity seemed likely. As January 1820 (came round the stability of the family was further insured, at least temporarily, by the appearance of dare's first volume of poems, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery. With the appearance of his poems in print a turning point from the upset of the fall and early winter of 1819 to security, both economically and artistically, seemed to have been attained by dare. 33

John Taylor, in partnership with Janies Augustus Hessey, had already

published works by Keats, Hazlitt, Cary, and Reynolds before Clare’s

Poems Descriptive. and soon after Lamb, DeQuincey, and Landor were to be added to the list of writers published by the Fleet Street firm of 96 Taylor and Hessey. Because both Taylor and Hessey were known for

their honesty and liberalness, they were well respected by writers dealing with them, Taylor, for all his good qualities, was a shrewd businessman and, as Blunden indicates, "Taylor had made sure that the advent of this genuine uneducated poet should be well and timely known through the press, and Clare’s book was immediately successful."9? The time was right for Clare’s volume since Burns’ great success made the idea of a ploughman poet familiar to everyone, and the sale of 26,000 copies of Robert Bloomfield's The Farmer's Boy in 1800, which incor­ porated the idea of a peasant poet, by a relatively unknown publisher, 98 Capel Lofft, prompted Taylor’s belief that the public was interested in genuine untaught geniuses. Clare’s similarity to Burns was perhaps most obvious. Like Burns, who, according to Muir, "became legendary because he was s♦o startingly ordinary" and whose poetry "embodied the obvious in its universal form, the obvious in its essence and its truth, the discovery of which is one of the perennial surprises of mankind"^ so too was Clare quite ordinary, and his poetry dealt with the commonplace. Taylor wanted to insure the success of the "peasant poet" and Octavius Graham Gilchrist, critic, scholar, and Stamford grocer, did much to secure Clare’s position in the contemporary literary world through his introduction of Clare in an article in the London Magazine for January 1820, as well as his advocacy of Clare’s work among his many influential friends.

John Taylor's instincts regarding Clare were proven correct, for

immediately after the publication of 1000 copies of Poems Descriptive

on January 16, 1820 a second thousand copies were called for. The

second edition vanished in much the same way as the first, and in May a third edition was printed, which was followed by a fourth edition before the year was out. The fantastic rapidity with which Clare was brought to the attention of the public resulted in a great disruption in his way of life. Clare received invitations from all quarters. In his first round of visits Clare was shy and embarrassed in the presence of gentry, but it was not long before the novelty of meeting new people wore off. For a while it became a fashionable diversion to take a carriage to the village of Helpstone to see how the "peasant poet" lived.

Not all the curious intruders were tactful and often the Clare family was made to feel freakish. The faddishness of Clare's popularity among a certain set of people is summarized best by Gravest

Clare became a nine days' wonder. He had clay on his boots, hay-seed in his hair, genius in his eye, spoke as charmingly odd a dialect as Burns. . . . Visitors came in coaches from London to the remote village of Helpstone where they gaped at this miraculous son of toil, a rival sideshow to his contemporary, the industrious legless-armless Miss Biffin, who threaded needles and worked samplers with her lips and teeth alone (poor creaturet ),-*-00

The gossipy and the tactless soon became an annoyance for both Clare and his family as he records: "I was often annoyed by such visits & got out of the way whenever I coud & toy wife & vsy mother was often out of temper about it as they was often caught with a dirty house than 35

which nothing was a greater annoyance, Amid the din and clamor

there were some people who were genuinely interested in Clare as a

poet, Mrs, Eliza Emmerson, wife of a London art dealer, became a life­ time friend and admirer of Clare’s poems; Lord Radstock began a sub­

scription list so that dare might gain a measure of independence; and

Herbert Marsh, Bishop of Petersboro, proved to be a valuable friend

over the next twenty years; and there were many others. For Clare it

seemed as though his days of poverty and obscurity were over.

The widespread popularity of dare's Poems Descriptive is attribut­ able to Taylor because in his sympathetic introduction to Clare's poems he carefully avoided any mention of the intrinsic worth of the poetry and concentrated instead on Clare's upbringing and station in life.

Taylor's emphasis on dare’s life and not his work, as Gregory suggests, made dare a "literary curiousity"-*-^ and a chance for Taylor to have an immediate return on a relatively small investment. Taylor was milling over plans for the London Magazine which was about to reach publication when he became aware of Clare, and Taylor "felt that the discovery of an English Burns or another Bloomfield among the poor would have a sensational character favorable for the promotion of new 103 enterprises." Though Taylor’s motivations for bringing Clare to light may not have been entirely ethical in a literary sense, Taylor was responsible for launching dare on his career as a recognized poet.

By suggesting that Clare was in the position of the ancients who wrote poetry without a set tradition as a guide, Taylor appealed to the pre­ vailing romantic sensibility of freedom and spontaneity and the critics 36

in turn dealt with the man behind the poems rather than with the

quality of the verse. At this time Clare owed "his repute largely to

his ’uneducated’ quality. Taylor’s reference to dare as a child

of nature was aimed at exciting popular interest; it associated him with Wordsworth's notion of a poet as expressed in the Preface, and his closing statement in which he quoted from a letter by dare: "If my hopes don't succeed the hazard is not of much consequence: if I sink for want of friends, my old friend Necessity is ready to help me as before"'^'’ made Clare seem too virtuous to be ridiculed.

Taylor’s machinations succeeded because most of the reviewers found the new discovery from Northamptonshire praiseworthy. The Quarterly. which had attacked Hazlitt and mocked Keats tinder the editorship of

William Gifford, who according to Bate was "certainly one of the least attractive figures of the day''^^ lauded Poems Descriptive, In May

1820 Gilchrist and Gifford himself wrote a high complimentary review which centered on the fact that Clare’s ability to write poetry, given his background, and despite his being English seemed just short of miraculous. With blissful condescension the reviewers;note that: He looks abroad with the eye of a poet, and with the minute­ ness of a naturalist, but the intelligence which he gains is always referred to the heart; it is thus that the falling leaves become admonishers and friends, the idlest weed has its resemblance in his own lowly lot, and the opening prim­ rose of spring suggests the promise that his own long winter of neglect and obscurity will yet be succeeded by a summer’s sun of happier fortune. The volume we believe scarcely contains a poem in which this process is not adopted; nor one in which imagination is excited without some corresponding tone of tenderness, or morality. When the discouraging circumstances under which the bulk of it was composed are considered, it is really astonishing that so few examples should be foundQqf querulousness and impatience, none of envy or dispair, 37

Clare’s success was further heralded by the London Magazine, Gentleman's Magazine, New Monthly. Eclectic Review, Annual Register, and newspapers

such as the Morning Post, and even as far as America where his work was 108 reviewed by the Analectic Magazine in Philadelphia, The great success of Clare's poetry in 1820 was achieved in part as a result of the considerable number of people interested in reading

poetry, as well as Taylor's superb publicity. Popular interest in

poetry swelled enormously after the 1812 appearance of Byron! s Childe

Harold I and II; and by 1820 when Clare's Poems Descriptive was pub- 109 lished there existed an extensive poetry reading public. Reading about country and villages in particular was fashionable and in vogue.

The widespread interest in Clare, the man behind the poetry, was a pop­ ular aspect of the interest in "country poetry" which had been growing since the turn of the century, "The Farmer's Boy" by Robert Bloomfield initiated the fashion, followed by: "The Happy Village" by Richard Wallis; "The Distressed Village" by William Golden; and "A Village

Romance" by Jane Elson. Clare's volume was composed of lyrics, and though interest in poetry was high, the public favored narrative poems and most lyric writers, even those with superior artistry, fared less well. In a letter to Clare in August 1820, Taylor tells of Keats's plight: "We have some

Trouble to get through 500 Copies of his Work, though it is highly spoken of in the periodical Works.Shelley's effect on the public was quite limited; indeed as Blunden states: "With society, at least with n? English society, Shelley was of course anathema." Clare's popularity 38

in 1820 is significant because Poems Descriptive contains a majority of lyric poems, and the widespread acceptance of the volume came at a time when lyric poetry was generally neglected. Clare’s success had little to do with his poetic abilities since Taylor's introduction caused many people to purchase Poems Descriptive out of curiosity. The implications of the popularity of Poems Descriptive, that Clare was more interesting as a man than as a poet, were later verified by the substantial decrease in his popularity even though his poetry improved.

The excitement of seeing his first volume of poetry published was surpassed by his first visit to London early in March which Clare describes» "I could almost fancy that my identity as well as my occupa­ tion had changed; that I was not the same John Clare, but that some stranger soul had jumped into my skin." After his arrival in London he was courted by the social and artistic elite. Among others he met the pious and evangelical Lord Radstook, who later established a sub­ scription fund for Clare and invested the collected money in Navy Five nA percents to insure a continued income for the poet. In addition, dare met the landscape painter DeWInt and had his portrait painted by

Hilton who also painted Keats. Because Patty was pregnant and expect­ ing shortly, Clare had to cut short his London visit. By the end of the first week in March Clare was home again in order to marry Patty at the Casterton Magna Church on the l6th. Early in June Patty gave birth to dare's first daughter Anna Marie.

For the time being Clare's financial difficulties appeared to be solved and he found the freedom to read as he pleased. Besides reading 39

widely in Dryden, Johnson, and Pope he was busy writing, and it was not long before he was ready for a second volume. As summer approached, however, it became apparent that what he thought was a small fortune was in fact little more than he might have earned as a day-laborer.

As a result of his rather meager earnings and his tenuous position, since he was supporting his mother and father as well as his wife and child, business matters rose in order of importance.

Unfortunately about this time there was a falling out between

Taylor aid Drury. Both Taylor aid Drury argued over who was to manage

Clare’s literary effairs, and the dissention between the two partners caused a great deal of upset for Clare. Drury discovered Clare, decided to publish his poems, and advanced money to him, while Taylor had edited and published the poems, and introduced Clare to the English literary scene. Both men sought control of Clare’s future endeavors because each felt responsible for Clare's success as a poet. In April, however, an agreement between the feuding partners was reached. Matters became worse for Clare though as his loyalty was tested on another front when

Lord Radstock advised Taylor to delete certain poems from future editions of Poems Descriptive because they were offensive to delicate sensibili­ ties. Mrs. Emmerson joined Radstock by urging Clare to remove certain radical passages from his work. An open split occurred between Taylor and Radstock when Radstock, in a gesture of paternal munificence towards the peasant Clare, insisted that a written agreement between Clare and

Taylor be drawn up and agreed upon before the publication of the next volume of poems. In an immediate reply Taylor defended his position, 40

and shortly thereafter he offered Clare an ultimatum» he would deal

with Clare and not with Radstock in any way for the copyright of the

next volume. Since Taylor already had many of the poems for the proposed second volume, Mrs. Emmerson advised Clare to keep Taylor as his pub­

lisher, because a change of publishers would only bring on a long delay,

but to agree in writing upon the method of distributing the profits

from the sale of the volume. In December therefore, with the meddling

Radstock out of the way, Taylor began his selection of poems for Clare’s

new volume and by January 1821 Clare was ready to sign an agreement

which would bind him to Taylor for all future publications. The almost comic intrigue was heightened still further first by Drury, who suggested

that Clare take Radstock’s advice to beware of Taylor, and secondly by

Radstock, who wrote to Drury about the deviousness of Taylor. In his

reply to Radstock, Drury then defended Taylor. In other words, Radstock*s

proposal that dare take precautions against Taylor, was later re-proposed

by Taylor to Clare to save Clare from Radstock. Eventually dare agreed

to Taylor’s proposal but after second thoughts Taylor dropped the entire matter. Clare could not tolerate discord; especially among his friends ani acquaintances, and during the months of December and January he relapsed into one of the fits which had occurred during his youth. The nervous disorder caused by his concern for the welfare of his family, the pro­ duction of his next volume, and the dissention among his friends, af­ flicted Clare throughout the winter. The destruction of some very old elm trees heightened Clare's agitated condition as he related to Taylor in a letter which Taylor quoted In his introduction to the Village 41

Minstrel.115

On May 11 Taylor informed Clare that he had purchased the London

Magazine and that the problems of editorship left little time for him

to work on the publication of the new volume of Clare's poems. The summer months were fast approaching and it was of utmost importance to get Clare's new volume, the Village Minstrel, in print before the

literari left London on holiday. Clare's anxiety over the delay in

publication was further aggravated by the news of the death of his newly 11 z born second daughter early in June. By July 5 the volume was complete

except for the introduction which Taylor had not completed. Four months after he began, in Late August, Taylor announced that the introduction was completed and that publication would commence at once. On September

22nd Clare saw his second volume in print for the first time, but, the time of the year was wrong as Mrs. Emmerson wrote,"The season is sadly against the sale." 117 The frustration in Clare's personal life, the delay in publication, and the ominous import of Mrs. Emmerson's letter suggest that the whole venture was doomed from the start, Indeed, the Village Minstrel was far less popular than Poems Descriptive, and by

December, 1821, the relative failure was sufficiently evident. The reasons for the less than enthusiastic reception of The Village

Minstrel had more to do with the time of its appearance rather than the quality of the verse. In his introduction Taylor had noted the rise of Clare's fortunes; it was almost impossible for Clare to be much worse off, but people who found the notion of a peasant poet interesting in

1820 were less interested in a peasant who made good in 1821, The time 42

involved between publication of his first and second volume was quite

long, dare could have had several volumes ready for publication in

the time between the first and second volume. As Tibble suggests:

dare had a public genuinely interested in his poetry; had Taylor been able to publish his books as often as Clare could write them, he might have established himself with his own,,« public, as Wordsworth did with his between 1820 and I83O."

Fewer critics reviewed the Village Minstrel than Poems Descriptive.

and the reviewers, though generally favorable, were more precise in their criticisms. The New Monthly, Literary Chronicle. Literary Gazette,

Gentleman's Magazine, European Magazine, and Eclectic Review reviewed

dare’s new volume, and their criticisms centered on Clare’s use of nq dialect and provincialism as well as his choice of subject matter.

A rather offhanded incident in connection with the reviews of the Village

Minstrel sheds more light on Clare's ability to make an intelligent distinction between valid and invalid criticism than it does on the work criticized, Taylor sent Clare a copy of a review intended for the

London Magazine in which the author criticized Clare's obscurity, wordi­ ness, and the narrowness of his choice of imagery. In addition he dis­ liked the glossary, and he wished to see a more genteel and established diction used. Clare inserted his comment at the end of the review: There are a many just faults found in this Criticism among some trifling. The censures are generally just, and the praises, in one or two instances, more than I can dare or can believe I deserve. His observation that Poets should conform their thoughts or style to the taste of the country, by which he means fashion, is humbug, and shows that he has no foundation of judgment for a critic that might be relied on. His lights led astray. 12®

Though his popularity was already in eclipse, his poetry showed a 43

degree of maturation, and the promise of his first volume was being fulfilled. The period of security, short lived as it was, was over, and the delay in publication of his second volume was only a prelude to the greater delay in his next volume. Tension, disappointment, and the constant pressure of poverty pressed hard on Clare during his ap­ prentice period; nevertheless he continued to write verse and his sub­ sequent publications indicate the advances he was making as he bade

"Clos’d illusions—fare ye well." 44

CHAPTER WO

The Bliss of Life

"This Transient Treasure"

The success of Poems Descriptive was due to superb advance public­

ity and the eagerness of a large poetry-reading public to know more

about the rustic from Northamptonshire who wrote poems. Most of the

verse in Poems Descriptive, however, is imitative and formative, though

there are signs of unique distinction which indicate the direction

Clare would later take. The number of verse forms used indicates

that Clare was well aware of other poets and that he was searching for

a comfortable mode of expression based on his study of other poets’ work. In this volume Clare's poems were grouped in three sections:

forty descriptive and narrative poems in open couplets, one of which

is in the Spenserian stanza, twelve ballads and songs in quatrain and

ballad stanza, and twenty-one sonnets. By examining representative

poems from the ballads, songs, descriptive and narrative poems, and particularly the sonnets, one can gain a clearer understanding and appreciation of Clare's abilities and achievements as a poet.

Ballads such as "Her I Love," "Patty of the Vale," and "The First of May" are attractively unaffected in their essential folk sentiment.

Patty from "Patty of the Vale" lives innocently in an ideal pastoral setting; the pristine beauty of a spring day in the rural countryside is complemented by the joy it instills in the local inhabitants as they i+5

pair off in "The First of May"; and the superiority of the persona’s

beloved to all things in nature is enumerated and praised in "Her I

Love," In "Dolly’s Mistake: or The Ways of the World" the preSminence of virtuous living is implied by the recapitulation of the ruination of

the unfortunate Dolly. The point seems to be relatively simple, and

Dolly's behavior appears to be the center of attention. The essential

impropriety of her actions is emphasized in the beginning as Dolly

proclaims that what she did was wrong, and at the end when she warns

other maidens to be very cautious. The simplicity and superficial

treatment of the subject are deceptive, and Clare appears to have aimed

at this effect. He was an exact observer and had a penchant for noting

detail. Dolly receives warnings from several quarters. Neighbors, hay-

mowers, and a fellow at the fair give her advice. More subtly, however

things in nature and the pace of her normal routine are at variance.

Her adventure begins after a sleepless night, and she commences her

activities at an earlier than usual hour. As Dolly walks past her cows with the deceitful Ralph the cows keep "booing" loud enough to

make her stop momentarily because their unusual behavior seems to be a warning. Indeed it is a warning, and Dolly’s refusal to heed the warning suggests her impending loss of innocence, and it introduces

tiie theme of her passage from innocence to experience. Once Dolly

passes from innocence to experience she is unable to understand the world in simple terms and her native environment seems foreign. 46

Prior to her "mistake" Dolly’s understanding of the world around her

was childlike; dew-drops in the early spring morning that "glitter’d

like glass" and the buttercups over the meads that swarmed like "so

many suns in the grass" became, in her imagination, a "fine string of

beads" for her. Immediately after her misfortune, however, "The moon

blush’d for shame, . , . Behind a cloud sneaking" and Dolly is left in darkness.

Irony plays a part in suggesting the way in which Dolly leaves

her innocence behind, and it contributes to the theme of the difference

between innocence and experience. A perpetual reminder of her rejec­

tion of the warnings she received from the people and things around

her is made pitiously clear to Dolly at the end when it is related that she is continually reproved by her mother and that she is one of

the transgressors who issues warnings to others. In addition, her

response to nature is severely altered. Whereas at first nature had

suggested a promise of ideality, after her fall nature seems to join

the chorus of reprimand. But the sharpest irony in the poem is asso­

ciated with the word "mistake." The word appears last in every stanza.

There are eleven stanzas in the poem and if the poem is divided after

stanza five it can be seen that when the word "mistake" is used in each of these stanzas it has the connotation of a warning, and it is

ironic that Dolly should disregard the warnings proffered to her. As the couple travel to the fair arm in arm, Dolly leaves her natural environment and seeks the unnaturalness and superficiality of the fair, and she is beguiled by Ralph as he "veigL’d" her off. It is quite 47 ironie that Ralph begins his seduction by offering Dolly whatever she wants so long as she asks for it, which Dolly sees as his way of making sure "That he mightn’t go make a mistake." Once at the fair Dolly is enthralled and amazed by the spectacle, and when she says:

Here some sell so cheap, as they’d even go gi’em If conscience would take . . . the ironic cast of the poem takes on added dimension in view of what happens to Dolly. First, she affects a superficial air once out of her native environment and she gives away her innocence willingly, and when she returns to her former environment she is judged severely in much the same way as she judges the values at the fair prior to her downfall. Secondly Ralph is the type of person who would take something for nothing without scruple but when faced with responsibility does not feel conscience bound. Dolly is passive until stanza six where she is faced with a decision. When she decides whether or not to buy a partic­ ular type of cake she assumes a new set of values since the events at the fair are beyond the realm of her past experience, and therefore she must sample each of the cakes offered. Once she actively pursues new experiences she works into thé hands of Ralph because "then there could be no mistake," Dolly receives her last warning at the fair by a "sly Merry Andrew" but Dolly has allowed herself to assume the superficial values of the fair in her willing acceptance of the experiences opened to her and she pays no attention to the import of his speech. When she and Ralph arrive at some hay-cocks in the meads

Dolly ironically defends Ralph’s suggestion that they rest by saying: "What a fool I should be to mistake." Her understanding of Ralph is 48

based upon the things he has given her, and when pressed for a return on his investment she sees his actions as good and she believes him to be in love with her; therefore, based on her new line of reason­ ing, which stems from her ready acceptance of new experiences, she explains, "where could I see the mistake?" A bitter note is sounded as Dolly relates how she was undone, and the poem takes on another ironic twist because in placing the blame of all her misfortune squarely on the shoulders of Ralph, Dolly fails to take into account the numerous warnings she received.

In other ballads such as "Crazy Nell" and "The Fate of Any" Clare uses detail effectively, though he is more apparently imitative. "Crazy Nell" seems to have its roots in such Wordsworthian poems as "The Idiot

Boy" and "Michael" as well as having an affinity to "She Dwelt Among

Untrodden Ways." Clare’s debt to other poets is apparent in "Familiar

Epistle," which is analogous to Burns’ "Epistle to John Lapraik"; in both poems the value of the individual and spontaneity are praised.

Cowper’s "To Mary" is the origin and the target of Clare satiric "My

Mary," Clare’s debt also extends to Thompson, Cunningham, Milton,

Ramsay, and Goldsmith.Exact observation and precise rendering of detail are evident in Clare's ballads and tales, but in his descrip­ tive pieces the clarity of certain details and the directness of lan­ guage gives these poems a lyrical strength that is unique to Clare,

In the description of frogs in "Summer Evening": From the hay-cock's moisten’d heaps, Startled frogs take vaunting leaps 49

Quick the dewy grass divides Moistening sweet their speckled sides; From the grass or flow’ret's cup, Quick the dew-drop bounces up.

dare notes with precision the minute and the idiosyncratic of both

the frog and the immediate scene: from the "speckled" sides of the

frog to the motions of the dew-drops as the frog passes through the grass. The intensity of "Noon" is enhanced by the simplicity of the

language and the clarity of the images presented. The utter heat and

silence of a summer noon takes on a surrealistic cast as a result of

the precision of the visual images. The "dazzled eye" surveys the

"liquid blaze" and "scorching gleams" which makes the scene appear

"As if crooked bits of glass/Seem’d repeatedly to pass," and "panting

sheep" along with shepherds "In the swaliest corner creep" as "Drowking

lies the meadow sweet." The vital configuration of visual and audi­

tory images in "The Fountain" also enhances the air of mystery that pervades the poem:

Ye gently dimpling, curling streams, Rilling as smooth as summer-dreams I’d just streak’d down, and with a swish Whang’d off my hat, soak’d like a fish.

Exact and vivid descriptions are channeled into the specific poetic form of the Spenserian stanza in "The Harvest Morning." The

poem begins with the sounds of a crowing cock and the striking of the village clock. These sounds initiate the action within the poem by

setting all other things in motion. The farmer, awakened to another day of toil, begins his round of daily chores. As the dawn grows into daylight, the number of sounds increases as more things are nudged from 50

rest, and the early morning scene comes into sharper focus. The be­

ginning of day is initially signaled by nature’s timepiece, the cock,

and man's mechanical clock, and as the day begins the bustling sounds

of animate and inanimate aspects of the landscape increase. The

visual and the auditory features of the morning come into clearer per­

spective as the sun burns off the morning mist and the mower, who

dreads the sultry day, begins his work "with sharp and tinkling sound." Once the harvest activities are in full swing the details of the actual

labor come into view. The "rustling sheaves" are loaded on the wagon and the loading boy’s power and strength diminishes as "The barley

horn his garments interweaves" causing him to mutter curses as "he mauls the heaps away."

In the first four stanzas the picture is clear and distinct in

much the same way as Cowper's descriptions of extended views and wide

expanses; there is no blurring of boundaries. In Book I of "The Task"

Cowper guides the reader over the landscape; foreground and background

remain distinct and separate. Similarly through the use of very pre­

cise images in the first four stanzas Clare directs the reader’s

attention by singling out significant aspects of the scene. Clare and

Cowper are similar in some ways but Clare's use of imagery is functional and sets him apart from Cowper. The auditory images in "The Harvest

Morning" have a twofold purpose; they enact an event, and they enhance the meaning of the poem. Sounds initiate all the actions within the

poem, and the customary way of life of the rural worker is suggested by the routine that begins with the various sounds associated with dawn. 51

In the first four stanzas Clare's attention is riveted on the scene

before him and he relates various details such as the wagon’s "rattling

sound," the "ponderous resting creaking fork," and the "smarting sweat­ ing" laborer. Clare's selection of particulars enhances the complete

picture and contributes to a final impression that is powerful. Un­

fortunately, after the half-way point in the poem Clare digresses,

moralizing on the conditions of the laborers. He discusses poverty

and the charms of rural living, and the poem becomes less urgent and more rhetorical in character. Whereas in the first four stanzas the imagery brought unity to the stanza, the imagery in the remainder of

the poem becomes less precise, less personal, more statuesque, and

Augustan in tone.

Like so many Eighteenth-Century writers, such as Pope at the end of "Windsor Forest," Clare seems to have felt the objective experience complete in itself but was impelled to relate the experience to uni­ versal ideas; therefore he attempted to round off his poems by address­ ing himself to universal concepts. The division between precise ob­ servation and direct rendering of what he observed, in verse, and the channeling of his exact apprehension of nature into pre-conceived forms is evident throughout Poems Descriptive. Clare is at his best in small segments; when he attempts a longer poem he loses contact with his original impulse. In "To An April Daisy," for example, he con­ centrates fully on the flower. The poem is related in the first person, and though it is implied that the speaker is like the flower because like the flower he is persistent even after the disappointment 52

of his fondest hopes, Clare maintains a distinction between the flower

and the speaker:

Now winter's storms shall cease their pelting rage, But winter's woes I need not tell to thee; Far better luck thy visits well presage, And be it thine and mine that luck to see.

Clare’s description of the flower is lucid and it is effective in so

far as it functions as an analogy for the speaker’s condition; however

there is a note of sentimentality that enters at the end of the poem: "We’ll mix our wishes in a tokening tear" which does not appear to be warranted by what has come earlier. In addition, there is a weakness in the language. The flower is addressed as "old matey," "beauty's gem," and "venturer" which seem opposed to the emotional impulse of the poem. The effectiveness of the poem is lessened by these defects but the poem is not destroyed entirely. When Clare is descriptive he is at his best, and though the emotional impulse and the style of the poem are at some variance, the use of the first person as an aspect of the dramatic situation enhances the descriptive strengths,

"To An April Daisy" is an important poem because in it Clare at­ tempts to illustrate the reciprocity of thought and emotion in associ­ ation with a unique experience in nature. The stress on the individu­ ality of what appears in the landscape distinguishes "To An April

Daisy" from meditative-descriptive verse of epigramatic statement where thought and feelings have an objective counterpart. The disso­ ciation between thought and feelings expressed at the end of the poem indicates the major problem faced by Romantic descriptive poets. Langbaum points out that most meditative-descriptive verse of the 53

Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries remained sentimental since thought,

emotion, and perceived object were merely juxtaposed and because:"the ideas come ready made from sources outside the poem, with the result

that their imposition on the landscape either strikes us as superfluous or reduces the landscape to a metaphor." Clare's maintenance of the distinction between the speaker and the flower, and his precise render­ ing of the scene gives the landscape particularity. The speaker relates his feelings in association with particularly realized aspects of the scene, and, as Langbaum suggests, "The emphasis on particularity (the autobiographical connection being one means of achieving it) is a guar­ antee that the poem is an authentic experience which gives birth to an idea rather than the illustration of a ready-made idea."^ When Clare maintains a balance among all elements within his poetry he achieves distinction, but when he attempts to attribute emotions that are un­ warranted by the event or scene described he falls into sentimentality. The division between Clare's animated perception and his tendency to sentimental moralizing is evident in several poems in Poems Descrip­ tive and it is the major fault of his early work. "Helpstone" is basically melancholic and ruminative though it is ostensibly a descrip­ tive poem. The immediacy of the descriptive passages is destroyed by the elevated tone as Clare austerely comments on the various problems confronting the rural village and its inhabitants. In many ways

"Helpstone" suffers in much the same way as Crabbe's "The Village" 4 because like "The Village" "Helpstone" is "structurally feeble."

Clare’s description is inorganic and, like Crabbe's poem, a series of &

descriptions leads to a split in the overall conception of his subject.

Helpstone village is at first described in ideal terms but as the poem

progresses several digressions enter in regarding the degraded and

poverty stricken villagers, and the unity of the poem is destroyed.

In several other poems where Clare deals with life philosophically,

such ass "What Is Life," "The Universal Epitaph," and "On a Lost Grey­

hound," he tends to be sentimental and reflective rather than emotional and thoughtful. The idea that Clare wishes to bring to our attention

in "Falling Leaves," for example, is not poetically realized and when the idea is expressed it appears unearned. He begins:

Hail, falling leaves! That patter round, Admonishers and friends; Reflection wakens at the sound— So, Life, thy pleasure ends.

The sight of the falling leaves is supposed to be the basis on which

he builds a poem dealing with the shortness and shortcomings of life,

the inequality of men, the apparent meaningless of death, and he then

comes full circle and in a gush of sentimentality speaks of his own unhappy condition:

A few more years, and I the same As they are now, shall be, With nothing left to tell ny name, Or answer, "Who was he?"

The emotional response, however, is unearned, a sense of urgency is not sustained, the language is awkward, and he seems to be unsure of what his real subject is. In "To An Insignificant Flower" also the transience of life and love, the speaker's abilities that are unknown and unappreciated by the world are lamented, but as in the other more 55

philosophical poems the cause for the action and response in the poem is uncertain and unclear.

It is in the sonnets that appeared in Poems Descriptive that two

significant points in relation to Clare's achievement emerge. First,

Clare's chief concerns, both philosophical and poetical, are reflected

in the sonnets, and secondly, though many faults found in the rest of

the volume appear in the sonnets, Clare's experiments within the sonnet

form indicate that the sonnet provided a mode of expression conducive

to his temperament.

The sonnets fall into two basic groups. The first group contains

sonnets that follow a formal pattern; there are five Shakespearian

sonnets and four sonnets that are a variation on the Shakespearian model but are consistent in their variation. The second group contains eleven sonnets with no two of identical pattern, as well as one thirteen- line experiment,The dates supplied by Tibble shows that Clare al- z ternated his experimentation and his writing in the traditional mode,

The appearance of regular sonnets along with an even larger number of experimental sonnets in the same volume indicates the problems Clare faced as a fledgling poet. Since his education was sporadic, and because he read and admired the great poets of England, Clare felt compelled to write within traditional forms, yet his impulses led him to experimentations. His use of the Shakespearian form and his adapta­ tion of that form suggest the difficulty Clare had in fitting his perceptions into a conventional or regular verse pattern. A tension, therefore, exists in Clare's regular sonnets between the form of the 56

sonnet and. the impulse of the sentiment. Instead of a three part

development followed by a couplet in the Shakespearian form, for ex­

ample, tiie sentiment in Clare’s sonnets is developed along the lines

of octave and sestet units. The variety of verse forms within Poems Descriptive indicates Clare's search for a vehicle for his thought,

and the degree of experimentation within the sonnets suggests that the sonnet form allowed him to express his most characteristic perceptions and attitudes before he was able to objectify them later in his great

short lyrics. Though Clare continued to experiment with other verse

forms throughout his life his greatest achievement is found in short

poems where the intuitive truth within him bursts forth, The expres­

sion of Clare’s short, quick, and precise probings at the very roots

of reality found their first expression in his sonnets.

The division between precise descriptive and sentimental moralizing

found in the other poems in Poems Descriptive also occurs in the sonnets

and this division is perhaps most evident within the sonnets following

a regular pattern. In each of his Shakespearian sonnets Clare begins

in description and progresses toward a concept that pertains to the thing described. The development of a single mood in these sonnets or the elaboration of an idea expressed in a single image is first estab­ lished. The concluding couplet, however, wherein the unity and inten­ sity of what has preceded must be sustained and given new dimension often fails to meet this requirement. The articulation of the couplet in a Shakespearian sonnet is a technical problem of greatest difficul- ty, but in Clare’s case the technical success or failure of the couplet 57

is of less importance than the progress it indicates toward a recon­

ciliation between the observed world and Clare's ideas about the world. The interaction of mind and scene is a mutual affair; a scene and Clare's

reaction to that scene comment on each other and lead to something else.

A landscape has a particular effect on Clare and his emotional response

to the landscape colors his rendering of the landscape. The chief

problem faced by Clare was to gain a command over his experiences and

in the sonnets we can see Clare struggling to achieve this end.

In "The Ant" Clare begins by concentrating on the size, "little

insect, infinitely small," and shape, "curious texture . , . minute

frame," of the ant. More tactile images are enumerated and the scope

of the ant's environment is enlarged, though the ant is the measure of all things. The ant raises, "monstrous hills" which are "Larger

than mountains when compared" and it drags a crumb of "Huge size"

which the speaker finds "strange," At this point, after eight lines

of careful observation and description, the speaker refers to that

"great instinct" which "Endues this mite with cheerfulness," and in the concluding couplet he goes a step further and draws an analogy between

the "great instinct" of the ant and the "soothing power" granted to

man. The progression from an observation of an ant to a comment on

the condition of mankind at first appears to be illogical and tangen­

tial. However, though "The Ant" as a sonnet is weak, it does illustrate what Clare was trying to do within the Shakespearian sonnet form.

In the first eight lines the speaker is very precise and exact in his description. The images depicted follow a pattern that empha- 58

sizes a variety of dimensions. Thus the "little insect" is compared to its "large , . , foresight" as well as to other physical aspects

of the landscape, and the structure of the first two quatrains enhances

the dialectic nature of the image pattern. In the first quatrain a

description of the physical attributes of the ant is followed by a

comment on the spiritual nature of the insect. Relationships between

the ant and his surroundings are established in the first half of the

second quatrain, and in the last half the scope of the comparison of

the ant is broadened to include man as the ant drags "the crumb dropt by the village swain." In addition to the images pertaining to texture

and dimension there is also a countering of observed physical phe­

nomena and the speaker's interpretation of the phenomena. The speaker

observes the ant's actions and interprets them as "talents not unworthy

fame" and an indication of great "foresight." At the end of the octave

the speaker sums up what he has observed by stating that the ant—and

what the ant does—"is strange indeed." Emphasis shifts from a descrip­

tion of a particular action and immediate interpretation by the speaker in the third quatrain to a more generalized speculation on the moti­

vating force behind the ant's actions. In his ruminations about the "great instinct" which animates the ant, the speaker also comments on

the ant's state of being when he refers to its "cheerfulness" and "toiling labours." What has happened is that Clare has come from a very precise rendering of an insect and its physical relationships in the world to a ruminative and highly speculative interpretation of the ant's actions. Unfortunately the conclusion bears only a tenuous relation to the rest of the sonnet. The shift in emphasis, from the ant’s actions to the "great instinct," for example, is viable only in so far as it follows the imagistic pattern in which a smaller thing is compared to a larger thing. That is, the ant is small in compari­ son to its surroundings, and after observing the ant in relation to its surroundings the speaker makes a somewhat analogous comparison between a large concept, "great instinct," and the physical world.

The larger comparison between what the speaker has observed and his interpretation of the observed action is only analogous; it does not grow naturally from the observed action as it should in a true Shake­ spearian sonnet, the sentiment is closer to a Petrarchan model. Fur­ thermore, the "cheerfulness" of the ant is clearly a value judgment made by the speaker and it seems oddly out of place both in regards to the imagery and the tone of the poem. The division between thought and observed fact is the undoing of the sonnet, but it indicates

Clare’s attempt to gain mastery over his perception of the natural world. An attempt to blend an evocation of natural scenery and a partic­ ular mood is apparent in "Evening," In the first quatrain the restor« ative power of the evening is referred to in conjunction with the natural scene and man. The first and second lines refer to particular facts: it is evening and evening is a time of restoration. In the second half of the quatrain the effect of evening on man and nature is recorded. A linking between the first and second half of the quatrain is suggested first by the interlocking rhyme scheme and secondly by 60

the thoughts expressed. "Glaring daylight’s" close is surely welcomed

by those involved in "weary labour," and "nursing eve" approaching

with "reviving dews" insures the continuance of nature's beauty. The

second quatrain also falls into two divisions. The first half of the

quatrain contains two, somewhat abstract, apostrophes, while in the second half precise facts are related. Both apostrophes are vague as

well as repetitive:

Hail, cooling sweetsI that breathe so sweetly here; Hail, lovely Eve I whose hours so lovely prove;

The first apostrophe is essentially sensual, "cooling sweets , , ,

breathe," while the second apostrophe is descriptive and factual,

"lovely Eve . . . hours . . , prove." In the second half of the quat­

rain particular aspects of the general idea stated in each of the

apostrophes are enumerated:

Thy silent calmt to solitude so dear; And oh, this darkness1 dearer still to love.

Sensual and factual are mixed in these two lines; "silent calm" is

related to "solitude" and "darkness" is related to "love." Taken as a whole the quatrain is an enactment of an inter-relationship among

its various components. The rhyme scheme and thought indicate a re­

lationship between lines five and seven, and six and eight; "cooling

sweets" and "silent calm" are sensual, and "Eve" and "darkness" are directly related. The blending of sensual and factual in the last half of the quatrain enhances the overall impetus of the quatrain and it prepares us for the next quatrain. Certain observed facts asso­

ciated with the approach of evening serve to remind the speaker of 61

of particular delights. Up to this point Clare has attempted to blend

the particular and the general by juxtaposing the factual and the

sensual. In the third quatrain the actions of lovers in the night

are alluded to and an attempt is made to amalgamate the sensual and

factual aspects of the scene. The lover seeks "silent plains" on which

to dally with his "charmer" and where vows of love, "jealous pains,"

and "doubtful fancies" can be brought to light. Unfortunately, a

sense of place is lost when the actions of the lovers are dwelt upon.

Whereas in the first two quatrains equal attention was given to man

and nature, in the third quatrain scant mention is made about nature,

"silent plains," and the tone is antithetical to the mood of the first

two quatrains. Furthermore, the emphasis on the couple alluded to in

the third quatrain digresses from the idea of evening as a restorative

power. In the concluding couplet the attempt to bring the first two quatrains and the third together fails primarily because the diffusion of images, tone, and mood of the third, quatrain is too great to over­ come. The speaker disavows himself from the intrigues of nocturnal lovemaking in the first line of the quatrain, and in the concluding line he affirms his love of evening. The result is that the couplet seems superfluous. Instead of commenting on what has preceded the couplet appears to be an attempt at summing up the speaker's feelings in relation to the landscape at evening. At the end of the sonnet the scene is not fully realized, and the speaker's response to the scene is not completely warranted.

A marked change in emphasis after the second quatrain, similar to 62

the division in "Evening," is evident in "To The Winds," The sonnet

begins with the speaker’s direct observation of the landscape and the

effect of the natural scene on him. In the first two quatrains the

apprehension of the wind's action is precise, "crimp the wrinkled flood

below," and it is personal. Besides showing the relationship between

the speaker and the wind, the action of the wind is enacted by the

language and the order of the various images. The action of the wind builds from "gentle winds" to "brisker gusts." The excitement suggested

by the intensity of the building winds is enhanced by the sense imagery

in the first quatrain. The auditory sense is appealed to first as

the "murmuring sounds" of "the gentle winds" are alluded to, and the visual sense is aroused as the speaker watches the willows "wavering

to and fro." Tactile, visual, and auditory images are combined when

the speaker relates his delight in stretching on "the daisied ground"

to watch the action of the wind on the "flood below." Both the action

of the wind and the intensity of the sense imagery increase in the second

quatrain. The speaker is:

Delighted more as brisker gusts succeed And give the landscape round a sweeter grace.

The wind and the action of the wind on the landscape, as well as the reaction of the speaker to what is happening, are unified by the inter­ action of sense imagery and the wind's intensity. In the last two lines of the quatrain all senses are appealed to in conjunction with the "sweeping" action of the wind:

Sweeping in shaded;waves the ripening mead Puffing their rifled fragrance in my face. 63

The movement of the imagery is away from the wind itself to the action

of the wind on the landscape and the speaker. The fragrance of the

ripening mead is "rifled" by the wind before it reaches the speaker’s

face. In other words, the wind is the medium through which the speaker

is made a part of the landscape as well as the means by which his

senses are informed, Clare appears to take a great leap away from what has preceded when, in the third stanza, the speaker alludes to

"Painters of nature," Indeed, the remainder of the sonnet seems quite

off the point of what has been portrayed in the first two quatrains unless the relationship established between the speaker and the land­ scape around him is kept in mind. In the first two quatrains the wind served as a medium through which nature could be rendered clearly. An analogous medium is introduced in the third quatrain when the speaker refers to the painters of nature. The painters of nature as a medium to understand the world is used in much the same way as the wind.

The painters of nature are "doubly dear," it is suggested, because they capture forever the charms of nature and because the natural beauty that is wrought by their artistry is passed on to nature’s children via their paintings. The analogy between the winds and the painters of nature as media is strengthened by the similarity of images used. Like the gentle winds the painters are loved because of their

"whispering charms" which are "murmur’d sweet to many an ear." The use of sense imagery, especially auditory images, recalls the images used in conjunction with the winds in the first quatrain where the apprehension of nature was direct and sensual. In addition, the 64

images suggest the relationship between art and nature and the speak­

er’s response to nature via art. The implication is that nature can

be accurately perceived through art, and that one can respond to nature

through art just as sensually as one can respond to the actual experi­

ence. Awkwardness and stiffness pervade the third quatrain and as a result the suggestion that art can be as direct and as sensual as ex­

perience is less convincing. Clare seems too self-conscious; the

images he uses have a relationship that is associative rather than

organic, In the concluding couplet the speaker is overly sentimental and his condescending self-pity all but ruins the sonnet:

And at this moment many a weed ye wave, That hides the bard in his forgotten grave.

Clare’s tendency to sentimentalize is perhaps most evident in "To

A Favorite Tree." Like "The Ant," "Evening," and "To The Winds,"

Clare uses the Shakespearian form in "To A Favorite Tree" and again there is a split between two analogous ideas after eight lines. In the first quatrain an "Old favourite tree" is the center of attention.

The manner in which the tree is described is stiff and it appears that Clare was purposely trying to distance the tree and make it stand for something more than a mere tree. There are no precise and distinctive perceptions, and the language is essentially Augustan.

The speaker asks if the tree has also "fled the scene," and he is sad­ dened that its '"dining age" could not delay the woodsman's axe so that it might "die in picturesque decay." In the second quatrain the suggestion of self-pity indicated by the speaker's attitude toward the tree in the first quatrain is full blown. The tree itself is lost 65

sight of as the speaker ruminates on the various evils of the day, and

the diffuseness of the imagery in conjunction with the precious tone

of the quatrain mitigates a true response:

What hadst thou done to meet a tyrant’s frown Small value was the ground on which thou stood; But gain's rude rage it was that cut thee down, And dragg’d thee captive from thy native wood.

The third quatrain brings the tree back into focus in association with

the dimension of time. The speaker refers to the tree as he knew it in the summer and as he knows it now. That Clare was attempting to make the tree stand for something more is indicated by the willful distancing of the tree, by the diction, and by the imagery. A resolu­ tion to the problem of making the tree a representation of some uni­ versal becomes a major difficulty as the concluding lines of the poem indicate, dare attempted too much and he was not able to reconcile the problems he brought up. Instead of concentrating on the particular he attempted to amalgamate the general in the particular. The last four lines of the sonnet indicate this problem. Knowledge of the tree’s beauty makes the speaker sad now that the tree is dead in much the same way as the loss of a friend is distressing: "And like as

Friendship leaning o'er the grave." The analogy between the death of a friend and the destruction of a tree at this point seems highly artificial, and the sentimental self-pity of the concluding line gives the sonnet an air of mawkishness. The fundamental problem is that Clare attempted to philosophize; he tried to add ideas to his poem, ideas that are not intrinsically related to what he is ostensibly describ­ ing. There is no precise and exact rendering of the tree that would 66

make it unique; instead there is pose and sentimentality unwarranted

by the poem itself.

Experimentation is again evident in the last of the sonnets in

Poems Descriptive which follow the Shakespearian form in "To Religion,"

The three quatrains read like a litany or a chanted prayer. Unlike

the other sonnets that follow the Shakespearian form "To Religion" does not have a break after the second quatrain. The various aspects and attributes of religion are enumerated down to the concluding couplet. It appears that the sonnet was merely an experiment and an exercise for Clare since there is no direct perception of nature. The tone is lofty, the diction is formal, and its sentiment is imitative rather than reflective.

Though "The Ant," "Evening," "To The Winds," and "To A Favorite

Tree" are successful to some degree they are significant mainly in relation to understanding what Clare was attempting to do within the

Shakespearian sonnet form. In each of the sonnets there is a shift in emphasis after the second quatrain; the sonnet begins in exact description of a precise object and after the second quatrain an anal­ ogous concept or situation is introduced. The use of the Shaker spearian form allowed Clare to present his observations and ideas in proportioned sequence. What Clare was trying most to do was to relate his direct experience in nature to larger philosophical concepts or ideas that would hold true for all things. Thus he broke the three­ fold presentation of an idea in three quatrains followed by a comment on the idea in a concluding couplet by making use of a pseudo-Petrarchan construct. The rhyme scheme is in the tradition of the Shakespearian 6?

sonnet but the thought pattern is closer to the Petrarchan model. The breakdown of the Shakespearian form in Clare’s sonnets, from three distinct quatrains and a couplet to an octave and a quatrain followed by a couplet, suggests that Clare was working toward a three part structure. In the first eight lines he presents a particular event or landscape, which is followed in the next four lines by an analogy, and in the couplet the speaker’s emotional response is expressed. The threefold nature of Clare's sonnets is also evident in his experimen­ tal sonnets as well as his other regular sonnets.

The sonnet "A Scene" illustrates Clare's attempt to unify his per­ ceptions of the natural world in order to give meaning to what he observed. The rhyme scheme is similar to the Shakespearian form in so far as it suggests three quatrain divisions. The landscape is detailed in the first quatrain: "dribbling brooks," "darksome lowering woods," and "grains of varied hues" are carefully observed. Relation­ ships among things are recorded in the second quatrain, and attention is given to minute detail. The speaker directs our observation begin­ ning with the "low brown cottage" and concludes by going up to the "steeple, perking just above the trees." Attention is further con­ centrated on the trees as the action of the "dangling leaves" in the breeze is related. Human beings are introduced into the description of the natural landscape when the "thoughtful shepherd," "maidens stript," "Hodge a-wistling," and "herdsmen hallooing" are alluded to.

After singling out various components of the landscape, the speaker concludes by relating his delight in all he sees, both near and far, 68

and the failure of language to express his pleasure. The admission

of the failure of language to describe accurately his pleasure is the

chief significance of the sonnet. The problem faced by Clare was how

to order his perceptions in such a way so that a scene and his feelings in response to that scene could be portrayed accurately and truthfully.

In this poem Clare has not as yet been able to select the image which will excite the response he desires. The sonnet is wordy and diffuse

because of Clare’s lack of selectivity. The images by themselves are precise and direct, but they do not fully contribute to an integrated whole. Toward the end of the sonnet it is as if Clare was aware of

his inability to come to grips with his observations when the speaker

says: "All these, with hundreds more, far off and near." Important also is Clare’s references regarding the accuracy of language to describe first the landscape, and secondly, his response to the land­ scape, In all of his early work Clare strives to integrate observation and emotion, and often his response appears to be overly sentimental because of a failure to integrate the observation and the response.

"Native Scenes" is an example of how Clare fails to reconcile what he observes and what he feels. The first four lines form a quat­ rain unit and the tone is austere and lofty. The speaker states that he has been happy in his native environs and that to leave is "cutting" and "severe." After line four there are no clear quatrain divisions; instead there is a series of alternating rhymes, and the tone changes.

From the generalized statement about "native scenes," the emphasis shifts to specific aspects of those scenes: "hawthorne bushes," "winds," 69

"shower," "woods," "nest," and "meadows." In the last three lines the tone changes again and it is similar in tone and imagery to the

opening four lines: Oh, fate unkindj beloved scenes, adieut Your vanish’d pleasures crowd my swimming eyes, And make the wounded heart to bleed anew, Clare presents the problems with which the speaker is faced in a pat­

terned sequence. Specific reasons why the loss of his native scenes

as he has known them from youth has importance for him are presented,

followed by a description of the speaker’s relationship with the land­

scape. At the end the speaker bewails his present situation with the

full awareness of the importance nature has had for him. The relation­

ships among the parts, however, are tenuous because the speaker’s dis­

play of emotion in the concluding lines does not seem warranted by

the rest of the sonnet. The shift in tone and the austerity of the

images makes the speaker's "swimming eyes," and "wounded heart" seem facetious. Observed phenomena and emotional response are out of sort

and the sonnet appears to be more bathetic than honest. When Clare loses sight of the thing he is writing about, there is

not only a dissociation between emotion and object but he inevitably

sinks to the level of sentimental self-pity. In "A Winter Scene," for example, the first four lines describe the winter landscape and the speaker's preference for the "despoil’d and bare" countryside to

"a summer’s morn," The remainder of the sonnet reveals the speaker’s

delight in likening himself to "winter's havoc" and his esteem for winter's "wildest horrors," After a catalogue of winter images, the 70

speaker concludes by stating, "Distress is their's—and they resemble

me," Little has been given by the speaker other than his statement of

preference for winter which would indicate a direct resemblance between

the winter scene and him. Instead Clare has presented a description

of the winter landscape, which is not unified, and a juvenile response

to the scene described. The information about winter scenes and the speaker is not commensurate; hence the comparison made by the speaker

fails. Clare achieves a certain degree of success in controlling his emo­

tional response in conjunction with a certain object when he keeps

his eye on that object. In "To My Oaten Reed," which Graves claims o is Clare’s "making obeisance to the aristocratic Augustan tradition,"0

the emotional response is sincere and effective. The speaker is self­

consciously aware of the difference between his "rude melody" and the

strictures of "the wise, the wealthy, proud and high." His awareness,

however, instead of being a mask of self-pity, becomes the sonnet's

strongest aspect because it functions as a point of perspective from which the speaker's joy in "artless dreams" and his "courting Taste's unblemished eye" with the knowledge that others "Would scorn as vain thy lowly ecstasy" can be seen. The speaker recognizes the differ­ ence between his ability and others but there is joy in the speaker's "uncultur'd themes" that is direct and unaffected, and the emotional

response I take thee up to smother many a sigh, And lull the throbbings of a woe-worn soul is honest. The speaker's emotions in this case are controlled and they 71

are artistically sustained by the careful balancing of thought and

imagery. The "wild-winding rhapsody" and the speaker’s awareness of

something else, the rural instrument, are reciprocal; one cannot be

separated from the other, and the speaker’s emotions correspond fittingly

to the dilemma. The problem of dealing with a response to a scene in nature is evident in "The River Gwash" and it represents another aspect of Clare’s coming to grips with experience and poetic form. For twelve lines the speaker describes the landscape from the perspective of where he is sitting. His description is exact, and careful attention is given to proportion and the relation of one aspect of the scene to another. The language is appropriate and the use of alliteration is effective: Where winding Gwash whirls round its wildest scene On that side view the meadow's smoothing green, Edg’d with the peeping hamlet's chequering brown Here the steep bank, as dropping headling down; Where glides the stream a silver streak between

The effect of the speaker’s description is to show how all things depicted are inter-related and associated. One aspect of the scene leads to another, and similarities between various elements are drawn.

The speaker himself is a part of the scene portrayed since he includes a description of where he sits in relation to the river, and the land­ scape is given meaning not only because he comments on it but because he is an integral part of it. He is both creator and receiver; he directs our view of the scene and he receives impulses from the sur­ roundings: "And moss and ivy speckling on my eye." The speaker’s dual role is the major problem in the sonnet, Clare has not as yet 72

been able to objectify his response to the natural phenomena; there­

fore, the speaker is placed in the scene and he relates what his

reactions are as an element of the scene. The speaker’s comment at

the end: Oh, thus while musing wild, I’m doubly blest, My woes unheeding, and my heart at rest

appears to be set off from the rest of the sonnet. The reason for this is because it seems to be a reflective afterthought. The comment is

related to what has preceded, but it does not bear an integral associ­

ation with the sentiment of the imagery of the natural description.

Though the feelings expressed appear to be genuine they are not dramat­

ically realized. The coherence between description and emotion is

lacking, and so it is with the remainder of the sonnet. An attempt to order the relationship between observed phenomena and emotional response and meaning is evident in Clare’s use of an

original form which appears to be based on the Shakespearian model.

In Clare's adaptation the concluding couplet of the Shakespearian sonnet is moved up to lines seven and eight, and the third quatrain follows it. The division between the second and third quatrains, that weakens or destroys the force of the concluding couplet in Clare's use of the Shakespearian form, is changed. The couplet, in this variant form, is moved up and serves as a pivot on which the observed phenom­ ena is transmuted into a meaningful understanding of the observation. The sonnet "The Setting Sun" begins with a description of a scene and the speaker's reaction to the scene. The speaker's speculation lead him away from the scene itself and end in an idea about the nature 73

of the event taking place: "A heav’nly prospect, brightest in decline."

The couplet introduces a new idea that was suggested by the preceding quatrain: "So sets the Christian's sun, in glories clear." The analogy

between the setting sun and the death of a Christian is maintained,

and the details of that correspondence are enumerated. Both the nat­

ural phenomena, the setting sun, and the idea, the similarity of the

death of a Christian to the setting sun, are related by Clare; however,

the language is loose and awkward, and the imagery seems affected:

The sun sweet setting yon far hill behind

What spangled glories all around him shine; What nameless glories all around him shine

No clouding doubts, nor misty fears arise, To dim hope's golden rays of being forgiven;

The use of the sun as a metaphor for Christian life seems contrived and artificial because the description of the natural sunset prior to the analogy is austere and imprecise. Clare apparently wishes us to feel what he feels at sunset, but the dynamism necessary to elicit the appropriate response is lacking. The images alternate between the organically inter-related and the isolated static. The scene

"now swift slides" from the speaker's "enchanted view," but the sun goes "In other worlds his visits to renew" and "nameless colours . . .

Attend his exit." Missing from the imagery is the consistency needed to achieve a unified effect. Colloquial and formal elements are mixed which makes the analogy between the setting sun and the Christian's soul appear something less than clear.

The most significant aspect of "The Setting Sun" is the shift in 74

position of the couplet. Coining as it does after the second quatrain

the couplet allows Clare to introduce a new idea, and the third quat­

rain that follows gives him room enough to develop the relationship

between the two parts of the sonnet. Significant also in Clare’s

attempt to reconcile observed phenomena and his reactions and ideas

regarding those observations in a formal, though variant, verse form. The experimentation suggests that Clare recognized the need for dis­

cipline which the sonnet form imposes but because of his unique per­

ception and understanding of the world around him he sensed a need

for variation within the form to accommodate his temperament. His ex­

perimentation was a step forward, but over sentimentality and adoles­

cent self-pity still found their way into his verse.

"Expectation" is an example of how Clare loses control over his

material. Instead of dealing with the essence of his observations he

presents his raw impressions. In the first quatrain the speaker describes the concept of expectation in generalized terms. From the

generic statement the speaker presents a specific example of how ex­

pectation effects "the poor prisoner, ere he’s doom'd to die." A shift occurs in the couplet that follows when the comparison is made between

the speaker's soul and the two elements described in the first two quatrains: expectation and the prisoner under the sentence of death.

The third quatrain develops the analogy between the speaker’s soul as

prisoner in association with the theme of expectation. The analogy, however, is flat and unconvincing primarily because the relationship is awkwardly contrived. In addition, there is little continuity of 75

diction, tone, mood, and thought of the sonnet. The dissociation among

the various elements is widened by the cleavage in theme between the

first and second quatrain. Expectation as an emotion is described in

the first quatrain in formal terms which do not convey the intensity of the emotion itself. Inversions are awkward, and the reserved diction

does not present the emotional experience with the meaning of the lines:

What fears, what hopes, distrust and then believe That something which the heart expects to find!

The prisoner's expectation in the second quatrain is intended to elicit

an emotional association; however, it does not follow directly from the

sentiment of the first quatrain, and the quatrain is reft of dramatic

intensity. In the third quatrain the discussion of the speaker's soul

as a prisoner suggests associations with the elements and ideas of the

first two quatrains but the diverse and conflicting aspects in those

quatrains negate the possibility of an intense, unified effect. There­

fore, in the third quatrain, when the speaker says: So do I long the grave’s dark end to prove, And anxious wait my long, long journey home

he seems to be languishing in a pose of self-pity. Even the analogy between the prisoner who is about to die and the eventual death of the

speaker is awkwardly handled since the prisoner is waiting in expecta­ tion of death, whereas the speaker is waiting for his soul's homeward

journey. The two elements of the analogy are only loosely associated, and the disparity between the two is only one aspect of the medley of diverse items which cause the sonnet to be substantially weakened. The failure to achieve a unified whole is directly attributable to 76

Clare’s lack of control over his material. Images are vague, there

is a cleavage between the tone and the emotional import of the lines, and the diction is imprecise. Ideas and emotions are dissociated because Clare was not responding directly to a specific stimulus. His

speculations are contemplative rather than evocative, and the sonnet

suffers from Clare's attempt to philosophize, which is evident in

several other poems in the volume,

A step closer to what would be Clare's true voice is apparent in

"Approach to Spring." The language is evocative, and the speaker's

perception is rendered precisely and directly:

When tootling robins carol-welcomes sing, And sparrows chelp glad tidings from the eaves.

The "omens of approaching spring" are carefully described in the first

quatrain, and the evocation of the particular aspects of spring leads into a discussion of the larger panorama of springtime and the rela­

tionships among the diverse elements of the season and the landscape

in the second quatrain. Relationships are living and organic: "How

sweet the sunbeam melts the crocus flower" but the most significant

aspect of the sonnet is the speaker's sympathetic and emotional identi­

fication with the crocus flower: "Whose borrow'd pride shines dizen'd

in his rays." Scene and feeling are mutally heightened; the scene

stimulates the speaker's feelings, and his feelings are directly associated with the scene. The appearance of the speaker's association with the flower in the sonnet points forward to Clare's later poetic achievement when subject and object are completely interfused each

by the other. That is the interaction of the speaker's own self­ 77

consciousness and the world of nature are unified in a poetic whole

when the natural scene and the poet's reaction comment on each other

and lead to something else. Identification between the speaker and the object described within the verse is an advance on the mere form

of the sonnet. Clare's use of the sonnet and his variations within

the form indicate his concern with combining object and emotion.

Though evidence of Clare's penchant for sentimental self-pity appears

in the third quatrain:

Want's painful hindrance sticks me to her stall— But still Hope's smiles unpoint the thornes of Care,

the fundamental sense of the verse indicates the process of description, identification, and reaction on the part of the speaker. The culmination of Clare's efforts to unite object and emotion— indeed perhaps the most significant poem in relation to his later

poetry—comes in "Summer." Relationships are organic in nature; the scene described elicits a response that is both sensual and emotive, and relationships between the outer world of nature and the speaker’s response to that world is achieved and given meaning through the imagination. Eternity, nature, and man are linked by the imagination, and the use of the imagination as a means of ordering, indicates a growing command over experience on the part of Clare as a poet. Pre­ cise and detailed observations are described in order to illustrate the inter-relationship of all things in nature. The sonnet begins with an inage which connotes not only the imitation of a process of growth and development but also a sensuous response to the leaf's growth and its color: "The oak's slow-opening leaf, of deepening hue," 78

The speaker forces himself into the scene when he makes judgments

such ass "slow-opening" and "deepening hue." In a larger context

these observed phenomena are signs of the approaching season but they are also something more. Through the power of the imagination the

observation of the oak's growth process, the speaker's response to what he has observed, and the meaning of the combined response and observation are brought together. From the exact description of the oak leaf a generalization is made and another precise observation is described, which leads to a panoramic rendering of the early summer scene. The portrayal of the landscape converges on particular images in the couplets

The meadowsweet taunts higher its showy wreath, And sweet the quaking grass hide beneath The shifting from precise and minute observations to a more generalized description of the implications of what has been observed, as well as the use of personification in the first two quatrains, indicates Clare's attempts to distance his poem to some extent from the experience that suggested it. But the emotional import and meaning directly associated with the experience described in the first eight lines are evident in the couplet where the speaker describes the meadowsweet that "taunts" its "showy wreath," and how "sweet the quaking grasses hide." Through an imaginative association the speaker's emotions enter into the ob­ jective description of what he sees. The implications of what the speaker has observed and felt are explored in the final quatrain.

Point of view in the last quatrain is of essential importance because it represents a departure from Clare's sentimental posing. In 79

the quatrain the speaker appears to be describing the scene from the perspective of a dead man: Ah, 'barr’d from all that sweetens life below, Another Summer still my eyes can see Freed from the scorn and pilgrimage of woe, To share the Seasons of Eternity,

Taken in context with the rest of the sonnet the speaker’s point of view is of twofold importance. First, the significance of even the most minute detail in nature is emphasized by the fact that the speaker is unable to partake in the actual joys of summer, and secondly, the relationship between the speaker and what has been described points forward to later lyrics such as "An Invite to Eternity" where Clare Q achieves "something like a vertigo of vision,"7

Taken as a whole the sonnets in Poems Descriptive represent an important step forward for Clare as a poet. The formality of the sonnet helped Clare to order his observations and perceptions of the natural world, and it served as the basis for some provocative experi­ mentation. Images that are rendered precisely and directly are the greatest strength of Poems Descriptive as a whole, but Clare’s attempts to make his images function in association with his emotional response to a specific stimulus in the sonnets illustrates his growing ability to gain control over experience and impart that experience in a poet­ ically cogent whole. 80

The material for this page appears on page 204. 81

CHAPTER THREE

Hopes and Pleasures Whirl Away

"There lonely I whisper"

The success of Poems Descriptive convinced Clare that his future was inevitably tied to poetry. Taylor’s low-keyed proposal for a

second volume was enthusiastically received by Clare, who immediately began writing. His letters to his publishers, Taylor and Hessey, from

the summer of 1820 through the spring of 1821, reveal his concern for the value of his art and his willingness to accept advice and criti­ cism.1 At this time Clare was still formulating his art, and a certain degree of anxiety is evident in his letters regarding the value of his talent.

The influence of Beattie, Dyer, Burns, and Smart, among others, is discernable in the verse of The Village Minstrel, and for the most part the subject matter is much the same as his earlier poetry in

Poems Descriptive. Subjects such as the change of seasons, Gypsy life, village fairs and celebrations, enclosure, country courtship, the isolated rustic poet, rural scenes, and various rustic characters con­ stitute the material upon which his poems were built. Though much of The Village Minstrel is only slightly better than Poems Descriptive, there are significant differences, however subtle, that attest to

Clare’s increasing poetic competence. Perhaps the most important aspect of Clare’s growing ability as a poet that shows itself in The 82

Village Minstrel is the nature of his achievement. Clare did not de­ velop in the sense that other poets developed. He does not progress

from a set formula to a fuller rendering of the implications of that formula, as Wordsworth does for example; rather, his achievement is

measured by his ability to select subjects and poetic structures that

are conducive to his unique perception of the world. Through an exam­

ination of selected poems from The Village Minstrel one can discern

a poetic art that was only germinal in Poems Descriptive. There are fewer philosophical poems in The Village Minstrel, and

even within this group of poems, which comprised some of the weakest verse in Poems Descriptive, a change in attitude is apparent. Clare seems to have realized that his ability for precise and arresting description was one of his strongest attributes as a poet and when he approaches a philosophical problem in verse he manipulates description in such a way that it functions to illuminate a concept he is dealing with. In "To The Violet" the transience of life and the inability of the speaker to maintain the joy he finds in nature are depicted. A parallel between the violet and the speaker is established through stanza four. Like the violet the speaker seeks an isolated spot:

Where, dithering many a cold blea hour, I’ve hugg'd myself in thy retreat. An awareness of the subtle relationship between the violet and the speaker is established by the precision of the imagery and description. Unfortunately Clare turned away from description when the speaker directly states that he and the violet have much in common:

, . . thou lov’st the dreary waste Which is so well belov'd by me 83

and concludes by stating the implications of the similarity between

the two. Description functions for part of the poem so that an under­ standing of the relationship between the speaker and the violet is

evoked, but when Clare figuratively steps back and thinks about his

imagery, he states relations that are already discernible. As a result

of his movement away from description to a more pragmatic statement,

the power and cogency of the poem are lost.

A division between Clare’s tendency to philosophize and his tendency

to describe the rural landscape is apparent in "Solitude." Here the

poet is torn between an attempt to evoke the feeling of solitude and an attempt to discuss the value and significance of solitude. There is a marked difference between the evocative passages and the passages in which Clare discursively comments on the conception of solitude.

The poem begins with the speaker’s profession of his love of solitudes

Solitude, I'll walk with thee Whether 'side the woods we rove,

Whether sauntering we proceed • ••«••••••••• ••• Whether sitting down we look • ••••••••••••••• Whether, Curious, waste an hour The language is unsure, the images are artificially contrived, and the catalogue of reasons is deadening. Following the speaker's introduc­ tion is a description of the landscape. The imagery, tone, mood, and language are quite different when the speaker describes the scenes that are his in his solitude. The description is taken from direct observa­ tion, and the speaker’s eye takes in alls 84

Where the mole unwearied still Roots up many a crumbling hill, And the little chumbling mouse Gnarls the dead weed for her house

Solitude's effect on the speaker is evoked later as the speaker

describes his relationship to the landscape:

As 'neath hazels I have stood In the gloomy hanging wood, Where sunbeams, filtering small, Freckling through the branches fall

In addition to Clare's use of evocative description, he uses language

effectively in order to elicit not only an emotional but a sensuous

response to the scene portrayed. Alliteration and the use of region­

alism contribute significantly to the success of the sense imagery:

Ne'er an axe was heard to sound, Or a tree's fall gulsh'd the ground

While the wild-thyme's pinky bells Circulate reviving smells; And the breeze, with feather-feet, Crimping o'er the waters sweet Trembling fans the sun-tann'd cheek, And gives the comfort one would seek.

Description of the landscape is developed separately from the speaker's discussion of solitude, and the two aspects of the poem are mechan­ ically linked, suggesting a twofold implication. First, the cleavage between direct observation and the description of observed phenomena and contemplated reaction indicates Clare's desire to comment on the emotional effect solitude has for him by setting up a type of analogy, and secondly, the division between the two elements suggests Clare's search for his proper mode of expression. His use of comparison and analogy fails in "Solitude" primarily because the poem is too long to 85

sustain the vitality necessary to maintain a direct relationship between the emotional impact of the experience of solitude and the

ramifications of solitude as a concept. The sonnet form proved to be

more valuable to Clare for the type of concentrated relationship he

was attempting to establish in "Solitude." The amount of description

in the poem suggests that Clare was becoming aware of his suprior

ability to evoke a sensuous response to nature as opposed to the mere

discussion of the various attributes of an abstract concept. His

realization of the force and power of carefully evoked images and his

emphasis on the precision of language mark a departure from the Augus­

tan tenor of his previous philosophical poems. In the end, however,

"Solitude" is only partially successful, even though certain passages

are enchanting, primarily because it rambles aimlessly over the land­ scape.

Several poems in The Village Minstrel display a lack of emphasis or direction, and Clare’s failure to be more selective is a major

fault of the volume. In "Rural Muse" the persona's attention seems

to be diverted as he shifts from a description of dawn to "Hodge the horse-boy," to "Dobbin," to "the blossom of the village," and so on.

The description of one aspect calls up another and the effect is a type of word painting that encompasses all but has little significance in particular. A charming scene is portrayed but the lack of direction gives the poem an aimless quality, "Rural Evening," though shorter than "Rural Morning," suffers in much the same way. Individual pas­ sages are delightful: 86

The woods at distance changing like to clouds, And spire-points croodling under evening's shrouds Till forms of things, and hues of leaf and flower, In deeper shadows, as by magic power, With light and all, in scarce perceiv'd decay, Put on mild evening’s sober garb of gray

but the impressions made by such passages are neither sustained nor

enlarged upon by the rest of the poem. The speaker's observations

are delivered precisely, and as separate units they are meaningful,

but they do not function as parts of a unified whole.

Scene painting is also evident in "The Gypsy’s Camp" where Clare

portrays the old Gypsy woman:

Where the real effigy of midnight hags, With tawny smoked flesh and tatter'd rags, Uncouth-brimm'd hat, and weather-beaten cloak, 'neath the wild shelter of knotty oak and describes her magic powers. But the portraiture of the old Gypsy woman, revealing as it is, has significance in other ways. The woman becomes the focal point of both the speaker's description and his recollections associated with her. A difference in time and point of view is interwoven into the account of the Gypsy's powers, and as a result the descriptive element in the poem is functional in the sense that it indicates the changing attitude of the speaker in relation to the Gypsy woman. As opposed to much of the verse in Poems Descriptive where the speaker is an active participant in the poem itself, stating his attitude or his sentimental bias, the speaker in "The Gypsy's Camp" is a careful observer whose attitude and reaction to the scene he describes is subtly revealed. The speaker as an integral part of the scene described was attempted in several earlier poems, most 87

noticeably in the sonnet "The River Gawash," and it indicates Clare's desire to establish an organic relationship within the scene described, the speaker’s reaction to the scene, and the meaning of the interchange.

The use of an aspect of the scene, as a focal point in this case an old Gypsy woman, shows that Clare was realizing the need for both per­ spective and unity within his poetry. It is highly signifcant that these advances occur in a short poem because it indicates the nature of Clare’s genius. Only in short poems does Clare approach a balance among all elements. Nevertheless, Clare continued to experiment, and many of the poems in The Village Minstrel fall far short of the rela­ tively small advance discernible in "The Gypsy’s Camp."

The long descriptive poem "The Woodman," which caused Taylor to p doubt Clare's authorship of it, contains "one or two of the outstand­ ingly inept lines that he [Clare] was apt to write when he felt ob- liged to subscribe to the equity of the social system.In "Cowper Green" colloquial diction is used effectively but the cataloguing of various elements becomes monotonous and the speaker drifts from one aspect of the landscape to another with a sense of capricious wander­ ing, Evidence of forced rhyme appears in "Winter Rainbow," and the banality of the imagery and awkwardness of language cause the speaker’s emotional response to the rainbow to appear piteously sentimental. An imbalance between the descriptive account of the butterfly in "To The

Butterfly" and the speaker's emotional response to the butterfly vitiates the possibility of success for the poem. Lack of direction is apparent in "Recollections After an Evening Walk," though there 88

are some fine descriptive passages, but, more importantly the language

the speaker’s sentiment, and the description are at odds: But the sweetest of all seeming music to me Were the songs of the clumsy brown-beetle and bee; The one was seen hast'ning away to his hive, The other was just from his sleeping alive— 'Gainst our hats he kept knocking as if he’d no eyes, And when batter’d down he was puzzled to rise.

The motions of the beetle are not enacted by the language and the use

of couplets restrains the immediacy of the description. A contempla­

tive pall hangs over a precise observation and it suggests that Clare

forced his perceptions into an established mode. When Clare is direct

and honest in his observation, he is at his best, but when he loses

contact with his subject, either through imitation or by artificially

philosophizing on material that does not warrant the idea he is attrib­

uting to it, his poetry suffers. In "Recollections After A Ramble"

both that which is best in Clare as well as that which is worst are

evident, Clare’s control of diction is surer from "the clod-brown lark" to the bumble-bees "Clinging to the drowking flower" and the "keck-made water mills." Description is direct and very precise. The speaker is stripped of all pretension, and when he states, "The wood is sweet—I love it well," he is poignantly sincere. Wistful, tender memories associated with various "spots once dear" are recalled by

the speaker, and his recollections in conjunction with the landscape

reveal much about the speaker. The authenticity of the speaker's ex­ perience is suggested by the delicacy of his observation of the various aspects of the landscape and the personal significance those aspects have for him. Unfortunately, the length of the poem nullifies the 89

emotional impact of the numerous individual scenes portrayed, Clare

directs our attention to specific recollections, which are emotionally

stirring in their delicacy and precision, but the total effect of the

poem is the creation of a sense of perplexity. There is no overall

structure in the poem; each stanza centers on a specific facet of the

landscape but there is little or no continuity between what follows

or precedes a particular stanza. In addition, in the last seven stanzas

a subtle shift in the speaker’s attitude occurs and he describes his recollections with increased emphasis on his attitude toward the value

of nature for all mankind. Though he is less mawkish in his espousal of nature's goodness, the speaker's attitudinizing is inconsistent with the rest of the poem where he presents an actual experience. The length of the poem is too great an obstacle to the maintenance of a balance between description and feeling. Unable to sustain an emotional re­ sponse to all that he recollects, the speaker collects his lively perceptions and transforms them into a ruminative statement.

Various themes which appear elsewhere in Clare's poetry are exhib­ ited in "Holywell." Man as an unwelcome intruder in nature, the en­ chantment of a particular place, and the speaker's inability to recap­ ture the past are considered in association with an economic and very precise description of the natural scene. The vitality and animation of all things in nature deeply impress the speaker and suggest a univer­ sal continuity:

And though the valleys, bush, and tree Still naked stood, yet on the lea A flush of green, and fresh'ning glow, 90

In melting patches 'gan to show That swelling buds would soon again In summer's livery bless the plain.

The speaker's observations are clearly rendered, and his joy is mani­

fested by his dreamlike description, "as like a spell," of "the 'witch­ ing views of Holywell." The particularity of the imagery is enhanced

by the speaker's carefull observation of the position of the sun, which

suggests the passing of time, and his position in relation to other

things as he "soodled on and on." Regionalism® and colloquial language are used appropriately and effectively, and the apparent simplicity of

the poem is achieved through a consistent control of tone, rhythm, and imagery. Clare's ability to use language as an added dimension to his descriptive powers is also evident in "Description Of A Thunderstorm"s

Slow boiling up, on the horizon's brim, Huge clouds arise, mountainous, dark and grim, Sluggish and slow upon the air they ride

The onset of the storm is dramatic, and the sublime element in nature is emphasized in conjunction with man's relationship to God, A corre­ lation exists between the gathering force of the impending storm and the intensity of the dramatic element. By describing the change from light to dark and the effect of the wind on various small animals and birds, "And seemly dread the threatened fate to come," as well as the shepherd, the speaker creates an aura of suspense, When "The sun drops sinking in its bulging tomb" all appears doomed, and the detailed description of lightning that follows brings the account to a breath­ less conclusion. The economy in his descriptive passages and his effective use of language marked another advance for Clare, and brought 91

him closer to an understanding of his true powers as a poet.

Almost all the faults and strengths of The Village Minstrel are contained in the volume's longest poem "The Village Minstrel," The

title and the use of Spenserian stanzas suggest an affinity to Beattie’s "The Minstrel" but Clare denied any obligation to Beattie’s' poem.^

Among his prose fragments there is a note on "The Village Minstrel"

that indicates what Clare’s intentions were:

The eneouragment my first Volume met with lifted me up into heartsome feelings and rhyming was continually with me night and day I began the Village Minstrel a long while before attempting to describe ny own feelings and love for rural objects and I then began in good earnest with it after the trial of my first poems was made and compieated it was little time but I was still unsatisfied with it and am now and often feel sorry that I did not withhold it a little longer for revision the reason why I dislike it is that it does not describe the feelings of a rhyming peasant strongly or localy enough,5

To some extent Clare's criticism is just, but his control of diction,

tone, and rhythm is an improvement over many of the poems in Poems

Descriptive. For the most part the speaker, Lubin, is an observer of

village life, though he does respond to various scenes he happens upon.

When Lubin's response is directly associated with a precise description

of observed phenomena there is little room for pose, but when he in­ dulges in nostalgic revery his emotional response seems fraudulent:

0 rural love! as spotless as the dove's; No wealth gives fuel to a borrow’d flame, To prompt the shepherd where to choose his loves, And go a forger of that sacred name; Both hearts in unison here beat the same; Here nature makes the choice which love inspires; Far from the wedded lord and haughty dame This boon of heavenly happiness retires, Not felon-like law-bound, but wedded in desires, 92

Whereas Lubin's descriptions of his pleasure in listening to stories,

the change of seasons, and Gypsies are exact and authentic, the account

of rural love is more ideal than accurate, and the verse lapses into

an abyss of sentimentality. Though nostalgic sentimentality weakens

part of "The Village Minstrel," Clare’s use of precise imagery and the

directness and honesty of his observations of the entire village scene

saves the poem. Bad as well as good aspects of village life are por­

trayed, and the accuracy of the description of some of the more

unfortunate villagers, such as "Civil Will," who earns his livelihood by being a human target, "Though sure enough he gets most ugly raps,"

and the introduction of the poor and ordinary people indicates a break

away from the influence of the poets he had been reading, and it points

forward to The Shepherd's Calendar.

In addition to its appearance in "The Village Minstrel" the depic­

tion of rustic life and the hardships of the rural laborer appear in the tales included in the volume. The portrayal of the seamy side of rural England had been dealt with in literature before, but the precision and the authenticity of Clare's presentation, which separates him from the others and was to reach its height in The Shepherd's

Calendar, is apparent in such poems as "The Cress-Gatherer" and "The

Cross Roads." Whereas Wordsworth, for example, uses rural events and rustic characters to illustrate a segment of his overall conceptual view of the universe, Clare dwells on the actual hardships he describes as ends in themselves. The misery and hardships of a widow and her son are recounted in "The Cress-Gatherer," and in "The Cross Roads" 93

the onslaught of a rain storm prepares the way for an old village woman named Goody to ", , , illustrate the fact / Of innocence oercome by flattering man." Goody's story encompasses local folk lore, super­ stitions, and the adventures of a young girl, but more importantly a sense of genuineness is created by Goody's vivid, detailed descrip­ tions and by her references to the present when she interrupts her story and notes the progress of the storm. The appearance of precise and detailed descriptions in association with specific themes indicates

Clare's poetic concerns and it suggests the direction he was to take in his later poetry.

Clare’s growing awareness of his poetic talents is reflected more clearly in the sonnets of The Village Minstrel. His views on the sonnet form in particular are stated quite clearly in a letter to

Hessey:

... if those cursed critics could be shood out of the fashion wi their rule & compass & cease from making readers believe a Sonnet cannot be a Sonnet unless it be precisely 14 lines & a long poem as such unless one first sits down to wiredraw out regular arguments & then plod after it in a regular manner . . . S

The experimentation evident in the sonnets of Poems Descriptive is again apparent in the sonnets of The Village Minstrel and the variety of experimentation is greatly increased. Some sonnets follow a regular pattern; there are six sonnets in the Shakespearian form, and nine of Q Clare’s own innovation. The remainder of the sonnets are irregular.

The subject matter of the sonnets as a whole is the same as the rest of The Village Minstrel, but in Clare's treatment of his subject matter in the sonnets several important observations can be made. In a major­ ity of the sonnets the subject of death and the speaker's lamentations

in relation to injustice, sorrow, and his own recollections are presented.

Particular things, scenes, seasons, and people constitute the material

for the rest of the sonnets. While there is some interchange between

these two general groups of sonnets, a distinction between the two is

nevertheless clear. The two groups, one in which the speaker laments

his position on earth, and one in which very precise observations of particular things are rendered, suggest what Clare was attempting to

reconcile in his poetry. The use of a specific form is the starting

point for Clare; his growing disdain for regularity and convention

lead him away from the strictures of the sonnet form to an awareness

of the sonnet as a unit in which he could frame his vivid perceptions,

Clare’s treatment of a particular theme in conjunction with his experi­ mentation within the sonnet form marks another small advancement for him as a poet. By analyzing Clare's use of various forms in relation to each of the two broad categories of sonnets in The Village Minstrel the extent of his achievement can be measured. The subjects of death and the speaker's weariness with the hard­ ships of the world are treated in the sonnet ''Hereafter." The Shake­ spearian form is used, and it enhances the basic thrust of the speaker's explanation of his preference for death since the reasons for his anticipation of death are stated in a concise and logical manner. In the first quatrain the speaker begins his dialectic by stating the conditions necessary for him to approach happiness, which is followed in the second and third quatrains by the implications of the speaker's 95

happy condition. A discrepancy, however, exists between the three

quatrains and the concluding couplet. Whereas the speaker's particular

views are dwelt upon in the quatrains, in the couplet the speaker

attempts to make a generic statement by applying the implications of

the imagined happy condition to all of mankind. Greater complications

arise in the couplet when the emotional effect of the revelation of an afterlife on man is compared to a natural occurence: Sweet will it seem to Fate's oppressed worm, As trembling sunbeams creeping from the storm.

The epitaph "Fate's oppressed worm" is awkward and quite out of place

in so far as the imagery in the rest of the sonnet is concerned, and

the comparison between the "oppressed worm" and the "trembling sunbeams

creeping" is insufficiently grounded. In addition, the tone is essen­

tially austere but the language in several instances does not contribute

sufficiently to sustain the tone throughout. Hackneyed phrases such as: "That long long look'd-for 'better place,"' "no more troubles no more cares" and "the sharp brambles of his life" are distracting, and they weaken the impetus of the sonnet. Meager as "Hereafter" is as a sonnet, there are a number of inter­ esting points to consider. Though much of the language is stilted, there are examples of arresting figures of speech: Ah, when the world and I have shaken hands, And all the frowns of this sad life got through and the type of comparison Clare was attempting in the couplet is a forerunner of what he succeeded in doing later on. That is, Clare tries to bridge the gap between man and nature by utilizing man's 96

emotional aspect as the hasis for the comparison. Thus man's know­ ledge of the happiness to come is "sweet" in the same way that "tremb­ ling sunbeams" appear after a storm. The cleavage, however, between

the two things compared is too great because the comparison as a whole

is not warranted by the rest of the sonnet. Therefore, instead of a

reconciliation, the two compared aspects tend to lead to an overall

diffuseness within the sonnet. The speaker's ruminations on the subject of death appear in "A

Wish." A variant form originated by Clare in the sonnets in Poems

Descriptive is used to encompass the speaker's desires related to his

own death. Basically, the speaker asks that he be able to return to

his native environment when it comes time to die so that he can become

part of the natural landscape by being buried in his beloved earth. The inevitability and uncertainty of death are developed in the first quatrain, followed by the speaker's speculations on the circumstances

of his death. A shift away from the subject of death occurs in the

couplet when the speaker centers on a specific aspect of the church­

yard wherein he hopes to be buried:

'Neath the thick-shaded sycamore's decay, Its broad leaves trembling to the breeze of day. In the remaining quatrain nature in association with the speaker after death is emphasized. Compared to the first and second quatrains the

third quatrain is more sensuous, and the placement of sensuous images in apposition to spiritual states or abstract concepts, which Clare does in "A Wish" and the other sonnets following his innovative form, has its roots in Spenser's verse where he invests his images with a 97

spiritual or abstract quality through association.Clare’s use of

sensuous imagery in association with the abstract state he describes in the third quatrain, for example:

To see it’s shadow o’er my ashes wave, How soothing will it be, while, hovering near, My unseen spirit haunts its daisied grave, Pausing on scenes in life once lov’d so deear. has its origin in Spenser’s sonnets: Fayre bosome fraught with vertues richest treasure, The neast of loue, the longing of delight: the bowre of blisse, the paradice of pleasure, the sacred harbour of that heuenly spright. 10

Just as "Fayre bosome" is invested with heavenly spirituality by Spen­ ser's allusion to the idea of spirituality in conjunction with the physical bosom, so too does the sycamore become the focal point of

Clare's abstract fancies through its suggestion of strength and the related connotations of peace and serenity. There are other indications of Clare's indebtedness to Spenser, such as the deliberate weakening of the divisions between the quatrains in favor of a fourteen-line unit, but Clare was not writing a sonnet sequence nor was he working within a tradition, The significance of any influence in relation to Clare’s poetry, and specifically in relation to "A Wish," is the way in which Clare adapted what he found valuable in other poets. The third stanza of "A Wish" is important not because it displays any affinity to Spenser, but because it shows that Clare was attempting to infuse the natural scene with an emotional quality. The particularity and pre­ cision of the imagery portrayed has emotional value for Clare: unfor­ tunately, however, the shift in tone, diction, and imagery that occurs 98

after line 8 is too great and the sonnet falls into two parts that

are mechanically, rather than organically, linked. The last six lines

are successful by virtue of the sensuous imagery and the economic use

of language, but the sonnet as a whole suffers from the diffuseness of

its various components.

An attempt to fuse idea and description within the bounds of the

sonnet is evident in "Summer" where Clare employs a variation of his

earlier innovative form. In order to link the quatrain units a couplet is used in lines 4 and 5 and it serves as a pivot for the sentiment of the sonnet and a link between the first and second quatrains. Another

couplet is used in lines 9 and 10, and it functions in much the same way. In the first quatrain the speaker describes his condition; what he sees and how he reacts. Specific aspects of the scene are described with particularity in the second quatrain:

And the great dragon-fly with gauzy wings, In gilded coat of purple, green, or brown, That on broad leaves of hazel basking clings and in the third quatrain the emphasis is returned to the speaker. The movement within the sonnet, from the speaker’s description of the land­ scape to his awareness of thoughts and feelings closely connected to the outer scene, is analogous in structure to what Abrams calls the greater Romantic lyric. In the greater Romantic lyric "the poem rounds upon itself to end where it began, at the outer scene, but with an altered mood and deeper understanding which is the result of the inter- 11 vening meditation," "Summer," however, is not great, but it does bear a structural relation to the greater poems of Romantic sensibility, 99

and in this sense it is significant to an understanding of what Clare was attempting to do. In poems such as "Tintern Abbey" and "Stanzas

Written in Dejection," as Abrams indicates, a speaker in a particula­

rized outdoor setting converses with himself or with the landscape, and

he receives an insight, comes to grips with a tragic loss, decides a moral issue, or achieves a resolution to a moral question, and then

views the landscape with a new perspective. Though Clare’s range and

scope are much reduced, his intentions are in many ways analogous to

Wordsworth’s and Shelley’s. Clare attempts to show the emotional value

of the landscape in relation to the speaker, and the significance of

the speaker’s awareness of that value. In "Summer" the self-imposed

restriction of the sonnet form proved to be too great an obstacle to overcome. As a result, the sonnet appears to be too mechanical in its

linkage of various elements, and at the end of the speaker’s statement

of his awareness of the value the landscape has for him:

Summer sometime shall bless this spot, when I, Hapt in the cold dark grave, can heed it not

seems unconvincing since it does not grow from the sentiment of the rest of the sonnet. Part of the problem within the sonnet is that the process of the speaker's awareness is not developed; Clare divides his attention between the speaker and the descriptive element, and the two aspects are only artificially joined by the rhyme scheme. Of greater importance, however, is the problem of selection. When Clare describes the flowers and insects he achieves a degree of lyrical strength, but when he discusses the reactions of the speaker the poetry becomes flaccid and unconvincing. The relationship between the speaker and 100

death in conjunction with a particular landscape interested Clare deeply,

as well as his concern for form, therefore he produced a number of son­

nets of irregular form that deal with this subject. In the irregular

sonnets many of the same weaknesses evident in the regular sonnets ap­ pear, but the experimentation with form allowed Clare to develop his

talent freely and it opened new avenues of expression.

The speaker's recollections are interwoven with a description of a

landscape in "Native Scenes." The significance of the scene is directly

stated:

Naught in this world warms my affections dearer Than you, ye plains of white and yellow flowers

and the speaker alludes to all that he sees as well as to his recollec­

tions of the past in association with the scene before him in lines 1

through 7. After line 7, however, there is a division, and the speaker describes what is happening to him as he surveys the landscape. The

speaker is self-consciously nostalgic:

All delights of former life beholding; Spite of pain, the care that intervenes— and the tone, diction, and imagery are affected and contrived. Instead of arriving at an emotionally charged awareness of the significance of the scene before him; at the end of the sonnet the speaker's response is bathetic: My soul can peer o'er its distress awhile, And sorrow's cheek find leisure for a smile.

The splitting of the sonnet in half accounts for the main difficulty in the poem. In the first seven lines the speaker describes both his feelings and the landscape. A perspective of time is created, as 101

the speaker’s memory is stimulated by various aspects of the landscape,

and the difference in time allows him to describe his emotions some­

what objectively. The language, however, is statuesque, a sense of

spontaneity is lacking, and emotional objectivity is lost in the second

half of the sonnet because the speaker dwells on his emotions as they

immediately arise. There is no mention of the scene before him, and

his references to his recollections are not associated with specifics

in the poem; as a result they sink to the level of graveyard pastiche.

The attempt to balance descriptive objectivity and emotional spontaneity

by developing each segment independently indicates both the direction

of Clare's interest and the problems he encountered as a poetic crafts­

man. His aim was to yoke emotion and object together through vivid

description. His most troublesome problem was his pre-occupation with what appears to be a previously formulated theme. The persona's responses do not seem geniune; they appear to be mere mouthings of a

pre-conceived attitude. The structure of the poem only adds to the mechanistic rendering of the speaker's lamentations by destroying any sense of emotional and descriptive continuity.

In other irregular sonnets dealing with the theme of death and the speaker's nostalgic recollections of the past divisions between various aspects appear. The sonnet "On Death" begins with an apostrophe to life and the speaker's profession of his disenchantment with life, which is followed by another apostrophe to the "happy hour" of death. A third apostrophe, addressed to the world, appears as the persona chides the world for being so meager in its gifts to him. Instead of 102

creating an integral relationship among the various aspects of the

speaker’s theme, the three apostrophes weaken the overall import of the

sonnet. Clare was attempting to cover too much and he lost control

over his material. None of the sections is developed forcefully, and when the speaker becomes emotional:

I only wish for one departing sigh, A welcome farewell take of all, and die

the verse sinks to the level of sentimental self-pity, A division between the exposition of the speaker’s theme and his reactions to it appears in "Hope." For ten lines the speaker enumerates the various aspects of hope and explains how hope cheats the living. In the re­ maining four lines the speaker explains how he has hoped for a better life and will continue to hope till the end of his life. Again, as in other sonnets in The Village Minstrel, the division between the speaker’s speculations on his theme and his personal, emotional response to the theme weakens the poetry. But the absence of overt sentimentality and the use of nature images to enhance his emotional response to the theme in the second section suggest Clare's coming to grips with his material. When he says:

I long have hoped, and still shall hope the best Till heedless weeds are scrambling over me, And hopes and ashes both together rest a balance between his emotions and his subject is struck by the use of

"heedless weeds." The emotional impact of the speaker's condition is achieved through the clever use of understatement, The weeds take on the weight of the emotional force, and the shift away from the speaker himself to the image of the weeds lessens the possibility of a lapse 103

into sentimentality. Clare’s awareness of the need to achieve and maintain a balance between the subject matter and the emotional response to that subject matter in his poetry is demonstrated in several other sonnets where he

concentrates on very particular events as opposed to treating pre­ conceived subjects like death. Specific times, such as morning, even­ ing, spring, and autumn are treated in a number of ways in several sonnets. Emphasis on precise images in association with a mood or an emotion is of prime importance in this group of sonnets, and by exam­ ining Clare's experiments with form and imagery the consequences of his experimentation can be evaluated.

In "Noon" Clare uses the Shakespearian form in describing the noon landscape with great delicacy. The first and second quatrains comple­ ment each other by the nature images that are singled out. In the first quatrain the "sultry stillness" of the noon hour is emphasized by the lack of movement in the air and on the water. The second quat­ rain begins where the first left off. The reflections on the still water are effectively depicted:

Like on large sheet of glass the pool does shine, Reflecting in its face the burnt sunbeam

Air, earth, and sun are captured in the pool's reflection and the intensity and stillness of the moment is enhanced by the unification of the various elements within the bounds of the pool. The tone, imagery, and language contribute to the mood of tranquil beauty, and the acute awareness of minute details that are economically described: 104

The very buzz of flies is heard no more Nor faintest wrinkles o’er the waters creep

indicates that the speaker's description is emotionally conceived. In

the third quatrain, however, the pool is mentioned but the center of

attention is given to a little bird who "splashes in the stream his

burning breast," Though the details of the bird and its actions are

particularized, the intensity and integral relationships among all

segments described, which is present in the first and second quatrain, is lacking.

A subtle shift in the speaker's tone and view point account for the discrepancy between the first two quatrains and the third. In the first eight lines a sense of immediacy is created and sustained by the inter-relatedness of all things, but in the third quatrain when the speaker alludes to:

The little bird, forsaking song and nest, Flutters on dripping twigs his limbs to cool he judges and evaluates; the images are less evocative and therefore less convincing. A further step away from the strength of the first and second quatrains appears in the concluding couplet:

Oh, free from thunder, for a sudden shower, To cherish nature in this noonday hour! The speaker’s comment is unnecessary in view of what he has portrayed in the first eight lines, and it seems to be added on as an after­ thought, The emotional value of the "noonday hour" is clearly evident in the speaker's description of the landscape, but his reference to thunder and his happiness in nature, in the concluding couplet, has no organic relationship with the rest of the sonnet, Another reason for 105

the dissociation between the first two quatrains and the third, and

between the third quatrain and the concluding couplet is the form of

the sonnet. By trying to fit his description into quatrain units Clare

broke up the continuity of his observations in order to work out a

logical progression. Hence, at the end of the sonnet the speaker

merely comments on the total effect of the scene without regard for

the organic nature of his description. Though the total effect of the

sonnet is weakened by the cleavage between the descriptive aspect of the verse and the speaker’s overt intrusions, which the verse structure encouraged, the power of the speaker's detailed observations in con­

junction with his economic rendering of the natural scene indicates one of Clare's strongest assets. In the description of the motionless water the speaker’s emotions and the imagery are coordinated, ard they mutually complement each other. The way in which Clare adapts the

Shakespearian sonnet form suggests his awareness of his descriptive strengths, and his adaptation of his own innovative sonnet form indi­ cates his search for a verse pattern that will suit his needs.

In "Lair At Noon" the quatrain units suggested by the rhyme scheme are deliberately weakened by the sentiment of the description. The natural inter-relationships of the trees and the speaker’s place among them, the movement of the air and water, and the variations of light and dark create a sensuous bond between the landscape and the speaker that runs through line 10. The significance that each aspect of the natural scene has for the speaker is indicated by his sensuous response to the scene he describes: 106

The water whirled round each stunted nook, And sweet the splashings on the ear did swim Of fly-bit cattle gulshing in the brook

Though the speaker’s emotional involvement is suggested by his sensuous

description, the speaker himself is not intrusive. His emotions are revealed by way of an element of the landscape. The imagery used to

establish the speaker's physical relationship to the natural scene

suggests a sort of process: And downy bents, that to the air did wreathe, Bow'd 'neath my pressure in an easy bed

The process suggested is more than that of the identification of the speaker with the landscape, it is the very process of poetry itself, as Herbert Read suggests, "this particular faculty to express an emo­ tional state of mind in words that are the exact equivalence of this state." Clare reports his emotional response to the landscape in words and images that enact his enchantment and approximate the depth of his feeling. The breakdown of the form suggested by the rhyme scheme is determined by the expression of the speaker’s emotions in associa­ tion with nature as an end in itself. The speaker's expression has form and rhythm that springs from the intensity of his emotions, and the sense of quatrain and couplet distinctions is lost. The attempt to fit his expression to an external form as he became more aware of his descriptive strength proved to be a mistake for Clare. After line

10 for example the detrimental effect of the outer form of the sonnet is apparent when the speaker enters directly into the verse by stating his inability to remain calm while in the presence of such natural beauty. The speaker's deliberate comment is substantially different 107

in tone and substance from what has preceded, and it is the major fault of the sonnet. There is a difference, however, between the speaker’s

entrance into the verse in "Lair At Noon" and the speaker’s similar

appearance in other sonnets. The difference between the speaker’s

subtle description of himself via his emotional relationship with the

landscape and his conspicuous presence when he comments on himself is

slightly diminished by the appearance of nature images. Included in

his direct comments on himself are glimpses of particular segments of

the natural scene: "flies would buzz around," "sweet snug retreat,"

and "woody screen." The inclusion of nature images helps to maintain

a relationship with the stronger descriptive passage that preceded,

and it suggests the poet's awareness of a need for a total integration

of all aspects in his poetry.

Clare’s attempts to coordinate form, description, and emotion are

evident in ’Winter," which follows the same innovative verse form as "Lair At Noon." Precise imagery, functional rhythms and diction, and arresting figures of speech contribute to the delicacy of the verse:

The small wind whispers through the leafless hedge Most sharp and chill, where the light snowy flakes Rest on each twig and spike of winter’s sedge,

...... vainly breaks The pale split sunbeam through the frowning cloud

Like "Lair At Noon" the sense of quatrain and couplet units is weakened by the description that extends beyond each unit. The careful use of

sense imagery enhances the emotional tie between the speaker and the

stark winter scene by suggesting the effect particular aspects of the landscape have on him. Significantly, the speaker does not appear 108

directly anywhere in the sonnet. In other sonnets the speaker usually appears after line 10, but in "Winter" a sort of analogy between what

Clare does elsewhere and what he does in this sonnet can be observed.

Beginning at the half-way point in the sonnet a traveller in the winter landscape is portrayed. In view of Clare’s other sonnets the traveller in "Winter" bears a functional relation to the speaker who enters directly in other sonnets. Like the appearance of the speaker in other sonnets the emphasis on the traveller represents a shift away from a direct apprehension and description of the landscape to a more distanced portrayal of the traveller's actions in the context of the natural scene. There is a substantial difference, however, in the way the traveller functions in "Winter" as opposed to the way the speaker in other sonnets functions in relation to his comments. The traveller is a part of the landscape and he is described in terms of his rela­ tionship with his surroundings. Under the threat of an approaching storm the traveller hastens to his cottage, and the comforts he enjoys there:

. . , the wood-saps frizzing sounds, And hoarse loud bellows puffing up the blaze are analogous to the speaker's comments in other sonnets where the speaker states his joy or sorrow in relation to a particular scene or landscape. Clare's selective focusing accounts for the sustained effect of the nature imagery in "Winter." The speaker's emotional reaction is first described in conjunction with precise aspects of the scene, and secondly, the meaning of his response to nature is portrayed in more generalized terms by way of the description of the 109

traveller. The meaning of the sonnet lies in the emotionally con­ ceived relationship between the speaker and the natural scene before him.

The use of precise and exact images in association with an emotion­

ally perceptive sensibility suggests Clare’s affinity to the mainstream

of English Romantic poets, whose aim according to Bowra was, "to convey

the mystery of all things through individual manifestations and thereby

show what it means.Clare, however, was not evolving a formula or

a philosophic stance in relation to life. Instead, he was attempting

to render his observations of nature as truthfully as possible in verse

Clare deals with the unseen forces of emotion and nature, but unlike Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, for example, he does not seek the

meaning of universal truths suggested by these forces; rather, he

portrays physical manifestations of these forces as they appear in nature and as he reacts to them. For Clare the meaning of whatever forces there are in nature resides in his emotional response to the

physical beauty of the natural scene as opposed to understanding nature

in terms of a higher or more complex order of things. The diminishing importance of the verse structure, evident in "Winter" and "Lair At

Noon," indicates Clare’s recognition of the evocative power of lang­ uage, and in view of his statement on the title page of The Village Minstrel that he wrote the poems in the volume "to please myself," 1U

Clare's directness in his poetry marks a deliberate attempt to render his unique perception of the world in verse that was characteristically his. Instead of a formal and intricate arrangement of quatrain and couplet or octave and sestet, for Clare the sonnet became a fourteen no

line unit in which he could unfold his observations of nature with

subtle variations in point of view.

In writing sonnets Clare worked both within and at the same time

against the sonnet form; his experiments with a regular verse pattern

are simultaneously attempts to adopt convention to his needs and at­

tempts to break out of convention. An indication of the dual nature

of Clare’s experiments within a regular, though variant, sonnet pattern

appears in "Wild Nosegay." The structure of the verse suggests two

turns of thought; one at the couplet in lines 4 and 5 and another at

the second couplet in lines 9 and 10. His use of the same verse pat­ tern in his treatment of the subject of death proved awkward and trouble­

some, but by de-emphasizing the restrictions of the rhyme scheme and

concentrating instead on the force of the descriptive element, Clare

achieves a higher degree of success in this sonnet. The speaker de­

scribes himself as an active participant in the natural scene:

And oft with anxious feelings would I climb The waving willow-row, a stick to trim and his direct relationship with nature is portrayed. The relation­ ship between the speaker and the landscape, however, appears to be superficial. The language and the images are precise but they do not

suggest strong emotional ties between the speaker and the scene. When the speaker refers to his "anxious feelings" or the "tempting flower" there is no indication why he is anxious nor why the flower is tempting.

The speaker’s somewhat self-conscious activity accounts for the steril­ ity of his description. By having the speaker actively relate to nature Clare was attempting to demonstrate the range and scope of the Ill

speaker’s relationship with nature, but the speaker's activity instead, becomes a balance against which various aspects of nature are weighed

and evaluated because his relationship with nature is stated rather

than enacted. Though Clare is successful to some extent in de-emphasi­ zing the restrictions of the verse form, the speaker's comment at the end:

But, ah, the question's useless to repeat, When will the feelings come I witnessed then? constitutes a weakening of the rather tenuous relationship between the speaker and the scene he describes. Throughout the sonnet various aspects of the scene, and how these aspects relate to the speaker, are enumerated, but the subtle interchange between a particular element in nature and the speaker, evident in Clare's more sensuous descrip­ tions in other poems, is missing. The lengthening of the description of nature apparent in the sonnets that follow a regular pattern indicates Clare's awareness of his partic­ ular strength as a descriptive poet, and the fact that the majority of the sonnets in The Village Minstrel are irregular shows that Clare used the sonnet as a verse unit in which he could frame a specific scene. His use of the sonnet is always experimental to some degree, and the best of his sonnets are unified by the intensity of the scene portrayed rather than by mechanical verse and rhyme structures. In some of the irregular sonnets from The Village Minstrel Clare emerges as an intense artist of the arrested moment.

The apparently inanimate winter landscape of "A Copse in Winter" is given vitality by the speaker's discriminating observation of minute 112

peculiarities. Flowers and foliage are singled out and given distinc­

tion, and the delicacy and precision of Clare's description indicate

a high degree of sensitivity; a sensitivity described by Arthur Symonds:

"There is no closer attention to nature than in Clare’s poems. . . .

Everything that touched him was a delight or an agony." 15 Past, pres­

ent, and future figure into the speaker's description as he alludes to

the natural life cycles Beneath your ashen roots, primroses grow From dead grass tufts and matted moss, once more

The inter-relationship among all things in nature is not only perceived

but it is given new vitality. The re-appearance of particular flowers

is joyfully extolled:

Sweet beds of violets dare again be seen In their deep purple pride; and, gay display'd, The crow-flowers, creeping from the naked green

The signs of new life springing from the remnants of dead leaves and

grass in the desolate landscape has an important twofold implication.

First, the re-appearance of life indicates the cyclical basis of nature,

and secondly, the speaker's acute awareness of the natural process

suggests to him the similarity of all living things. Therefore, when

the speaker describes particular segments of the coppice a subtle emotional relationship between him and the thing he describes becomes evident:

Shades though you're leafless, save the bramble-spear, Whose weather-beaten leaves, of purple stain, In hardy stubbornness cling all the year To their old thornes, till spring buds new again

Both the scene and the speaker's reactions comment on each other. The 113

appearance of new life stimulates the speaker’s emotions, and when he

refers to what he sees his description has an emotional cast. From

a mere receiver of impulses from nature Clare gains a degree of con­

trol over his experience and begins to give it meaning by his selective

ordering of images. In the process of gaining complete control over his experience and

material "A Copse in Winter" marks an advance for Clare, but there are

still some flaws evident in the way he portrays the relationship be­

tween the speaker and the coppice. For the most part the bond between

the two is subtly understated, which constitutes the poem’s greatest

strangth, but at one point the speaker is so emotionally taken with

one aspect of the scene he bursts out:

Shades, still I love you better than the plain For here I find the earliest flowers that grow

There is a lack of balance between the shades that are addressed and

the speaker’s response. His description of the shades is precisely drawn but his reaction strikes a false note because, first, it relies on a comparison that is not developed, and secondly, the plain referred to does not figure into the landscape depicted, and it is not an integral part of the imagery. Once Clare realized that he was a tal­ ented descriptive poet, his next problem to overcome was to control and cultivate his emotional response to natural beauty. Perspective and the maintenance of a proper emotional distance from an object described are important factors of Clare's sonnets as he continued to experiment in developing his own version of the sonnet unit. An interesting example of Clare's work along the lines of the 114

speaker’s place in relation to his description appears in "The Ants."

The description of the ants is prefaced by the speaker's remarks about

the overall scene: ... In ignorance we muse: Pausing, annoy'd, we know not what we see, Such government and thought there seem to be

The speaker takes on the role of interpreter; what he observes is described in terms of his world; therefore the ants' activities suggest "government" and "thought" because that is how things "seem to be,"

The actual description of the ants carries with it a sense of the speaker's judgment in relation to the ants' activities. As the ants drag "their loads of bent-stalks" they do so "slavishly." Appearances are described and interpreted by the speaker and as a result the speaker develops a stance mid-way between the ants and the audience. Through­ out the poem the speaker maintains his position as a sort of guide, and at the end, in view of what he has observed, he assures us that the actions of the ants:

Prove they have kings and laws, and that they be Deformed remnants of the fairy-days. Though the speaker's position in relation to the scene is established and sustained in "The Ants" the poetry is flat. Not only our attention but our reactions are directed and explained to us. A sense of spon­ taneity, present in Clare's most characteristic and best work, is lacking. To some extent the relationship between the ants in their natural environment and the speaker is realized since the speaker ex­ hibits knowledge of the ants when he carefully points out specific actions, but the relationship is a superficial one and the speaker's 115

anxiously directed explanations detract from any evocative power the

description might have had. The distance between the speaker and the

object of his description, the ants, is too great. Clare’s attempts

to have the speaker give his personal reaction to the event depicted in the scene as well as his attempt at formulating an interpretation that could be understood by all at once failed because the speaker’s middling position does not allow for a fully developed and integral relationship to be realized between the speaker, as a unique individual, and what he observes.

The balance between the speaker and that which he describes is more clearly defined in "Nature" as the speaker relates his delights with nature’s trifles, and:

, . , foolish things, As some would call them

It is immediately evident that the speaker is stating his own personal opinion and that he realizes that what pleases him may be considered by some to be "foolish." The emphasis on detail, the precise naming of particular flowers, and the effective use of language to enhance the distinctiveness of the imagery, as in the portrayal of the dog- rose, "with dew-drops seeth'd, while chick'ring cricket sings," which suggests an intimate knowledge of and acquaintance with nature’s variety.

Emotion is enacted rather than stated.

Where love's warm beauty steals her sweetest blush, When, soft the while, the even silent heaves Her pausing breath just trembling thro' the bush, And then again dies calm, and all is hush.

The speaker's emotions pervade the description yet the verse does not 116

fall into sentimental reverie. The balance between the speaker’s emotions and his rendering of those emotions in association with his observations is achieved by the incorporation of emotionally packed words in the description. The speaker is present but his presence is subdued by the delicacy of the particular images portrayed. The scene is more than just a landscape; it becomes a projection of the speaker.

The gentle movement of the air is given meaning by the speaker’s des­ cription, and the degree of his sensitivity to the most minute aspect of nature is evident by the significance he attaches to specific de­ tails. As opposed to "The Ants" where the speaker tried to explain how the ants portrayed had significance for everyone, the speaker in

"Nature" demonstrates that his experience in nature has far-reaching implications through his reaction to particular qualities of nature.

At the end of the sonnet the speaker states: But there are souls that in this lovely hour Know all I mean, and feel whate'er I feel. His apprehension of nature is unique, but through his emotionally charged description of the scene others will recognize what it is he means and what "words can’t reveal." Another subtle variation in the speaker’s point of view appears in the sonnet "In Hilly Wood," The identification of the speaker with nature is unmistakable since the joyful speaker is literally surrounded by nature:

How sweet to be thus nestling deep in boughs, Upon ashen stoven pillowing me

The speaker’s position in relation to other things alluded to suggests 117

his desire for a complete unification with nature, and the sensuous,

almost erotic, description of the exchange between the speaker and

nature enhances the absorption of the one into the other:

The sunbeams scarce molest me with a smile, So thick the leafy armies gather round; And where they do, the breeze blows cool the while, Their leafy shadows dancing on the ground The foliage envelops the speaker in a sensual bond, and the differences

between sunlight and shadow in conjunction with the breeze enhances

the ecstatic motif. The directness of the speaker's relationship with

his surroundings is effectively developed for eight lines as the

speaker precisely reports the manifold joys that arise in his seclusion.

The speaker is hidden from others and he luxuriates in his seclusion:

Faintly are heard the ploughmen at their ploughs, But not an eye can find its way to see.

Our attention is focused primarily on the scene described by the speaker. Realization of the full import the scene has for the speaker

comes from the sensuousness of the imagery and the delicate rendering of that imagery. Clare does not overtly state his love for nature; he demonstrates it in verse via the speaker's.unobtrusive position as a receiver of joy directly associated with nature. In lines 9 through

14 another aspect of the speaker's love of nature appears and it is organically related to the rest of the poem. The speaker observes:

Full many a flower, too, wishing to be seen, Perks up its head the hiding grass between. The flower almost hidden by the grass is somewhat analogous to the speaker who is hidden by the foliage. By describing the flower in terms of its partially hidden state the implication of the analogous 118

situation where the speaker is similarly hidden is that the speaker's emotional response to what he observes can be attributed to the flower.

All aspects of nature are drawn together by the analogy, and each as­ pect becomes simultaneously a contributor and a partaker in the overall joy that is created by the interchange among the various elements. The speaker moves from the simple joys and simple understanding of nature to a realization of the relationship between the outer world and his inmost emotions through the powers of his imagination which are stimu­ lated by the interaction between him and what he observes.

Clare's ability to deal with two major aspects of his relation­ ship with nature suggested by the subtle shift in the speaker’s point of view; in "Nature," for example, from an ecstatic rendering of the natural scene from within to an intensive description of particular elements from above, indicates the degree of his achievement over his earlier poetry and his sonnets in particular. Throughout The Village

Minstrel Clare's contemplation of specific aspects of nature in con­ junction with a specific theme suggests a past that seems full but futile, and a future that portends to be bleak but bearable. In Clare's next volume, The Shepherd's Calendar, the ramifications of what he observed in association with his love of nature are more fully developed and explored in poetry that is direct and honest. 119

The material for this page appears on page 205. 120

The material for this page appears on page 206. 121

CHAPTER FOUR

Endless Labour All in Vain

"On shadow pillowd banks and lolling stile"

The Village Minstrel was slightly better poetically than Poems Descriptive but much less popular. In December 1821, therefore, Clare found himself out of money and relying on Taylor's generosity for

support of him and his family. Nevertheless, Clare emersed himself in literary activity. From December 1821 through March 1822 Clare wrote, either furiously, or not at all. The sporadic nature of his writing during these months is recounted by Clare in his letters. In early February, for example, he states:

the muse is a fickle Hussey with me she sometimes stilts me up to madness & then leaves me as a beggar by the wayside with no more than whats mortal & that nearly extinguished by mellancholy forbodingsl

By mid-March 1822 he was nearly exhausted from his intense concentra­ tion on his work, and the constant threat of poverty did little to rouse his spirits. His discouragement and his depression are reflected in a letter to Hessey:

this confounded lethargy of spirits that presses on me to such a degree that at times makes me feel as if my senses had a mind to leave me Spring or Fall such feelings it seems are doomed to be my companions , . , when death comes he will come2

Clare felt isolated in Helpstone and he craved discussion with other poets and writers. The villagers generally avoided Clare, and when

Clare attempted to gain their grace by stopping at the Blue Bell for 122

ale, he paid a heavy price for his good intentions because he would become helplessly drunk, thereby losing their respect and at the same

time increasing his debts, A change from Helpstone and its inhabitants

was due for Clare, and in April Mrs. Emmerson invited him to join her

and her husband in London, Hessey urged Clare to accept and with five

pounds from Hessey in May he set off for his second excursion to London,

Clare travelled to London by himself and when he arrived there he

stayed with Taylor, The great change from the boredom of rural Help­

stone to the pulsating life in London overwhelmed him and his fascina­

tion with the city is related in his Autobiography t

On my second visit things became more distinct or separate on my memory & one of my greatest wonders there was the continual stream of life passing up and down the principal streets all the day long & even the night one of my most entertaining amusements was to sit by Taylor’s window in Fleet Street to see the constant succession throng this way & that way^

After a brief stay at Taylor’s, Mrs. Emmerson requested that Clare

come and stay with her and meet Edward Villiers Rippingille, the artist.

Clare and Rippingille took an immediate liking to one another and their

friendship extended over several years. Of greater significance for

Clare during his stay in London, however, were his discussions with the contributors to the London Magazine. Lamb, Hazlitt, Cary, Allan

Cunningham, Thomas Hood, Hartly Coleridge, and C. A. Elton were among the regular contributors, and Reynolds, Procter, Talford, and DeQuincey had occasional poems and essays published.5 In 1822 the London Maga­ zine reached its peak, and the dinner parties given at Waterloo Place were regularly attended by the contributors to the magazine. Clare’s 123

greatest amusement was "the curiosity of seeing literary men,and at the dinner parties Clare talked to one and all present. The dinner parties and the famous Londoners who attended them are included in

Clare's descriptions of his visit. His descriptions shed as much light on him as they do on the people and events depicted. The pom­ posity of "dabbling critics," whom Clare referred to as "little vapours that were content to shine by the light of others" and other self- 7 important hangers-on was immediately perceived by Clare, J. H.

Reynolds is described as "the soul of these dinner parties he was the most good-natured fellow I ever met with his face was in the three-in- one of fun wit & punning personified he would punch you with his puns Q very keenly without ever hurting your feelings." As opposed to the jocular Reynolds, Hazlitt made quite a different impression on Clare: he sits a silent picture of severity if you watch his face for a month you would not catch a smile there his eyes are always turnd towards the ground except when one is turned up now & then with a sneer that cuts a bad pun or a young author-s maiden table'talk to atoms.7

Descriptions and impressions of Coleridge, DeQuincey, Southey, Carey, Cunningham, and other notables of the London scene in 1822 are related, but the one person with whom Clare was most taken was Charles Lamb.

Clare saw Lamb as "a long remove from his friend Hazlitt in ways and manners . . . he is a good sort of fellow & if he offends it is most innosently done,"^ Though Lamb preferred the city and had a distaste for all things rural he liked Clare and the two became very good friends. Their recollections of childhood and their love of romance set the groundwork for discussions on poetry. Lamb's influence on 124

Clare and the ties that kept them friends are evident in Clare’s sonnets to him:

Elia, thy reveries and visioned themes To care’s lorn heart a luscious pleasure proves, Wild as the mystery of delightful dreams, Soft as the anguish of remembered loves; Like records of past days their memory dances Mid the cool feelings manhood’s reason brings

Friend Lamb, thou choosest well, to love the lore Of our old bygone bards . ,

Love of the past, revery, and the similarity between Lamb’s loss of

his ideal sweetheart, Alice W______alluded to in "Dream Children" which appeared in the January London Magazine, and Clare’s loss of

Mary Joyce were responsible for the continuance of the friendship

between these two beyond the London dinner parties. T2

Clare returned to Helpstone on June 17, and upon his arrival there 13 he learned that Patty had borne him a daughter the day before. Life back in Helpstone, however, was quite dull but Clare found relief by reading and by writing letters to his friends in London. Throughout

1822 and 1823 Clare was busy writing poems for a new volume of poetry. In his writing during this period he experimented with verse forms and subject matter. He tried writing verse for children, and in a letter to Hessey he suggested poems dealing with:

a boy running races with the moon--and another hunting the landrail or landrake . , , you know the bird its a little thing ... & one of the most poetical images in rural nature ... I will set seriously to work to make the thing as good as I can^

Clare also wrote an extended satire of over one-thousand lines on life in a rural English village entitled The Parish. The Parish was 125

like nothing else Clare had written; the tone is bitter and the satire is harsh. After completing The Parish Clare recognized that satire

of the sort he had written was not his metier. His notions on the sonnet also underwent a change and he expressed his view in a letter

to Taylor; I have made it up in my mind to write one hundred Sonnets as a set of pictures on the scenes of objects that appear in the different seasons & as I shall do it soly for amusement I shall take up wi gentle & simple as they come whatever in my eye finds any interests not merely in the view for publication but for attempts^

Financial matters still plagued Clare but more disconcerting was the lack of response from his publishers in relation to his proposals for

a new volume. The Village Minstrel was slow in coming to print in

1821 because Taylor was almost totally involved with producing the

London Magazine. Relations between Clare and Taylor had been strained during the months preceding the publication of The Village Minstrel and Clare was still slightly distrustful of Taylor. In February 1823

Clare had submitted what he considered to be a sufficient number of poems for a third book but Taylor did not respond. By the beginning of 1824 Clare was completely exhausted, after completing still more poems, because he had been writing almost without rest since 1820,

In a letter to Taylor the degree of his fatigue is apparent;

When I have done with ’The Shepherd’s Calandar’ I shall make up my mind to publish no more for .8 or 10 years ■ wether the thing be successful or not*-®

Clare’s illness had been increasing during the latter part of 1823 and 17 the symptoms took the form of acute mental distress. In view of his financial and domestic problems, which were increased by the birth 126

of a son in January 1824, as well as by his extended literary activity,

it is no wonder that Clare should be terribly depressed. During the winter of 1824 he suffered severely from despondency and physical ill­

ness. Hessey sent him medication and advice from Dr. Darling, who had

taken care of Keats. Clare was quite concerned with thoughts of death

and he became involved with religious questionings. For a while he

considered joining the Ranters, and he had Woodhouse, who advized T ft Keats in legal matters, draw up a will for him. In a letter to

Thomas Inskip six months later Clare describes his symptoms:

I have been in a terrible state of ill-health six months gradually declining and I verily believe that it will upset me at least I was taken in a sort of appoplectic fit and have never had the right use of my faculties since a numbing pain lies constantly about my head and an acking void at the pit of my stomach keeps sinking me away deeper and deeper^-9

In April he was no better and he decided to travel to London on the advice of Taylor to see Dr, Darling.

Clare arrived in London in late May and he stayed with Taylor.

His physical condition improved somewhat as a result of the medical attention he received from Dr. Darling but his depressed mental con­ dition remained the same. During his stay in London Clare renewed his acquaintance with some of the contributors to the London Magazine whom he had met earlier. The London Magazine, however, had deterior­ ated, and its circle of writers was not what it had been in 1822. Clare saw Lamb and he met a little known poet, Harry Stoe Van Dyke, who offered to help him copy the drafts of The Shepherd's Calendar.

The company of others helped Clare only to some extent and his mental condition did not change significantly. In his Autobiography Clare 127

relates the degree of his fears that plagued him at this time: terrors came upon me tenfold & my head was full of the terrible as a gossip’s thin death-like shadows & goblins with saucer eyes were continually shaping on the darkness from my haunted imagination & when I saw anyone of a spare figure in the dark or passing or going on by my side my blood has curdled cold at the foolish apprehensions of his being a supernatural agent whose errand it might be to carry me away at the first dark alley we came to . . . I could not get it out of my head but that I should be sure to meet death or the devil2®

On July 12 Byron's funeral cortege proceeded along Oxford Street and up Tottenham Court Road on its way to Nottingham^ and Clare in

his agitated state was much impressed by the spectacle, To Clare

Byron’s death suggested greater implications than the mere passing

of a single human being, and the reaction of the people who had gathered

along the funeral route indicated to him the extent of Byron's signifi­

cance: The common people felt his merits and his power & the common people of a country are the best feelings of a prophecy of futurity they are the veins & arteries that feed & quicken the heart of living fame The breathings of eternity & the soul of time are indicated in that prophecy They felt by a natural impulse that the mighty was fallen & they moved in saddened silence22

Clare admired Byron greatly and the impact; of Byron's influence on

him would show itself later when he went to stay at the asylum at

Northampton. Important also in relation to Clare's later life are

the amusements he and his friend E. V. Rippingille enjoyed. Together

they went to the French Playhouse and to boxing matches. Clare be­

came very enthusiastic about seeing various boxing events, and after an evening at The Five Courts he stated: "I left the place with one wish strongly uppermost & that was that I was but a Lord to patronize 128

Jones the Sailor Boy who took my fancy as being the finest fellow in the ring."^3 The full significance of the impressions made on him at

this time showed themselves during his years of confinement when he

identified himself as Byron and Jones the Sailor Boy. Toward the end

of July Clare was anxious to return to his family in Helpstone even though he was far from cured. Dr, Darling detained Clare for a short

while but Clare was determined to get home, and on August 8 he left

for Helpstone,

Upon Clare’s arrival home the conditions that caused his distress still existed. He continued to receive medication in the form of

pills from Dr, Darling throughout August and September, and since he

felt that death was imminent he read other poets and he wrote in a

flourish of activity. He completed his Autobiography, some of his

Natural History of Helpstone, a few critical essays, and he began

keeping a journal. The summer and fall of 1824 became a turning point

for Clare in relation to his poetry. He came to the realization that

his only hope to overcome his position in Helpstone was in his ability as a poet. Thoughts of death and his haunted'spirit made his writing

seem much more important, and if he was ever to pull himself out of

poverty and relieve his mental distress it would be because of his

poetry. His greatest concern during the winter of 1825 was the publication of The Shepherd's Calendar. Taylor had promised that it would be published in the winter of 1824, and the year-long delay caused Clare a great deal of anxiety since the relative failure of The Village 129

Minstrel was largely due to Taylor’s delay. In January Taylor was attempting to save the London Magazine, and he devoted almost all of his energies in that direction. In February, Van Dyk, who was copying

Clare’s poems for Taylor informed Clare that he would have the first proofs shortly and that The Shepherd’s Calendar would be published in 24 March. March and April passed before Clare heard anything more,

Clare was terribly disheartened and he attempted to retrieve his poems from Taylor in order to have them published by someone else as the en­ try for April 17 in his Journal indicates:

I have waited three weeks for a new proof of the Shepherd's Calendar & nothing has come which was to be in 3 days—I have sent for some rough copys of Poems which I sent up to Taylor when the Village Minstrel was in the press & I have not got them yet & never shall I expect—I want them to finish some for a future publication . . . wrote to Hessey in a manner that I am always very loath to write but I coud keep icy patience no longer* 5

In May Clare received a letter from Van Dyk written in March, which

Taylor forgot to send on to him, that stated the printing of his poems would be held up because Taylor neglected to pass on all the poems to be included in the volume. The further delay and the apparent lack of concern on the part of Taylor added to Clare's disillusionment, but when Taylor confronted him in relation to his request for the return of his poems, Clare acquiesced to Taylor's suggestion not to change publishers in his reply:

when I feel anything I must speak it I know that my temper is hasty . . . but put yourself in my place for a minute & see how you woud have felt & written yourself ... I have no desire to seek another publisher ... I will conclude with the hopes of seeing a proof of the Shepherd's Calendar in a few days2? 130

Relations between Clare and Taylor were re-established but during the

summer of 1825 Taylor underwent a series of drastic changes. The

partnership of Taylor and Hessey was dissolved in July and Taylor gave up the London Magazine in the same month. In September Taylor suf­

fered a severe illness as Hessey indicates in a letter to Claret

For ten days he [Taylor] was in a high state of delirium ... he is still very weak .... The Shepherd's Calendar cannot make much progress at present on account of Taylor’s weak state, but as soon as he gets better he will set about the correction of it.2®

Four months later, in January 1826, Clare once again asked Taylor to set a publication date for The Shepherd’s Calendar. Taylor was in­ censed and he blamed Clare for the delay because the manuscripts were unreadable. Again Clare humbly accepted Taylor's criticism and he asked to have the manuscripts sent to him so that he could re-copy them. The process of re-copying went on and by September all but the introduction was ready for publication. In November Clare received six copies of the book but DeWint's engraving for the frontispiece was unsuitable and the actual publication was delayed until May 1827.29 * '

The Shepherd's Calendar was less widely reviewed than Poems Des­ criptive and The Village Minstrel, and the reviewers, such as they were, did not rate the volume highly. The Eclectic Review contained the only favorable review, but the reviewer for the Literary Gazette stated the reason why Clare's latest work was doomed to failure was 30 that there no longer existed a public for such verse. Clare s greatest fears, that The Shepherd's Calendar would fail, had appeared 131

in a dream two years earlier seemed to be realized; I had a very odd dream last night & I take it as an ill omen for I dont expect that the book will meet a better fate I thought I had one of the proofs of the new poems from London & after looking at it awhile it shrank thro my hands like sand & crumbled into dust31

Clare’s health, which had been in a precarious state for several

years, did not get any better after the unenthusiastic reception of

his latest volume of poetry. Money matters became more important since

it was clear that he would not make money from the sale of The Shepherd* Calendar. In the face of such dire circumstances Clare continued to write in the hope of publishing still another volume. No sooner had he resolved to push on with his work than he learned of John Taylor’s 32 appointment to the University of London as publisher and bookseller.

With Taylor out of the business of publishing poetry, Clare was forced to seek out someone who would publish his work. About this time Clare's depressed mental condition was compounded by the onset of painful physical distress which took the form of eruptions on the body. Dr,

Darling who had been prescribing medication for Clare demanded that he return to London for treatment. With encouragement from Mrs. Emmerson in February 1828 Clare departed for London for his fourth visit.5

All the joy and good companionship that came together at Taylor's dinner parties when the London Magazine was at its height was complete­ ly missing when Clare arrived in London. All the famous Londoner’s had departed and the only member of that memorable group he met was

Allan Cunningham. For the five weeks that Clare spend in London he did little, and most of his time was spent at the Emmersons with whom 132

he was staying. Aside from the medical treatment he received, the most significant events of his stay in London were his meetings with

Henry Behnes, who made a bronze bust of Clare, and his dealings with

Taylor, Taylor suggested that Clare buy back, at a reduced rate, all his unsold books and peddle them in Northamptonshire.^ Clare agreed,

and since he was very homesick for his family, he quickly left London.

Clare's rest in London did him good and Dr. Darling's medical treat­

ment cured him of his physical illness. For the next year and a half Clare enjoyed reasonably good health.

In January 1829 Clare was ready to proceed with a new volume.

Prior to the publication of The Shepherd's Calendar Clare indulged in a great deal of reading. His particular favorites were the Renaissance

poets, especially Shakespeare whose sonnets he considered the best in the language.35 in a letter to Cary, Clare states his intentions of

producing a volume of poems in the manner of the older poets based upon his readings: I write to beg your opinion of the enclosed Poems as one of those I intend to pass off as the writings of others— this I sent to the 'Everyday Book* as the production of Andrew Marvel & the Editor took it for granted that it was so & paid me a compliment in praising it which he would not have done had it passed under my own name ... I still have thoughts of going on with the deception . . . but Taylor wished me not to disguise them under the names of others but publish them under the Title of 'Visits of Earlier Muses'36

Fortunately Cary convinced Clare not to go ahead with his proposed intentions and the entire idea of literary forgery was dropped. Clare decided that he must remain true to his own style if he was to succeed at all as a poet. The problem, however, was that Clare's ideas in 133

relation to nature poetry were not in fashion. Clare was aware of

this as he indicates in a letter to Taylor»

I think many of the productions of the day that introduce action do it at the expense of nature for they are often like puppets pulled into motion by strings & there are so many plots semiplots & demiplots to make up a bookable matter for modern taste that its often a wonder how they can find readers to please at all37

The failure of The Shepherd's Calendar to attract a sizable audience

still rankled Clare even though he became more convinced of his views

on poetry itself. After a brief visit to Northampton in February 1829 Clare returned home to work in the fields. The work outdoors helped Clare clear up

some of his financial problems, and it helped to calm his mental anxi­ eties. Money continued to be a problem and Clare had been waiting for a statement of his account with Taylor in the hope of receiving some money to defray his debts. In August he received a letter from Taylor explaining all of his finances. The sum total of the sale of all

Clare’s books showed that he owed Taylor £ 140. Taylor explained that he had no intentions of pressing Clare for the money, but he did want it made clear that he owed him nothing.3® After ten years* writ­ ing the only thing Clare had to show was an unpayable debt. The dis­ couraging news upset Clare greatly because he felt that there must be some sort of mistake in the account books. After much deliberation with himself Clare wrote to Taylor and he expressed his dissatisfaction in characteristically humble language» you must excuse ray enquireys if I make them where none are necessary for my ignorance in such matters must be my 134

innoscence of any impertinence that may appear to be so—as every wish in making the enquirey is to be satisfied of things that I do not understand & not one with the intention to offend—so where I am right I feel convinced that you will alow it & where I am wrong I hope as strongly you will excuse me of any other intention then that of wishing to be right39

Taylor's reply brought with it even worse news, because not only were

the accounts correct but the proposed lowering of the interest rate by

the government would decrease Clare's allowance from the fund which

was established for him at the beginning of his career.

In the early part of 1830 Clare attempted to write two prose tales,

The Stage Coach and The Two Soldiers. which were similar to his earlier attempts at a prose work in 1822, The Bone and Cleaver Club.^ He soon

gave up his attempts at prose, however, and in June he want to Peter­

borough at the invitation of Mrs. Marsh, who was interested in Clare's

poetry. Clare made a favorable impression on the people gathered at

the Palace at Peterborough, and he was invited back to attend the

theater to see The Merchant of Venice on July 14. About this time

Clare’s health began to give way again and the thoughts of suffering from physical pain affected him deeply. During the performance the extent of Clare's agitated mental condition became evident when he rose to his feet and cursed Shylock much to the embarrassment of every- one present. The flaring up of his anxieties at the theater was only a prelude to greater physical illness which followed. Clare was once again depressed as a result of his chaotic finances, and the pains associated with his latest attack only served to sink him deeper into melancholia. Dr. Darling sent prescriptions and prescribed these 135

medical treatments: leeches to be applied to his temples, cold cloths

to be continually applied to his head, a seaton to his neck, poultices

on various parts of his body, and a water diet. As a result Clare was 42 too weak to write even a letter for two months. Even as he seemed

better in late September the difficulty he had in writing at all is indicated in a letter to Taylor:

my fancys & feelings vary very often but I now feel a great numbness in my right shoulder—& the seaton tho I cannot bear it to be dressed for 3 or 4 mornings together discharges so much that I fear I shall fall into a Decline at last— but thank god icy head is more relieved tho it stings now & then as if nettled43

The seriousness of his latest attack was evident to Clare, and he seemed to be aware of the implications of any future illness in another letter to Taylor:

I fear I shall be in the same state I was in last summer . , . last night I got tollerable rest but the pain in my stomach was more frequent in its attacks & I awoke in dreadful irritation thinking that Italian liberators were kicking my head about for a foot ball—my future prospects seem to be no sleep—a general debility—a stupid & and stunning apathy or lingering madness & death —my dreads are very apprehensive^

Following his illness Clare went back to writing poems and he literally gave them away to the Bee ami the Champion since Taylor said that he could not publish a new volume of his poetry.^ Though Clare gradually regained a measure of health during the fall and early winter of 1830 his debts continued to increase, and by January I83I he was in a des­ perate financial situation. Throughout 1831 Clare sank deeper and deeper into debt but in order to maintain his sanity and physical well-being he continued to 136

plan for the future. He proposed various ideas to Taylor for a new

volume, and he wrote poems which were to be included in the volume.

At the end of 18JL Clare had written much but he owed two years' rent

on his cottage. Through the efforts of Mrs. Emmerson arrangements were

made whereby Clare could move with his wife and six children to a

larger and more comfortable cottage in Northborough. Clare fell ill

again, however, during the fall of 1831 and he was very apprehensive about leaving his beloved native Helpstone where he had lived all his

life. In a letter to Taylor, Clare expresses the reasons for his re­

luctance to move to Northborough:

the woods & heaths & favorite spots that have known me so long for the very mole-hills on the heath & the old trees in the hedges seem bidding me farewell—other associations or friendships I have few or none to regret . . . altho my flitting is not above three miles off—there is neither wood nor heath furze bush molehill or oak tree about it & a Nightingale never reaches as far in her summer excursions*

In May I832, however, Clare gathered his family and his possessions 4,7 and moved to Northborough.

Since I83O Clare’s friends, spearheaded by Mrs, Emmerson, had been attempting to interest a publisher in his poems, Shortly after his arrival in his new home in Northborough Clare went to work by copying his rough drafts with the hope of bringing his work to print. Clare selected over three-hundred poems from thirty-five manuscript books that had been written over a ten-year period. He decided to publish his poems by subscription, and on September 1, I832 one-hundred copies of his proposals to publish a volume of poetry called The Midsummer

Cushion arrived from Peterborough. With the help of the Emmersons, 137

the Simpsons, the Mossops, the Marshes, and Henderson two hundred sub- 48 scribers were collected by the end of October. Clare changed his

mind about the subscription, however, and he decided to sell his poetry

to a London publisher, Whittaker, by way of a local man named J, How.

The announcement of Clare’s new volume stirred up some interest

and, some unfortunate publicity. In the August 25th Anthenaeum it was

stated that Clare had been given his cottage by Lord Milton free for 49 life, and the Bee ran the same story. When Clare attempted to clar­ ify his situation his statements were misunderstood. The Alfred gave the correct facts shortly thereafter, but another story was added to the correction which suggested that Clare had been cheated out of all his money by Taylor, and the Bee and the Anthenaeum followed suit.3®

Taylor was quite upset by the stories, and in January 1833 he went so far as to file suit against the magazines. The confusion and gossip went on but eventually Clare made it very clear that he regarded

Taylor as a friend and that he did not feel cheated. In a letter to Cunningham, Clare wrote;

I have a strong opinion of Taylor, & shall always respect him & I think if the matter had been entirely left to business & I had sold them out & out even for a trifle I should have been much better off & much better satisfied ... I cannot but say God protect all hopes in difficulty from the patronage of Traded

Taylor dropped the libel suit and became a subscriber to Clare’s proposed volume. The manuscript of The Midsummer Cushion was completed by August

1833, and Clare sent it to Mrs. Emmerson. Mrs. Emmerson praised the poetry but she suggested a title change from The Midsummer Cushion 138

to The Rural Muse. In January the Emmersons received How’s promise

that The Rural Muse would be published in the spring. Clare was once

again in deep financial trouble and the pressure of supporting a large

family was beginning to tell as his health began to deteriorate. He

began to have hallucinations and Dr. Darling’s only suggestion was to

read from the Bible so that his spirit would be calm. In the spring

of 1834 The Rural Muse was not published as promised, and Clare went into another period of illness and depression. Temporary relief came

in March when Mr. Emmerson informed Clare that he would receive £ 40 for the copyright of The Rural Muse.^2 Clare, however, remained ill

and Dr. Darling finally suggested that Clare come see him in London

in July, but since neither Taylor nor the Emmersons would be able to

provide him with lodgings at that time Clare was stuck with his ever-

increasing problems. Clare did manage to finish the Preface for The

Rural Muse in August, but he asked Taylor to correct the proofs, which 53 he did during September. In December Clare applied for £ 50 from

the Literary Fund, and in January the money arrived in time for Clare 54 to pay off some of his more pressing debts. The slight lift in his spirits as the result of his being able to pay some of his debts, however, was countered shortly thereafter by the news of the death of Woodhouse, and, more importantly, the death of Lamb. When The Rural Muse was published there was little interest and only a mild response from the general public. By the end of the year many of the copies of the first edition remained unsold. Ironically,

The Rural Muse contained Clare’s best work up to this point, yet as 139

opposed to the widespread popularity of his apprentice work in Poems

Descriptive. The Rural Muse was hardly noticed. Derwent Coleridge,

Alaric Watts, James Montgomery, E, V. Rippingille, and Charles Elton all lauded Clare's work, but their priase had little or no effect on the volume’s lack of popularity.$$ In his review of The Rural Muse for Blackwood's Magazine. Wilson was generally sympathetic, and the

Literary Gazette, the Anthenaeum. the New Monthly, and the Druids' 56 Magazine had warm praise for the book. Despite the superiority of the verse in The Rural Muse in comparison with his earlier work, and the warm-hearted appreciation expressed by the reviewers, Clare’s last work to be published during his lifetime failed to capture an audience. 140

CHAPTER FIVE

Where Fewer Paths Intrude

"I had a joy, and keep it still alive

Between the publication of The Shepherd's Calendar and The Rural Muse Clare searched for folk ballads among the villagers of Helpstone, Though he was unsuccessful in collecting whole ballads, the fragments he was able to gather served as a basis for his own work in the ballad form. His use of the ballad form proved valuable as a means of dis­ cipline. The necessity of selecting words carefully in order to com­ press or suggest an idea, and the brevity of the ballad stanza helped

Clare to rid himself of the diffuseness so often apparent in his early work. Clare's penchant for experimentation is evident in his variations with meter and the ballad stanza. None of his best work in the ballad written between 1825 and I835 was published during his lifetime, but the influence of the ballads and the lessons he gained from them are discernable in his other poems. In "The Maid of Ocram," which was not published until 1920, for example, the narrative is precise and the poem moves along swiftly:

Gay was the Main of Ocram As lady eer might be Ere she did venture past a maid To love Lord Gregory. Fair was the Maid of Ocram And shining like the sun Ere her bower key was turned on two Where bride bed lay for none 141

And late at night she sought her love-- The snow slept on her skin— Get up, she cried, thou false young man, And let thy true love in. And fain would he have loosed the key All for his true love's sake, But Lord Gregory then was fast asleep, His mother wide awake.

Clare is direct, his descriptions are sparse yet delicately rendered, and much happens within a very short space. The banter between Lord

Gregory's mother and the Maid of Ocram is terse, and the reversals in the story are poignantly clear. In "Betrayed" the verse is succinct and the directness of the language is arresting. The infidelity of the speaker’s lover is recounted in association with nature images:

I set my back against an oak, Thinking it to be some lusty tree; But first it bowed and then it broke, And so did my false love with me.

The imagery and language by themselves are quite elementary, yet the reciprocal nature of the relationship between the girl’s story and the images she uses to illustrate the decline of her love affair, which are maintained throughout the poem, enhance the connotative power of the ballad. Sentimentality that appeared often in Clare’s early verse is missing even at the end when the girl says»

I cropt a lily from the stalk, And in my hand it died away; So did my joy, so will my heart, In false love's cruel grasp decay. The analogy between the girls' condition and various aspects of nature has been distinctly maintained. A maid's love for a young man is the theme of the humorous "0 Silly Lovet 0 Cunning Lovel" The lighter side of love in the context of everyday events is depected in an amus­ 142

ing manner:

Last Christmas Eve, from off the spit I took a goose to table, Or should have done, but teasing love Did make me quite unable; And down slipt dish, and goose, and all, With din and clitter-clatter; All but the dog fell foul on me; He licked the broken platter.

Much is compressed into the words "teasing love" and throughout "0

Silly LoveJ 0 Cunning Love" Clare’s ability to select words that bear

•the weight of connotative value is apparent. The careful modulation of rhythms throughout the poem is effective in suggesting the comic element, and it serves to set off each phase of the girl's experience with love by emphasizing the elementary character of the experience.

The happy and light-hearted mood of "Love's Biddle" is also enhanced by the basic rhythm and simplicity of the words: Unriddle this riddle, my own Jenny love, Unriddle the riddle for me, And if ye unriddle the riddle aright, A kiss your prize shall be, And if he riddle the riddle all wrong, Ye’ll treble the debt to me

The repetition and play on words contributes to the levity of the situation, and the lilting movement of the verse complements the exchange between the lovers and sudden reversals in the puzzle pre­ sented. The natural goodness and beauty of a poor young maiden and the ideality of a young nobleman in his relationship with the young maiden is dealt with in "The Banks of Ivory." Unlike the other ballads written during this time, "The Banks of Ivor/’ is more broadly des­ criptive : 143

Her face it wore the beauty of heaven's own broken mould; The world's first charm seemed living still; her curls like hanks of gold Hung waving, and her eyes glittered timid as the dew, When by the banks of Ivory I swore I loved her true.

The maiden’s spotless beauty, both physical and spiritual, is econom­ ically portrayed as well as the young man's fascination with her. The imagery, diction, and rhythm are surer and Clare maintains the objec­ tivity, and brevity needed for the ballad form.

The significance of Clare's ballad writing is closely associated with the nature of the ballad form itself. The elementary human ex­ periences depicted, the necessity for clear and économie narrative, and the basic rhythm of the ballad stanza provided Clare with a means of sharpening his poetic talents. After The Shepherd *s Calendar Clare seems to have become more fully aware of his talent for rendering short, precise impressions and descriptions in verse. He must have discovered that he could not sustain the intensity of his perceptions throughout a long poem. The ballad stanza apparently helped Clare to understand the nature of his abilities, and his experiments wihin the form showed him that much could be compressed into a small unit. In his ballads he is in control of his material and he demonstrates his ability to use words effectively. The importance of the need for economy and succinctness, which Clare learned from writing ballads, is more clearly evident in his descriptive poems in The Rural Muse.

When Clare was in his mid-thirties, between 1825 and I83O, he began writing a number of poems on birds. Some of these poems appeared in Rural Muse, but most did not. These poems are essentially con­ 144

versational; "The Pettichap’s Nest," for example, begins:

Weill in my walks I’ve rarely found A place less likely for a bird to form Its nest—close by the rut-gulled wagon-road and the majority of the poems on birds are interesting, more often than not, for the information they give about the particular bird described. Clare's interest in nature was profound and in his poems on birds his interest is that of an ornithologist rather than a mere weekend dabbler. The accuracy of detail and the precision of the description in "The Pewit's Nest" is typical of these poems:

Chance found four eggs of dingy dirty green, Deep blotched with plashy spots of chocolate stain; Their small ends inward turned as ever found, As though some curious hand had laid them round, Yet lying on the ground with naught at all Of soft grass, withered twitch and bleached weed To keep them from the rain-storm's frequent fall; And here she broods on her unsavoury bed.

In the best of the poems on birds Clare's distinct awareness and response to nature is evident. His portrayal of a particular bird and its surroundings is accomplished without the intrusion of the speaker's attitude; the bird is the center of attention at all times. In "The Yellow-Hammer's Nest," "The Skylark," and "The Yellow Wagtail's Nest" the distinction between the speaker and the birds described is sustained, and as a result the substantial difference between the speaker and the birds is all the more evident. The implications of the speaker's precise description of the birds, their nests, and their habits, is that he is quite different from them, and his relation­ ship with nature therefore is complicated. In order to understand nature he must be more keenly aware of all that he observes. That is, 1A5

the speaker carefully observes every possible detail to gain an under­

standing of a particular bird's behavior. All of nature takes on new

meaning as a result of each revelation of specific behavioral patterns

of particular birds. In "The Nightingale Nest," for example, the

speaker carefully observes the scene before speculating on larger

issues:

How curious is the nestt no other bird Uses such loose materials, or weaves Its dwelling in such spots; dead oaken leaves Are placed without and velvet moss within, And little scraps of grass, and—scant and spare, Of what seem scarce materials—down and hair; For from men's haunts she nothing seems to win. Yet nature is the builder, and contrives Homes for her children's comfort even here, Where solitude disciplines spend their lives Unseen, save when a wanderer passes near Who loves such pleasant places. Nature is active, varied, and fascinating even in the most obscure detail. The presentation of the intricacies of nature in the bird poems suggests Clare's deeper awareness of nature that has come with matur­ ity. Birds and various other aspects of nature are perceived in a new sense; they are subjects for his poetry because they are signif­ icant and interesting by themselves. Clare communicates his special perception of nature by accurately delineating what he observes. He often draws our attention to fine distinctions of relatively obscure facets of nature by initiating his poems dealing with birds through a dramatic illustration of the way in which he comes in contact with a specific bird. In "The Blackcap," for example, the speaker is

"astonished" to learn that he has mistaken the "jug-jugged" sound of 146

the Blackcap for the Nightingale. Though such matters as the mistaken

identity of a bird have a limited value in the aesthetic sense, the

careful attention to such an ordinary and perhaps for most an insignif­

icant event as a bird’s song suggests the delicate sensitivity of Clare’s

relationship with nature, Clare’s understanding of the beauty and

sovereignty of all things in nature and the reality of his vision is

commented on by John Middleton Murry, "For in Clare's vision is indub­ itable truth, not comprehensive, not final, but because it strikes our hearts as truth, and is truth, it is prophetic of the final and compre- hensive truth. It is melody not harmony." The portrayal of birds is uncomplicated by religious or philosophical expectations of nature; instead nature is presented as an amoral force that is both indiffer­ ently destructive and generous. In "Kingfishers", for example, the natural balance among the birds and fish is objectively depicted;

No finer birds are known to fly Than these gay-dressed kingfishers are, Who live on fish and watch the fry Of minnows nimbly passing there; And there they'll sit whole hours away In that same lone and watching spot, And when they dart to seize their prey Drop down as sudden as a shot.

During the years of his disappointment over the slow process of bringing The Shepherd's Calendar to print and the illness and depress­ ion following its failure, Clare developed, more than ever before, a capacity for an intense emotional response to nature. The numerous poems on birds, field animals, and flowers attest to his awareness of his environment, but the tone, the delicacy, and the accuracy with which he describes various aspects of nature indicate his love and 147

respect for all forms of life. It is very significant that Clare never

infused human qualities into his descriptions of nature. Every bird,

flower, and animal is presented objectively because for Clare each was special in its eternal uniqueness. Clare learned through years of

financial hardship that he could best find eternal values in nature.

The sensitive apprehension of nature as the embodiment of all that is eternal on earth is expressed in what has been described as "the most exquisite of his early poetry" and "the most perfect of Clare's poems"2

"Song's Eternity"»

What is Song's Eternity? Come and see. Can it noise and bustle be? Come and see. Praises sung or praises said Can it be? Wait awhile and these are dead— Sigh, Sigh; Be they high or lowly bred They die. 'Tootle tootle tootle tee’— Can it be Pride and fame must shadows be? Come and see— Every season owns her owns Bird and bee Sing creation’s music on; Nature’s glee Is in every mood and tone Eternity. Song is the unifying metaphor of the poem, and as each of the simple

sounds of nature is perceived by the speaker he comes to an awareness of the sound’s reverberation throughout all time by his emotional response to it. The speaker and his song are part of the eternal continuum. What Clare hears is authentic, and his direct presentation 148

of what he observed and experienced in verse indicates the change in

his apprehension of nature that had taken place for him between his

early verse and the appearance of The Rural Muse. In his early poems

Clare was less objective in his portrayal of nature; the verse is often

marred by sentimental rumination and condescending self-pity. Clare's maturer poems are distinguished by the separation between the subject

of his description and himself; personality and attitudes are suppressed or negated in order to present the most sensitive observation truth­

fully. The difference between Clare's descriptive poems of his youth and the poems of his maturity is most evident in his short lyrics. A good example of Clare's mature ability is "Grasshoppers" which was not published until 1920:

Grasshoppers go in many a thrumming spring And now to stalks of tasselled sour-grass cling, That shakes and swees awhile, but still keeps straight While arching oxeye doubles with his weight. Next on the cat-tail grass with farther bound He springs, that bends until they touch the ground.

Clare infuses a momentary observation with intense lyricism. The ordinary actions of a grasshopper as it flits from place to place become significant because we are made aware of the grasshopper's uniqueness. Language is used effectively; words such as "thrumming," and "shakes and swees" capture the fragility of the moment and the movement of the grasshoppers. The delicacy of the scene is accurately portrayed, and the speaker remains out of the picture entirely.

Brevity and imagistic power enhance the tone of spontaneity and nat­ uralness, As opposed to the diffuseness of his earlier descriptive 149

poems "Grasshoppers" is whittled down to the essentials; Clare has

control over his material and the effect he achieves is aesthetically

gratifying.

Clare's best work is apparent in his shorter poems; however, he did include some moderately long descriptive pieces in The Rural Muse.

These descriptive poems suffer from the same fault as his earlier works since they tend to be without form, yet they are different in the sense that they are composed of a number of short lyrical segments.

On the whole they are also shorter than his earlier descriptive poems.

The theme of man's acceptance of his mortality in association with the immortality of nature and poetry expressed in "Song's Eternity" appears also in "The Eternity of Nature." Like "Song's Eternity" nature is presented objectively in "The Eternity of Nature" and the implications of what is observed assures the speaker of the signifi­ cance of nature;

The little robin in the quiet glen, Hidden from fame and all strife of men, Sings unto Time a pastoral, and gives A music that lives on and everlives. Spring and autumnal years shall bloom, and fade, Longer than songs that poets ever made. The essence of all song is in nature, and the elementary perception of that fact carries with it a profound understanding of the basis of life.- Nature is not saddled with a metaphysic; rather, its common aspects illustrate fundamental truths. When Clare hears the bird's song he is in contact with eternity, and when he joins in nature's song by creating poetry which echoes nature's song he reaches beyond the limits of his mortality and becomes part of nature's eternity. 150

Clare’s song is like nature's song because its essence is in the im­

mutable, though ordinary, ebb and flow of life.

The point of view assumed by Clare in his mature poetry is similar

to the neutral but fascinating position of nature. In "Wild Bees," for example, he responds to various aspects of nature in terms of their importance to the bees; he is not sentimental and his sympathy with the bees is controlled by the accuracy and objectivity of his description. Nature becomes the single most important factor in

Clare’s life because it represents and is for him the only example and promise of permanence in this world. In "Pastoral Fancies" he does not seek to comprehend experience in terms of its philosophic implications s

A thymy hill should be my cushioned seat; An aged thorn, with wild hops intertwined, My bower, where I from noontide might retreat; A hollow oak would shield me from the wind, Or as might hap, I better shed could find In gentle spot, where fewer paths intrude, The hut of a shepherd swain, with rushes lined« There would I tenent be to Solitude, Seeking life's greatest joys, to shun the rude.

His emotional response to nature is proof of nature’s authenticity. The compelling quality of his powerful emotional impulse, however, often lacks form. Clare took his poetry directly from nature and in many instances his poems continue on like the unending voice of nature. His descriptive poems suffer most from the lack of form though even within tiie procession of nature's variety that he portrays there are examples of intense perception. The poem "Autumn" illustrates Clare's ibability to reject hardly any element of true experience. Various 151

aspects of autumn are vividly realized: Now filtering winds thin winnow through the woods In tremulous noise, that birds, at every breath, Some sickly cankered leaf Let go its hold, and die. but they remain isolated and they do not contribute to any sort of unified poetic whole. In his descriptive poems Clare's vision is im- agistically portrayed, and it is always tinged with emotion that is controlled, But the long poem did not suit Clare's sensibilities and the merits of his descriptive poetry can be measured best in terras of short segments. A good example of Clare's achievement between his earlier poetry and The Rural Muse is the difference between an earlier and later draft of Summer Images. In its first version written in 1820 the 3 poem shows a strong rhythmical debt to Collins' "Ode To Evening":

Jet-black and shining, from the dripping hedge Slow peeps the fearful snail And from each tiny bent Withdraws his timid horn.

The yellow frog from underneath the swath Leaps startling as the dog with heavy feet Brushes across the path And runs the timid hare.

In The Rural Muse this same verse is richly transformed to:

I love at early morn, from new-mown swath To see the startled frog his route pursue, And mark, while, leaping o'er the dripping path, His bright sides scatter dew; And early lark that from its bustle flies To hail his matin new; And watch him to the skies: 152

And note, on hedgerow baulks, in moisture sprent, The jetty snail creep from the mossy thorn, With earnest heed and tremulous intent, Frail brother of the morn, That from tiny bents and misted leaves Withdraws his timid horn, And fearful vision weaves.

The second version is powerfully suggestive and’ evocative primarily

because the language is surer and more precise. Rich understatement is effectively used and "We have indeed almost to be on our guard against

the sweet, cool shock of such verse; the emotional quality is so assured

and individual, the language so simple and inevitable, the posture of 4 mind so unassuming and winning.” The lines dealing with the snail

have been infused with an emotional quality that is powerfully elicited.

"Frail brother" is delicately tender, and "earnest heed," "tremulous

intent," "timid horn," and "fearful vision" suggest the accuracy of Clare’s perception and the emotional cast of his understanding and

affinity in relation to all things in nature. Poetry and nature were

directly related for Clare. The foremost achievement of The Rural Muse appears in the sonnets. Clare’s experimentation with form is evident in the collection but it is done to a lesser degree than In his previous work. The sonnets are for the most part evocative verse units. Like Clare’s other sonnets, the sonnets in The Rural Muse do not constitute a sequence; rather, rural scenes and moments of quiet contemplation are captured and ren­ dered in a fourteen-line unit. Dylan Thomas, whose poetry was influenced by Clare's sonnets,5 thought that the sonnets of The Rural Muse were 6 Clare's finest achievement. 153

Clare uses the Shakespearian form once again, but as with his earl­

ier sonnets in this same form, he works against the three quatrain and

couplet development. In "Water-Lillies," for example, there is a sort

of two-part structure. In lines one through six water lilies are ac­ curately described, but in line seven a "chubby boy" is introduced,

and for the remainder of the sonnet the effect of the pebbles thrown

by the boy on the water lilies is dwelt upon. The water lilies, however, remain the center of attention; the presence of the boy as well as his

actions are of secondary importance. By noting details and subtle

relationships among the elements of the scene portrayed, Clare lets

the evocative power of what he describes carry the weight of the poem’s

significance. The structure suggested by the rhyme scheme is virtually

ignored; the power of the final couplet, for example, is diminished

by the sentiment;

. , . the chubby boy, In self-delighted whims, will often throw Pebbles to hit and splash their sunny leaves; Yet quickly dry again, they shine and glow Like some rich vision that his eye deceived, Spreading above the water, day by day, In dangerous deeps, yet out of danger' s way. The water lilies themselves are the subject of Clare’s poem but he makes no overt statement about their significance or value in relation to the world at large. The evocative power of the scene as it is portrayed is the meaning of the sonnet. At least one of the sonnets, "Rural Scenes," follows the structure of the Shakespearian form to some degree. In each of the three quat­ rains an image is developed that leads directly to another image which is more f«1 ly examined in the next quatrain. The sonnet begins; 154

I never saw a man in all my days— One whom the calm of quietness pervades— Who gave not woods and fields his hearty praise And felt a happiness in summer shades.

In the second quatrain the image of "summer shades" is developed as

the speaker tells how he notes the scene in verse so "that all may

read," and in the third quatrain the effect that the speaker's verse

has on rural people is described. The final couplet comments on, but

does not develop any further, the role of the speaker's verse:

For rural fame may likeliest rapture yield To hearts whose songs are gathered from the field.

Though there are clearly quatrains followed by a couplet, these units

are related not so much by an integral development or logical progres­

sion as by the nature of the speaker's observations. The images pre­

sented do not illustrate a large idea or concept; rather, they demon­

strate how poetry is created, and the value nature has for Clare, In

the second quatrain the speaker says of a particular scene:

There I meet common thoughts, that all may read Who love the quiet fields: I note them well, Because they give me joy as I proceed, And joy renewed when I their beauties tell.

Nature itself carries with it the essence of joy. By capturing nature

as accurately as possible in words Clare is able to assimilate that which is eternal and unchangeable in this life into his poetry and thereby assure permanence for his poetry. Clare's belief in the

reality and validity of what he saw and what he felt in the presence of nature is echoed also in a sonnet written at this time but not

published until after his death. "Mystery": 155

, Books are penned Mere guesses into truth, aid at the last Mere guesses only, going to where they came To that exhaustless blank that swallows all With shadows and darkness overcast.

"Rural Scenes" is a statement of Clare’s beliefs in relation to poetry and nature. The sentiment of the poem does not fit the rhyme scheme and the quatrains are linked organically by the process of creation illustrated by the speaker’s comments, Clare finds his subjects in nature and he is joyful in his primary contact with it. He rejoices when he captures those aspects of nature which excited his emotions in verse. The matter of Clare’s poetic purpose finds expression in another sonnet in the Shakespearian form, "The Shepherd's Tree." The speaker sits beneath a "Huge elm, with a rifted trunk all notched and scarred" and he listens to "the laugh of summer leaves above." He begins to reflect on the past in association with the presence of an old but mighty tree. The idea that people and events pass away and are quickly forgotten in comparison to objects in nature like the elm tree strikes him: While thou art towering in thy strength of heart, Stirring the soul to vain imaginings In which life’s sordid being hath no part and he is led to contemplate what his position is in relation to time and the world. Nature holds the answer, and he concludes that it is only by partaking in nature's song by rendering it in his verse, thereby making him one of nature's singers, that he can hope for any sort of immortality; 156

The wind of that eternal ditty sings Humming of future things, that burn the mind To leave some fragment of itself behind.

Again the structure is not typically Shakespearian. The relationship

between the speaker and the elm tree is developed from line one through

line eleven. Quatrains are suggested by the rhyme scheme and the shifts

in the speaker’s positions; from his reclining position, to a sitting

position, to a position of contemplation beneath the tree as he ap­

proaches a realization of his problem, but the sentiment of the sonnet does not fall into three distinct units. The image of the elm tree and the ideas it suggests to the speaker are developed throughout the first eleven lines. A major turn occurs when the speaker comes to a realization in conjunction with the tree in line twelve; "The wind of that eternal ditty sings." The speaker’s statement that follows completes the turn and it unites the poem since the tree and the sound of the wind in its branches becomes a representation of that which is eternal in nature. His recognition of the sound's permanence prompts him to make nature’s sound his by evoking it in his verse,

Clare’s early verse and his sonnets in particular are often marred by the speaker's overt intrusion into the poem. In the sonnets of

The Rural Muse Clare occasionally refers to matters outside the son­ net as he did in his apprentice work but his personality is surpressed and a distinction between the speaker and the object or scene he describes is maintained. In "An Idle Hour,” for example, the elemen­ tal feeling of Idleness is evoked in association with direct observa­ tions taken from nature and a larger, more universal, theme is referred < 157

to. The detailed description of the landscape suggests the mood of

idleness t

And mark the sunshine dancing on the arch, Time keeping to the merry waves beneath, And on the banks see drooping blossoms parch, Thirsting for water in the day's hot breath.

All senses are appealed to; the particular aspects of the scene must be felt in order to be understood in terms of the larger context which

is introduced at the end. The words "sunshine dancing," "merry waves," and "drooping blossoms parch,” "thirsting," "day's hot breath" used to

describe the different segments of the landscape suggest a vast dis­ tinction between two parts of the scene. While the sunshine is enchan­

ting as it reflects off the arch and waves it is destructive to plant life, The implication is that sunshine by itself is neutral. It is beautiful and moving in one sense and destructive and oppressive in another. In lines one through six Clare stresses the beautiful aspects of what he sees in his idleness, and from line seven through line twelve the harsher aspects of that same scene are revealed. The first twelve lines, then, can be equally divided in half; each half focuses on an opposite viewpoint. In the couplet Clare makes a statement that is analogous to what he has observed in nature» So in the world, some strive, and fare but ill, While others riot, and have plenty still.

Basically Clare is working with a three-part structure within the Shakespearian form. The restrictions of the quatrain units and the turns of thought necessitated by the logical progression of the form did not suit Clare's vision. Clare's poetry is based directly upon 158

what he observed in nature. Unlike his early sonnets where the coup­

let was unwarranted by the material that preceded it, and where the

speaker stated relationships between natural observations and abstract

ideas or concepts, in "An Idle Hour" Clare remains objective; there

are no sentimental outbursts, and he demonstrates nature’s impartial­

ity before he comments on a larger application of the same idea.

Several of Clare’s sonnets in The Rural Muse are completely unlike

anything he had written previously in his experiments with the sonnet form.? In his apprenticeship period Clare evolved variations of the

Shakespearian form as well as a number of other variations on varia­

tions. Contained in The Rural Muse, however, are sonnets that are

nothing more than fourteen-line verse units of rhymed couplets. In

many of these sonnets Clare pays tribute to a specific person, "Izaak

Walton," "To Napoleon," "To Charles Lamb," "Lord Byron," etc., and to

concepts, "Decay," "Antiquity," "Merit," "Memory," etc. Also con­

tained within this group are sonnets that deal with country experience.

On the whole, the sonnets wherein rural scenes and events are treated

seem more like snatches and glimpses of an endless poem. Indeed,

Clare realized that his talent for imagistic presentation was superior

to his efforts to contrive a long poem made up of momentary observa­

tions, The sonnets, therefore, that deal with nature can be better understood as verse paragraphs rather than in terms of the purist's definition of the sonnet. Scenes and events are precisely drawn in an effort to reflect nature as accurately as possible. In opposition to his earlier poetry where a division between the speaker and the 159

scene he described was arbitrarily crossed by the speaker's statements

and overt emotional response in relation to the scene, in the sonnets

of The Rural Muse elements of the scene portrayed are rendered after

his feelings and emotions have been acted upon. The scene is presented

without the intrusion of the speaker, but after the specific segments

described have been slightly transformed by Clare's response to them.

Nature as he apprehends it is the subject of Clare’s poetry.

The meaning of the sonnets written in rhymed couplets and portray­

ing rural activities resides in the power of the evocation of sense

objects. The lines; . , . the sweet smelling air, Whose scent of flowers and grass and grazing cow Fling’s o'er one's senses streams of fragrance now;

from "haymaking," and the description of the fields in late summer in

"Beans in Blossom";

Now luscious comes the scent of blossomed bean, As o’er the path in rich disorder lean Its stalks; whence bees, in busy songs and toils, Load home luxuriantly their yellow spoils are rich in their suggestive force. The scene and the activities de­

picted are sensually realized. In each of these sonnets Clare attempts to capture and relate his sensual response to nature. By yoking the sensuosity of nature in verse as accurately as possible poetry itself becomes a direct link to the eternity of nature. Humans, animals, and inanimate objects in nature are equally valuable to an understanding of particular aspects of nature. In "Boys at Play" all elements of the scene described contribute to the evocation of nature's vivacity and animation; 160

The winds with idle dalliance wave the woods And toy with Nature in her youthful moods, Fanning the feathers on the linnet's breast, And happy maid in lightsome garments drest, Sweeping her gowns in many a graceful shade, As if enamoured of the form displayed.

The wind and its effect on all it comes in contact with are equally

significant. Like the wind, nature is a sort of shaping force in the

poem. Just as the wind is significant in itself as an aspect of nature

as well as a means of unifying other elements of the scene through its

contact with them, so too is nature an important part of the poem

because like the wind it is an organizing factor since everything de­

picted takes place in nature, and it is the subject of the poem.

Nature as the shaping power of poetry is also expressed in

"Pleasant Places." The sonnet begins with a precise and detailed por­ traiture of country scenes:

Old stone-pits, with veined ivy overhung; Wild crooked brooks, o'er which is rudely flung A rail, and plank that bends beneath the tread; Old narrow lanes, where trees meet overhead

The effect is a sort of scene painting, but toward the end Clare indicates that nature is the artist: While painting winds, to make the scene complete, In rich confusion mingle every green, Waving the sketchy pencils in their hands, Shading the living scenes to fairy lands. The components of nature are important and valuable by themselves not because they signify something more. Each stone-pit, brook, leaf, and tree is truth itself for Clare. Once an object is fully realized in verse by Clare nothing more needs to be said. The object or scene is complete if it is accurately presented. What appears to be a major l6l

problem with this type of poetry is that if nothing more can be said

is there anything more to be thought? In relation to many of Clare’s

sonnets the answer is very little. Clare’s perception and understand­

ing of nature were spontaneous; he did not contemplate the implication of what he observed to any large extent. He found joy and solace in

nature, and in his verse he mirrors those aspects of nature that in­

still powerful feelings in him. He is unobtrusive in his poetry and

he deals with matters that are easily comprehended. Philosophical

speculations fall outside the realm of Clare's world; in his poetry

he treats only those thins with which he has had a long-time famili­

arity. Instead of being a limitation or fault, the absence of intel­ lectual design makes the purity of Clare's vision all that more real.

The sensitive and delicate portrayal of the most common elements of nature gives rise to an enchanting and delightful apprehension of the most ordinary events.

In his other irregular sonnets Clare portrays scenes and events that achieve momentary intensity through his precisely detailed description of them. The spontaneous capacity for life of young boys as they leave school in the late afternoon is developed in association with the natural landscape in "Evening Schoolboys." The speaker ob­ serves :

How happy seem Those friendly schoolboys leaning o'er the stile, Both reading in one book!--Anon a dream, Rich with new joys, doth their young hearts beguile, And the brook's pocketed right hastily.

For the moment the speaker becomes one of the schoolboys and he thinks 162

in their terms. At the end, however, an awareness of the difference

between the boys' innocent "happy shout" and his experienced view of

the world comes to the speaker;

Ah, happy boysI well may ye turn and smile, When joys are yours that never cost a sigh.

The vast distinction between the schoolboys and the speaker is effec­

tively realized because the difference is cleverly understated. Whereas

in his earlier sonnets Clare often emphasized the difference between

a beautiful or moving scene and his miserable condition, the speaker

in "Evening Schoolboys" never makes an overt or direct association

between himself and his subject. The joy of the schoolboys becomes more important and meaningful when the speaker suggests that once the boys pass from their schoolboy days they will no longer have the

capacity for the spontaneous and uncomplicated joy of childhood.

The intense appreciation of a particular scene as the result of an altered perception is also evident in "The Crab-Tree." Like "Evening

Schoolboys" the speaker in "Crab-Tree" contemplates the signs of the approaching spring as he sees them in association with his recollec­ tions of the same sights as he saw them as a child. Clare uses sense imagery effectively to illustrate the impact that the recognition of the speaker's altered view of the same scene has on him. For the first seven lines the speaker makes numerous visual associations; he singles out the "hedge," "ivy," "withered leaves," "clumps of sedge," and "pooty-shells." What the speaker describes is also what he recol­ lects, but he makes it clear that in his present condition "cares" have entered into his life, "And chilled the relish which I had for joy." 163

The pleasant associations of the visual images depicted are countered

hy the allusion to "chilled," The sensation associated with "chilled"

is a mild shock and so it is with the speaker who in the midst of his

recollections is abruptly brought back to the present by the realization

that other influences have made their way into his perception of the

scene before him. His view of the scene is altered. The speaker's

altered view of the landscape, however, leads him to another realiza­

tion which is based upon what he has come to understand about the nature of his former relationship with the scene before him and his

present situation. The chill of maturity which has altered his per­

ception is counterbalanced in the lines that immediately follow when it is related:

Yet when crab-blossoms blush among the may, As wont in years gone by, I scramble now Up mid the bramble for my old esteems. Filling my hands with many a blooming bough, Till the heart stirring past as present seems, Save the bright sunshine of those fairy dreams.

The "blush" of the new crab-blossoms suggests the warmth and affection of nature as opposed to the chill of maturity. Nature holds the key to those elementary and exhalting joys of childhood. The speaker realizes that he cannot react to nature as he once did as a child, but by doing those things he did in his childhood in nature he can still achieve happiness since nature remains essentially unchanged and therefore the source and example of fundamental joy. The image pattern functions to enhance the speaker's realization of his altered view and the continuing value of nature. Just as the poem began in concrete visual images that led up to the tactile image of chill, so 164

too does the second part of the poem progress from one sense to another. The pattern.however, is reversed; instead of going from visual to tac­

tile, the second half of the poem progresses from tactile to visual.

The implication is that the shift from visual to tactile to visual

again suggests a movement from the outer world to an inner response to

that world which leads to an altered view of the outer world. With a

new apprehension of nature and a new understanding of his position in

nature the speaker is able to accept the joy he finds in nature,

limited as it is without "the bright sunshine" of youth.

The clarity and force of the imagery and the conscious patterning

of the images evident in many of the sonnets point forward to Clare’s

best work in lyric poetry. In "Evening Primrose," for example, each

image is precisely drawn and related to the whole poem so that the

mood of the discovery of a delicate flower in moonlight is unmistak­ ably suggested:

An dew-drops pearl the evening’s breast, Almost as pale as moonbeams are, Or its companionable star, The evening primrose opes anew Its delicate blossoms to the dew

Clare’s observation of the minute, his lingering over fine detail, and his intense concern for the most ordinary manifestations of life indicate the degree of his sensitivity to the world around him. The sonnets in The Rural Muse are far more objective than his earlier sonnets yet the precision and accuracy of the scenes and objects por­ trayed suggest that everything gathered in the verse is emotionally conceived. The impact of seeing an old favorite tree in "Burthorp 165

Oak" leads to an emotional response;

And desolate fancies bid the eyes grow dim With feelings, that earth's grandeur should decay And all its olden memories pass away.

It is a response that is controlled and evocative rather than senti­ mental and languishing. By the time he had completed The Rural Muse

Clare understood his relationship to nature, and his apprehension of nature's variety is carefully rendered in his verse. His relationship to his poetry is more clearly evident also. The sensitive personality of the man behind the poems is reflected in the precision and honesty of the verse. Suggestions of the poet’s sentiment filter into the poetry but they are tempered by a sort of objectivity that is at once personal yet controlled. The visionary quality of his short lyrics written some years after find their antecedent in various sonnets that deal with the relationship between observed phenomena in nature and the paradoxes of man's existence. In "Nothingness of Life," for example, reflections on the "emptiness of lost delight" lead to an insight in relation to the observed world* Yet there's a glimmering of pleasure springs From such reflections of earth's vanity; We pine and sicken o'er life's mortal things, And feel a relish for eternity.

If Clare did not think deeply or long on the ramifications and impli­ cations of nature, he did succeed in evoking the essence of all that he observed. 166

The material for this page appears on page 207. 167

The material for this page appears on page 208. 168

The material for this page appears on page 209. 169

CHAPTER SIX

Invitation to Eternity

"Love lives with nature"

Between 1832 and 1837 Clare produced many poems in which he treats violence and suffering. The impersonal tone and the implied sense of disgust with the vulgarity and cruelty of man in his treatment of animals suggests a broadening of the cleavage between Clare's instincts and convention. Poems such as "Marten," "Vixen," "The Lout," "Wild

Duck's Nest," and particularly "Badger" are objective, and the delin­ eation of violence is severely rendered. The description of the killing in "Badger" is vividly grotesque:

The grightened women take the boys away, The blackguard laughs and hurries on the fray. He tries to reach the woods, an awkward race, But sticks and cudgels quickly stop the chase. He turns agen and drives the noisy crowd And beats the noisy dogs in noisy crowd He drives away and beats them every one, And then they loose them all and set them on. He falls as dead and, kicked by boys and men Then starts and grins and drives the crowd agen; Till kicked and torn and beaten out he lies And leaves his hold and cackels, groans, and dies.

Clare's resignation to the presence of cruelness and injustice in the world pervades the calm mood with which the speaker matter-of-factly records the evil wrought by man on animals. The emotional separation between the speaker and what he observes in all the poems dealing with animals is parallel to Clare's life at this time. He remained ill for the most part during the period before and after the publication of 170

The Rural Muse but he continued to write poetry with the relentless

hope of producing yet another volume. Financial problems and disap­

pointment over the failure of The Rural Muse plagued Clare and he began to lose control of his mental equilibrium. Often he lost his temper,

and he had difficulty even finishing letters; of the letters completed many were not sent,1 The move from Helpstone to Northborough proved

to be more harmful than good since Clare was cut off from all those

places with which he was intimately familiar, Mary Joyce, Clare's

first love, became the woman whom he had dreamed about and recorded in

The Dream;

I had a remarkable dream that Guardian spirit in the shape of a soul stirring beauty again appeared to me with the very same countenance in which she has since appeared at inter­ vals & moved my ideas into exstacy . . . these dreams of a beautiful presence a woman deity gave the sublimest concep­ tion of beauty to my imagination

By 1836 Clare suffered from the delusion that Mary Joyce was his first wife and that Patty was his second. Life for Patty and the rest of the Clare family became unbearable and in June 1837 a man with a note from Taylor escorted Clare to High Beech where Dr. Matthew Allen, who was a leader in the effort to bring about more humane treatment of the insane, would treat him,3

It was Clare's good fortune that he became a patient of Dr. Allen's because Allen had experience with people who suffered from the same sort of affliction as Clare's, and his method of treatment for mental patients was far in advance of any treatment of the day. Clare was allowed the freedom of roaming the garden and grounds surrounding 171

High Beech, and his physical condition became markedly improved. He

wrote poems and letters throughout the period from 1837 to 1841, but

by 1841 Clare had developed three fixed delusions. He believed that

he was Byron, that he had two wives, and that he was one of four

boxers, sometimes he was Randall, Jones the Sailor Boy, Ben Caunt or 4 Tom Spring, Problems that most especially bothered Clare, as well as his identification with Byron, are evident in his imitative "Don

Juan." It begins»

’Poets are born'—and so are whores—the trade is Grown universal—in these canting days Women of fashion must of course be ladies And whoreing is the business—that still pays Playhouse Ballrooms—there the masquerade is —To do what was of old—and now adays Their maids—nay wives so innoscent [sic] and blooming Cuckold their spouses to seem honest women5

Beneficial as Allen’s treatment was Clare still fell in and out of

various roles in an attempt to find his real identity, Clare felt well enough, however, in both body and spirit to leave High Beech, and in mid-July 1841 he evaded his custodians and walked the eighty miles back to Northborough, It took Clare three days to travel home; he had neither money nor food. On the third day of his journey he ate grass, and in his Reccolection etc. Of Journey From Essex he notess

a cart passed me with a man & a woman & a boy in it when nearing me the woman jumped out & caught fast hold of my hands & wished me to get into the cart but I refused & thought her either drunk or mad but when I was told it was my second wife Patty I got in & was soon at Northborough but Mary was not there®

Dr, Allen wrote to Patty and asked her what she wanted to do about

Clare, Since Clare seemed much better Patty expressed a desire to 172

keep him at home. In August Clare wrote to Allen and explained his

disappointment with his return to Northborough and his need for freedom.

Also included in his letter is a revealing description of his relation­

ship with Patty at this time:

a man who possess a woman possesses loss without gain the worst is the road to ruin & the best is nothing like a good cow—man I never did like much & woman has long sickened me I should [like] to be to myself a few years & lead the life of a hermit—but even there I should wish for one whom I am always thinking of & almost every song I write has some sighs or wishes in Ink about Mary'

As summer turned to autumn Clare became worse and Patty could not deal

with him effectively. Finally she consented to have him certified

insane, and in December 1841 Dr, Fenwick Skimshire had Clare admitted

to the Northamptonshire General Lunatic Asylum, afterwards known as

St. Andrew's. On the hospital records Clare's alleged insanity was g attributed to "years addicted to Poetical prosings."

Clare was again fortunate in relation to the treatment he received

for his mental illness because he fell under the care of Dr. Thomas

Prichard who, like Dr. Allen, was attempting to improve the methods of dealing with mental disorders. Under Prichard's care Clare was again allowed to roam as he pleased, and again he regained his physical strength rapidly. His mental condition still fluctuated, however, but when he talked of nature or poetry he was always coherent and accurate. W, F, Knight who became house steward in 1845 urged Clare to continue writing. Knight collected all the poems Clare gave him a and he transcribed them in manuscript books. Knight's interest, and encouraging letters from Clare's friend Inskip spurred Clare's 173

inclination to write, and he did so until I85O, News of Inskip’s death

in November 1848 slowed Clare's desire to write, and Knight's departure

in January I85O marked the end of Clare's best writing.

During his first nine years at St, Andrew's Clare wrote some of his finest poetry. Much of the verse, however, aside from the small number of outstanding poems is less than inspiring. There are many ballads and love songs addressed to Mary and other girls; Lucy, Jane, and Kate, to name a few. For the most part these ballads are ordinary and they do not rise above the level of the street ballad. Along with the rather slight ballads and love songs there are a small number of ballads and songs that suggest a more careful attention to poetic concerns. In comparison to "Sweet Mary O' the Plough" with its conventional language and imagery;

I went to see my true love O'er the dirty roads again O'er moors and mosses slups and sloughs I went to see her many miles The hips were scarlet awes were red And beautiful were Mary's smiles^ the song beginning "I would not feign a single smile" illustrates the cleavage between Clare’s conscious art and his mere verse exercises:

The soul within these orbs burns dry; A desart spreads where love should be. I would not be a worm to crawl A writhing suppliant in thy way; For love is life, is heaven, and all The beams of immortal day. The words are precise and the imagery is evocative. As opposed to

"Sweet Mary 0’ the Plough" there is no dissociation between the words and sensual reality. "I would not feign a single smile" also indicates 174

one of Clare’s major concerns during his confinement in the asylum:

the implications of love. His experience in the world at large was

filled with disappointment especially in relation to love and trust.

In "My old Lover left me I know not for why" the bewilderment and. un­ certainty caused by rejected love is portrayed as the speaker laments

the disappearance of her lover:

I once had a sweet heart I know not for why But I think I could love all the days of my life • ••••••••••••••••••••••• But my true love has left me and there remains still He kissed me and left me nor do I know whyll

The speaker’s unsuccessful attempt to understand love in terras of the

visible world is depicted in "Adieu":

I left the little birds, And sweet lowing of the herds, And couldn’t find out words, Do you see, To say them good-bye, Where yellow cups do lie; So heaving a deep sigh, Took to sea. And in "Stanzas" the remembered emotion associated with early love is

analyzed, but answers to the problems he raises are not forthcoming: Black absence hides upon the past, I quite forgot thy face; And memory like the angry blast Will love's last smile erase.

These poems are significant because they indicate the direction Clare's

perception was taking. The precision and accuracy that marked his

earlier verse appears in these poems but the nature of his vision is different. Nature, although it remains a major element in his poetry, is not the center of his interest. Instead, in his verse written in 175

the asylum he seeks out the proper identification of love and its place in human life. Even the poems addressed to various girls, though

often lacking in aesthetic value, are important in so far as they shed

light on Clare’s attraction to beauty and love. Comradeship, trust,

and betrayal are subjects that Clare deals with in association with

the meaning of love and how love pertains to him as well as to all

mankind.

The poems in which Clare treats love in conjunction with specific

people and precise situations serve as a prelude to his lyrics in

which he goes beyond specifics and treats the essence of love and life.

Nature is still an essential element of Clare's verse in the lyrics

where he takes up larger matters, but nature is only the starting

place from which his vision expands. In "Stanzas: Wouldst thou but

know where nature clings" the impermanence and mortality of man's

creations are contrasted to the immortality of nature:

Stand not to look on human things, For they shall all decay. False hearts shall change and rot to dust, Whilst truth exerts her powers. Love lives with nature, not with lust, Go, find her in the flowers.

Love becomes the single most important factor in Clare's perception

of nature; it is exhibited and at the same time enhanced by nature.

Wherever Clare looks in nature he finds the epitome of life forces.

The individual manifestation of a bird's untroubled rest in "The Sleep of Spring" suggests a larger concept to Clare, and he yearns for the time when he shall once again share in the same type of bliss: 176

The heart asleep without a pain~ When shall I know that sleep again?

The implication of his statement is that nature is no longer enough; nature illustrates what is eternal but his experience in the world does not allow him to share in the elemental joy of nature as he once did. The problem of the change in perception that comes with maturity, which all Romantic writers confronted since they placed special value on the role of the senses and the power of the mind as a creative force, appears and is treated in "The Pains of Love." In contrast to his failure to feel now what he once felt in nature which is lamented in "The Sleep of Spring," an internal conflict of emotion is expressed in "The Pains of Love.” As opposed to "The Sleep of Spring" where

Clare expressed his inability to react to nature with the same degree of spontaneity as he did as a child, in "The Pains of Love" Clare states his inability to resolve or understand the nagging emotional effect of unrequited love;

This love, wrong understood, Oft turned my joy to pain. I tried to throw away the bud, But the blossom would remain.

In both poems Clare attempts to reconcile his emotions with the visible universe. First he looks to nature and he finds suggestions of states of being which he cannot share, and secondly, he expresses his in­ ability to come to terms with his own emotions. Both the outer world of nature and the inner world of his feelings are mysterious to him, yet in some ways they seem to be related. Nature and his emotions suggest things which are beyond his understanding but the two seem 177

related since his emotions are stirred by what he observes in nature.

Clare's vision of the location of the essence of all emotion is ex­

pressed in "A Vision":

I lost the love of heaven above, I spurned the lust of earth below, I felt the sweets of fancied love, And hell itself my only foe

I lost earth’s joy’s, but felt the glow Of heaven's flame abound in me, Till loveliness and I did grow The bard of immortality.

I loved, but woman fell away; I hid me from her faded flame. I snatched the sun's eternal ray And wrote till earth was but a name.

In every language upon earth, On every shore, o'er every sea I gave my name immortal birth And kept my spirit with the free.

The speaker's inability to recapture fully the spontaneity of his childhood reactions to nature, suggested by the loss of "earth's joys," is complicated by the lingering glow of "heaven's flame." In "Sleep of Spring" and "The Pains of Love" Clare treated each of the subjects alluded to in the second stanza of "The Vision." In "A Vision," how­ ever, the difference between the two states, which suggest the divi­ sion between innocence and experience, is resolved. The two states are fused through poetry. By assimilating the "loveliness" of nature and combining his love, which is beyond human love and is as eternal as the sun's ray, with it in his poetry the earth becomes "but a name." The tangible and the emotional are transcended and poetry is the channel through which he is in contact with the eternal. It is a 178

poetry that is built on a fusion of all experience. Through his poetry

he hopes to gain immortality since he is able to come to terms with the conflict between innocence and experience by imagining a reality that

supersedes what he can sense on earth. However, the problem of his

identity and the meaning of his life on earth still persists, and these

problems are treated in "I Am":

I Am; yet what I am none cares or knows, My friends forsake me like a memory lost; I am the self-consumer of my woes, They rise and vanish in oblivious host, Like shades in love and death’s oblivion lost; And yet I am, and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorns and noise, Into the living sea of waking dreams, Where there is neither sense of life nor joys, But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems; And e'en the dearest—that I loved the best— Are strange—nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod, A place where woman never smiled or wept; There to abide with my Creator, God, And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept: Untroubled and untroubled where I lie, The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

In "I Am" Clare reaches another level of lyrical intensity. The prob­ lem of his mortality is poignantly understated through the delicate manipulation of language and imagery. Emotions are tenderly appealed to but the cadence and arresting figures of speech do not allow the verse to slip into sentimentality or an expression of self-pity. The utter singularity of the speaker in conjunction with his recognition and full awareness of his own uniqueness lifts the poem from the abyss of sentimental rumination and illuminates Clare's dilemma. 179

Echoes from his other poems, recollections of the past, the conflict

between recollected happiness and his inability to achieve that hap­

piness, and the yearning for eternity are important elements of the

poem. The fundamental problem that still remains and is the crux of

the poem’s appeal is the matter of the speaker's identity. He knows what he has experienced and he desires an identity with a place that transcends time and man, but he cannot comprehend the present either in terms of the past or in terms of what he can imagine. Love, the meaning of relationships with other people, and the vision of an ideal state where human love is transfigured are the seemingly incongruous elements of the speaker's existence that make the matter of his identity a crucial concern. Love is the thread by which all things seem related, and in "Secret

Love” Clare analyzes the communicative aspect of love in association with nature. In the first two stanzas love as an uncontrollable force that is present from earliest recollections is portrayed. The speaker relates how he attempted to suppress his loves I hid my love to my despite Till I could not bear to look at light but all to no avail. The love exhibited in nature is feminized and the metaphor wherein nature and woman are yoked together functions by suggesting the universality of love that is displayed in all living things. The lines s

I met her in the greenest dells 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; 180

illustrate the interpenetration of love in all living things as per­

ceived by the speaker. Love is given feminine qualities and as the

stanza progresses the natural landscape is transformed into a metaphor

for woman as a result of the pervasive power of love. The "bluebells"

become "her bright blue eye" and the "sunbeam" streaking across the

natural scene becomes a "gold chain round her neck." The implication

of the identification of love, woman, and nature is that nature must

hold the key to an understanding of love since love is evoked by all

the speaker senses in nature; love that cannot be subdued. In the final

stanza the speaker's inability to deny love is related. Love as he ex­

perienced it in nature tantalized him but he could not fathom the

meaning or understand what he felt, and his attempts to suppress love

failed:

I hid my love in field and town Till e'en the breeze would knock me down; The bees seemed singing ballads o'er, The fly's bass turned a lion's roar: And even silence found a tongue, To haunt me all the summer long

But in his failure to escape the power of love the speaker arrives at

an awareness of nature and love: The riddle nature could not prove Was nothing else but secret love. Love is the informing principle of all things, and nature is merely the expression of love and the reflection of human love. "Secret

Love" is the communicative element that runs through man to all eter­ nity. Love is undeniable and beyond rational analysis. Experience and love are directly related; love unites the internal world of man 181

and the external universe. Nature cannot prove love’s "riddle" because

nature is only one aspect of love. Unification among all aspects of love exists on another level of being beyond mortality.

A clearer picture of Clare's perception of ideality is portrayed in "An invite to Eternity," Like "Secret Love" Clare's concept of love is expressed in metaphorical terms as a woman. The colloquial language and intimate tone enhance the intriguing and fascinating import of the verse. The speaker asks if the "sweet maid" will go with him;

Through the valley depths of shade Of night and dark obscurity Where the path has lost its way Where the sun forgets the day Where there's nor life nor light to see

The problems alluded to in his other poems rise up and are calmly dis­ pelled as he continues his description;

Say maiden wilt thou go with me

Through his sad non-identity Where parents live and are forgot And sisters live and know us not

In the third stanza the dissolution of the speaker's singularity into a unification with eternity is expressed after he repeats his invita­ tion to the maiden to join him:

In this strange death of life to be To live in death and be the same Without this life or home or name At once to be and not to be That was and is not—yet to see Things pass like shadows—and the sky Above, below, around us lie.

The culmination of Clare's resolution to the paradox of mortal life and the vision of ideality wherein he and the maiden are unified is 182

manifested in the concluding stanza:

The land of shadows wilt thou trace And look nor know each others face The present mixed with reasons gone And past and present all as one Say, maiden, can thy life be led To join the living with the dead Then trace thy footsteps on with me We are wed to one eternity,^2

Clare’s vision of eternity is clearly depicted but the meaning of what

he describes remains teasingly enigmatic. Love is stimulated by the outward forms in nature yet all human associations in conjunction with

love pass away. By wedding himself to the essence of love, which can

be recalled all the way back to earliest memories and associations

and is evoked in the presence of nature, the speaker achieves immor­

tality. The wedding of mortality and immortality for Clare occurred

through his poetry. Poetry linked Clare with that which is eternal

in nature. In relation to his life poetry served to alienate him

from his fellow villagers, and the desire to write made him unfit for

routine labor. The dilemma Clare faced, the necessity to work in order

to fend off poverty and the yearning to write poetry, was the main

factor in Clare's identity crisis. Removal from his native and beloved Helpstone and the isolation of his confinement in the asylum made poetry Clare's reality. Through poetry he was united with his recol­ lections of love and nature. The poetry he wrote became a re-creation of what once was. In his sonnets Clare steadily progressed from a dissociation be­ tween thought and feeling to an integration of all elements. The form of the sonnets for the most part was organic; the uniqueness of 183

each scene or event depicted was enhanced by the individual nature of

the verse form. Colloquial language and the familiar tone used in

describing nature, especially throughout the sonnets in The Rural Muse, indicates the vital importance nature had for Clare. Nature unsullied

and untouched by man became the province of Clare's imagination; when

he was in the presence of nature he was free and in contact with ele­

mental and eternal life forces. The lyrics wherein he describes his

vision of eternity and ideality have their roots in his nature sonnets.

The precision, clarity, and evocative power accurately rendered in

the sonnets are taken a step further in Clare's lyrics writtin in the asylum. He sees not through nature but with it. Through his imagina­ tion he becomes part of the natural world. The desire for the dissolu­ tion of self is an expression of a yearning for immortality. In his poetry he identifies with nature directly, and by capturing nature accurately in verse he is able to unite the past with the present—

"And past and present all as one." After Clare had written "A Vision," "Secret Love," "I Am," and

"Invite to Eternity" his poetry took another turn and it dealt with matters of less explicit visionary proportions. Since nature repre­ sented freedom and eternity, many of his poems written around 1849 treat nature but in a way different from his earlier verse. A desire for dissolution into nature is apparent and he sees the universe with nature; from nature's point of view. In addition, a new level of simplicity is achieved which contributes to the clarity and poignancy of the verse. In "Clock a Clay" a lyricism of Shakespearian propor­ 184 tions is captured:

In the cowslip's peeps I lye Hidden from the buzzing fly While green grass beneath me lies Pearled wi* dew like fishes eyes Here I lie a Clock a Clay Waiting for the time o' dajA3

Clare is a part of nature; he writes from the perspective of a "Clock a Clay." Emotion lightly permeates the description of the imagina­ tively miniaturized landscape:

While grassy forests quake surprise And wild wind sobs and sighs and the imagery is tenderly evocative. Through verse Clare becomes absorbed into nature. The dissolution of self occurs as he is united with the fundamental elements of nature that he enumerates, and he achieves the being and not-being of his visionary concept of ideality and eternity:

Here still I live a lone clock a clay Watching for the time of day.

There is nothing more. Nature and he are one; the matter of his singular identity is of no concern because he is joined by his verse to nature's eternity.

The precision of language and imagery exhibited in the sonnets, and the delicateness of his lyrics appear in combination with an en­ chanting rhythmic pattern in "Little Trotty Wagtail." The perception of nature is elemental and the description is childlike in its direct­ ness and simplicity:

Little trotty wagtail, he waddled in the mud, And left his little footmarks, trample where he would. He waddled in the water-pudge, and waggle went his tail, And chirrupt up his wings to dry upon the garden rail. 185

In his introduction to The Wood Is Sweet Edmund Blunden says of this

poem, "It is one of Clare’s truly rhythmic poems, folk-tune in language 14 which makes him a metricist of an unusual kind," "Little Trotty

Wagtail: expresses and evokes tender feelings from the particularity

and compression of the language as well as the movement enacted in each

line. Confinement in the asylum over a period of years made nature all

that more valuable for Clare and in "The Invitation" the suggestion of

freedom is added to the richly connotative aspects of nature’s impor­

tance to him;

Come where the violet flowers, come where the morning showers Pearl on the primrose and speedwell so blue; Come to that clearest brook that ever runs round the nook Where you and I pledged our first love so true.

The purity and freshness he found in nature could blot out the un­

pleasantness of man's world. All the pleasant associations in his

entire life was in conjunction with nature. As his mental condition

worsened nature became the only channel through which he could deal

with reality. The poetical truth expressed during the first nine years

of confinement in St, Andrew's represents the quintessence of Clare's

lyricism, but in the years following 1850 Clare's mind and poetry

suffered from atrophy.

The death of Inskip and the departure of Knight marked the virtual end of Clare's poetic output. Between I85O and i860 there are no

letters from Clare. In 1854 Dr. Prichard, who had attended Clare personally and allowed him a great deal of freedom within Northampton, left and Dr. Nesbitt who took his place placed restrictions on Clare and Clare was not allowed to leave the grounds of the asylum,About 186

this time Taylor evolved a plan to publish Clare’s entire poetry but

nothing came of it. Until I854 Clare had been helping Elizabeth Baker

with her provisional glossary Northamton Words and Phrases. but when

he completed his work with her he was left completely unoccupied. By

February i860 Dr. Wing, who then worked with Clare, noted that Clare's physical condition was good but that mentally he was incoherent."^

On the advice of Dr. Wing in March i860 Clare wrote an answer to a

letter of inquiry in which the degree of his confusion is apparent:

I am in a Madhouse & quite forget your Name or who you are You must excuse me for I have nothing to communicate or tell of & why I am shut up I dont know I have nothing to say so I conclude-!-?

Later in the spring of i860, however, Clare was able to write poetry

again, but not much and not for very long. In I863 at seventy he was

confined to bed since his physical strength had diminished greatly,

and for the next year he was generally uncomfortable. In the early

spring of 1864 Clare composed his last poem entitled "Birds Nests":

'Tis spring, warm glows the south, Chaffinch carries the moss in his mouth To filbert hedges all day long, And charms the poet with his beautiful song; The wind blows bleak o'er the sedgy fen, But warm the sun shines by the little wood, While the old cow at her leisure chews her cud.

The movement in the poem, from the warmth of spring's promise and the

enchantment of the poet with the natural scene, which is interrupted

by the harshness of the wind blowing over the fen, to a final resolu­

tion wherein the paradox of mortal existence with its variety of

pleasure and pain is resolved by the example of nature's apparent warmth and congeniality, parallels the course of Clare's life. Even 187

in his final poem he finds solace and promise in nature.

On Good Friday 1864 Clare was taken outdoors for the last time.

On May 10 he had a paralytic seizure, and on May 20 died in the after­

noon. Years earlier Clare expressed a wish to be buried in his native

Helpstone and that the inscription on his headstone read "Here rest

the hopes and ashes of John Clare" without a date since he wanted his

memory "to live or die" with his poems,Throughout his life Clare was patient and unobtrusive, and, in typical fashion, upon the arrival

of his coffin in Helpstone no one claimed it at first. The coffin was taken to the Blue Bell where he had often visited in his periods

of depression and where he had been employed during part of his adoles­

cence. Clare’s body remained propped up on trestles in the pub until

someone went out to fetch the sexton so that a grave could be dug. 19

With the passage of time Clare's poetry has grown in stature, and his name is not forgotten. The nature of his unique perception of the world around him is expressed in his verse. Clare was receptive to the myriad impressions nature offers to the careful observer, and the truth gained from his intimate familiarity with nature contributes significantly to the intensity of his arresting lyricism which is singular among poets. 188

NOTES

Chapter One

1. John Clare, Selected Poems and Prose of John Clare, eds, Eric Robinson and Geoffrey Summerfield (London: Oxford, 1967), p. xiv.

2. John Clare, Selected Poems of John Clare. ed, James Reeves (London: Hinemann, 1954), p.xvii, 3, John Clare, Sketches in The Life of John Clare Written by Himself, ed, Edmund Blunden (London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1931)» P* 45 Hereafter referred to as Sketches.

4, Sketches, p. 45.

5. Sketches. p. 47. 6, John Clare, The Prose of John Clare, eds, J. W. and Anne Tibble (New York: Barns and Noble, 1970), pp, 11-12. Hereafter referred to as Prose.

7. Sketches. p, 46. 8, J, W, and Anne Tibble, John Clare: A Life (London: Cobden- Sanderson, 1932), p. 20, Hereafter referred to as Life.

9. Life, p. 20.

10, Sketches. p. 47.

11* Prose, pp. 13*14. 12. Prose, p. 16. 13. John and Anne Tibble, John Clare: His Life and Poetry (London: Hinemann, 1956), p. 10. Hereafter referred to as Life and Poetry. 14. Sketches. p. 48,

15. Sketches. p. 47. 16. Sketches. p. 48, 17. Sketches, p. 48. 189

18. Life, p. 26.

19. Sketches. p. 48.

20. Rayner Unwin, The Rural Muse (London: Allen and Unwin, 1954), p. 51. 21. Prose, p. 15.

22. Prose, pp. 41-42.

23. In Ms 4 at the Northampton Public Library three sonnets to Turnhill are listed. They are: "Ye brown old oaks," "To Mr. Turnhill," and "Turnhill lov'd naure a clown, pp. 130-131. 24. Prose, p. 44.

25. John Clare, Poems of John Clare's Madness, ed. Geoffrey Grigson (London: Kegan Paul, 1949), p. 5«

26. Sketches. pp. 51-52. 27. Prose, p, 14.

28. Life and Poetry, p. 16.

29. Life, p. 35. 30. Life and Poetry, p. 15.

31. Sketches. p. 53.

32. Prose, p. 43.

33. Prose, p. 51.

34. Sketches. pp, 56-57.

35. Sketches. p, 57. 36. Sketches. p, 58.

37. Sketches. p. 59. 38. Ms, 4, pp. 66-68.

39. Life, p. 40. 40. Life, p. 40. 190

41. Prose, p. 30. 42. Ian Jack, "Poems of John Clare’s Sanity," in Some British Romantics. eds., James Logan, John Jordan and Northrop Fry (Columbus: Ohio State University, 1966), 191. 43. Herbert Read, Reason and Romanticism: Essays in Literary Criticism (New York: Russell and Russell, 1963), P* 65.

44. Prose, p, 3°.

45. Prose, p. 31.

46. Prose, p. 19.

47. Prose, p. 19. 48. Prose, p. 20,

49. Prose, p, 20,

50. Prose, p. 22.

51. Sketches. p. 60.

52. See: Prose, pp. 24-26.

53. Prose, p. 44.

54. Prose, p. 27. 55« J. L. Hammond and Barbara Hammond, The Village Labourer 1760-18321 A Study in the Government of England before the Reform Bill (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1924), p. 3°8.

56. Hammond, The Village Labourer, pp. 19-72. 57. W. E. Lunt, History of England (London: Harper and Brothers 1928), p. 616.

58. Lawrence Hanson, The Life of S. T. Coleridge: The Early Years (New York: Russell and Russell, 19627, pp. 35“36.

59. Prose, p. 47. 60. Prose, p. 48,

61. Ms. 4 Northampton Public Library, p. 32. 62. Prose, p, 32. 191

63. Prose, p. 32. 64. Life, p. 74.

65. Prose, p. 35» 66. Prose, p. 38.

67. Prose, p. 33.

68. Prose, p. 45.

69. Prose, p. 46.

70. Sketches. p. 70.

71. Sketches. p. 67.

72. Prose, pp. 52-53.

73. Prose, p. 53.

74. Prose, p. 53.

75« Prose, p. 58. 76. Prose, pp. 44-45.

77. Prose, p. 54.

78. Prose, p. 55.

79. Sketches. p. 75. 80. Sketches, p. 75.

81. Sketches. pp. 75-76. 82. Edmund Blunden, Shelley: A Life Story (London: Oxford, 1965), p. 280. 83. Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Harry Buxton Forman, Vol, Ill (London: Reves and Turner, 1880), P. 352. 84. Sketches. p. 76. 85. Life and Poetry, p. 46, 192

86. Life and Poetry, p. 46,

8?. Life. p, 100. 88. Prose. p. 60.

89. Prose. p. 6l. 90. Prose. p. 62.

91. Prose. p. 62. 92. Prose. p. 64.

93. Prose. p. 64. 94. Prose. p. 65.

95. Prose. P. 65. 96. Edmund Blunden. Keats’s Publisher: A Memoir of John Taylor (London: Jonathan Cape, 1936), see chapter V.

97. Keats’ s Publisher, p. 103. 98. Rayner Unwin, The Rural Muse: Studies in the Peasant Poetry of England (London: Allen and Unwin, 1954), P. 92. 99. Edwin Muir, "Burns and Popular Poetry," in Essays on Litera­ ture and Society (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1965), P. 6l. 100. Robert Graves, "Peasant Poet," The Hudson Review. VIII, No. 1 (1955), 99-105. 101. Prose, p, 69. 102. Horace Gregory, The Shield of Achilles: Essays on Beliefs in Poetry (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1944), p. 22.

103. Fredrick E. Pierce, Currents and Eddies in the English Romantic Generation (New Haven: Yale University, 1918), p. 203.

104. C. H. Herford, The Age of Wordsworth (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1925), P. 186. 105. Quoted in Life, p, 11?.

106. Walter Jackson Bate, Keats (New York: Oxford, 1963), p. 369. 193

107. "Poems, Descriptive or Rural Life and Scenery," The Quarterly Review. XXH, May-June 1820, pp. 172-73.

108. Life, p. 118. 109. See: Henry Curwin, A History of Booksellers (London: Chatto and Windus, 1873), p. 119. Harold G. Merriam, Edward Moxon: Publisher of Poets (New York: Columbia, 1939), P. 20. F, A. Mumby, Publishing and Bookselling: A History from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (New YorkK Bowker, 1931), P. 255.

110. Life and Poetry, p, 63.

111. Quoted in Keats's Publisher, pp. 111-112.

112. HLunden, Shelley, p. 298.

113. Quoted in Life, p. 129. 114. Life and Poetry, p. 68.

115. See Life, p. 164, and Letters. p. 101, 338.

116. Life, p. 166.

117. Quoted in Life and Poetry, p. 81,

118. Life, pp. I68-I69.

119. Life, p. 169. 120. Quoted in Life, p. 170.

Chapter Two

1. Life, pp. 61-121.

2. Robert Langbaum, The Poetry of Experience (New York: Norton, 1957), P. 41. 3. Langbaum, p. 48. 194

4, Karl Kroeber, Romantic Narrative Art (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966), see: pp, 115-121.

5. See Appendix I.

6» Poems, pp. 116-130, 7. Edward Hubler, The Sense of Shakespeare's Sonnets (Prince­ ton: Princeton University Press, 1952), p. 19. 8. Robert Graves, "Peasant Poet," The Hudson Review. VIII, No. 1 (1955), P. 101. 9. Harold Bloom, The Visionary Company (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1961), p. 474.

Chapter Three

1. John Clare, The Letters of John Clare, eds. J. W. and Anne Tibble (New York: Barns and Noble, 1970), pp. 57, 67, 89, 93, 94, 95, 108, 109, 112, Hereafter referred to as Letters.

2. Life, p, I65.

3. Ian Jack, "Poems of John Clare's Sanity," in Some British Romantics, ed. James Logan, John Jordan, and Northrop Frye (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1966), p, 207.

4. Letters. p. 48,

5. John Clare, Selected Poems and Prose of John Clare, eds. Eric Robinson and Geoffrey Summerfield (London: Oxford, 1967), p. 66.

6. John Clare, Poems Chiefly From Manuscript, ed. Edmund Blunden, and Alan Porter (London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1920), p. 76.

7. Letters, p. 56. 8. See Appendix II.

9. J. W. Lever, The Elizabethan Love Sonnet (London: Methuen, 1956), pp. 130-138.

10, Edmund Spenser, The Works of Edmund Spenser. Vol, II, ed. Edwin Greenlow, C. G, Osgood, F, M. Padelford, and Ray Heffner (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1947), p. 353. 195

11. M. H, Abrams, "Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric," in From Sensibility to Romanticism, ed, Fredrick W. Hilles, and Harold Bloom (London: Oxford, 1965), PP. 527-528. 12. Herbert Read, Wordsworth (London: Faber and Faber, 1930), p. 170. 13. C. M. Bowra, The Romantic Imagination (London: Oxford, 1949), P. 10. 14. Quoted in Life, p. 171. 15. Arthur Symonds, The Romantic Movement in English Poetry (London: Constable and Co., 1909), p. 270.

Chapter Four

1. Letters, p. 32.

2. Letters. p, 135. 3. Life. p. 178. 4. Prose, p. 82.

5. Life, pp. 182-183. 6. Prose, p. 86.

7. Prose, p. 86. 8. Prose, p, 86,

9. Prose, p. 88,

10. Prose, p, 89.

11. Poems. I, pp. 520-521, II, p. 112.

12. See: Edmund Blunden, Charles Lamb and His Contemporaries. (Canbridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933), P. 140.

13. Life, p. 200,

14. Letters. p. 154, 196

15. Letters. p. 156.

16. Letters. p. 156.

17. Life, p, 208.

18. Edmund Blunden, Keats's Publisher (London: Jonathan Cape, 1936), p. 173.

19. Letters. p. 157.

20. Prose, pp. 94-95.

21. Leslie Marchand, Byron: A Portrait (London: John Murray, 1971), p. 469.

22. Prose, p. 100,

23. Prose, p. 96,

24. Life and Poetry, p. 118, 25. Prose, p. 143,

26. Life and Poetry, p. 118,

27. Letters. pp. 170-171.

28. Quoted in Keats's Publisher, pp. I82-I83.

29. Life, p. 288,

30. Life, p. 289.

31. Prose, p, 138,

32. Life, p. 298.

33. Life, p. 300. 34. Life and Poetry, p. 140. 35. Prose, pp, 103-125, 140.

36. Letters, pp. 223-224.

37. Letters. p. 222. 38. Life, pp. 309-312. 197

39. Letters. p. 235. 40. See Letters, p, 130.

41. Life, p. 320.

42. Life, p. 320.

43. Letters. p. 247.

44. Letters. P. 253. 45. Life, p. 338. 46, Letters, p. 258.

47. Life. p. 344. 48. Life and Poetry, p. 148.

49. Life, p. 358.

50. Life, p. 358.

51. Letters. P. 273. 52. Life, p. 363.

53. Life, p. 364. 54. Life, p. 364.

55. Life, p. 365. 56. Life, p. 366.

Chapter Five

1. John Middleton Murry, "The Case of John Clare," John Clare and Other Studies (London: Peter Nevill, 1950), p, 23, 2. John Middleton Murry, "The Poetry of John Clare," Counties of the Mind: Essays in Literary Criticism (London: Oxford University Press, 1931), pp. 72-73. 198

3. C, Day Lewis, The Lyrical Impulse (Cambridge: Harvard Uni­ versity Press, 1965), p. 112. 4. John Middleton Murry, "The Poetry of John Clare," Countries of the Mind: Essays in Literary Criticism (London: Oxford, 1931), p. 70.

5. See: Dylan Thomas, The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. ed. Ralph Maud, (New York: New Directions, 1965), pp, 16-17. J Horace Gregory, "The Romantic Heritage of Dylan Thomas," A Casebook on Dylan Thomas, ed. J. M. Brinnin (New York: Crowell, i960), p. 131. 6. Life and Poetry, p. 132.

7. See Appendix III,

Chapter Six

1. See Letters. pp. 278-285.

2. Prose, pp. 231, 232.

3. Life, p. 378. 4. Life and Poetry, pp. I68-I69.

5. John Clare, The Later Poems of John Clare, ed. Eric Robinson and Geoffrey Summerfield (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1964), p. 83. Hereafter referred to as Later Poems.

6. Prose, p. 250.

7. Letters. p. 295.

8. Life and Poetry, p. 173.

9. John Clare, Poems of John Clare's Madness. ed. Geoffrey Griegson (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949), p. 28. Hereafter referred to as Poems of Madness. 10. Later Poems, p. 202,

11. Later Poems, p. 160. 199

12. John Clare, Selected Poems and Prose of John Clare, eds. Eric Robinson and Geoffrey Summerfield (London: Oxford, 1967;, pp, 196-197• Hereafter referred to as Selected Poems. 13. Selected Poems, pp. 199-200.

14. John Clare, The Wood Is Sweet, ed. David Powell (London: Bodely Head, 1966), p. 11.

15. Life, p. 433. 16. Life and Poetry, p. 198.

17. Letters, p. 309. 18. Life, p. 440,

19. Poems of Madness. p. 50. 200

LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED

A. Primary Sources

Clare, John, John Clare: Poems Chiefly From Manuscript, eds. Edmund Blunden and Alan Porter. London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1920.

______. Poems of John Clare's Madness, ed. Geoffrey Griegson. London: RoutLedge and Kegan Paul, 1949.

______. Selected Poems and Prose of John Clare. eds. Eric Robinson and Geoffrey Summerfield. London: Oxford University Press, 1967.

______. Selected Poems of John Clare, ed. James Reeves. London: Hinemann, 1954. ______. Sketches in The Life of John Clare Written by Himself. ed. Edmund Blunden. London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1931.

______, The Later Poems of John Clare. eds. Eric Robinson and Geoffrey Summerfield. New York: Barns and Noble, 1964.

______. The Letters of John Clare, eds. J, W. and Anne Tibble. New York: Barns and Noble, 1970.

______. The Poems of John Clare in 2 vols. ed. J. W. Tibble, London: J. M. Dent, 1935. ______. The Prose of John Clare. eds. J. W. and Ann Tibble. New York: Barns and Noble, 1970. ______. The Shepherd's Calendar, eds. Eric Robinson and Geoffrey Summerfield. London: Oxford University Press, 1964.

______. The Wood is Sweet, ed. David Powell. London: Bodely Head, 196S7"

Manuscripts 1., and 4. Northampton Public Library. Northampton, England. 201

B. Secondary Sources

A Casebook on Dylan Thomas, ed. J. M. Brinnin. New York: Crowell, 19567 Anon. Review of John Clare; Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery. The Quarterly Review, XXII, May and June, 1820, pp. 166-174,

Bate, Walter Jackson. Keats. New York: Oxford University Press, 1963.

Bloom, Harold. The Visionary Company. New York: Doubleday, 1961.

Blunden, Edmund. Charles Lamb and His Contemporaries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933»

______. Keats's Publisher: A Memoir of John Taylor. London: Jonathan Cape, 1936.

______. Shelley: A Life Story. London: Oxford University Press, 1965. Bowra, C. M. The Romantic Imagination. London: Oxford University Press, 1949. Curwin, Henry, A History of Bookselling. London: Chatto and Windus, 1873. From Sensibility to Romanticism: Essays Presented to Fredrick A. Pottle, eds. Fredrick W. Hilles and Harold Bloom, London: Oxford University Press, 1965. Graves, Robert. "Peasant Poet." The Hudson Review. VIII, 1 (1955), pp. 99-105. Gregory Horace. "On John Clare, And the Sight of Nature in His Poetry." The Shield of Achilles: Essays on Beliefs in Poetry. New Yorks Harcourt, Brace, 1944. pp. 21-32.

Hammond, J. L. and Barbara. The Village Labourer 1760-1832: A Study in the Government of England Before the Reform Bill. London: Longmans, Green, 1924. Hanson, Lawrence. The Life of S. T. Coleridge: The Early Years. New York: Russell and Russell, 1962.

Herford, C. H, The Age of Wordsworth. London: Bell and Sons, 1925. 202

Hubler, Edward, The Sense of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952.

Kroeber, Karl. Romantic Narrative Art. Madison: University of Wis- , consin Press, 1966.

Langbaum, Robert. The Poetry of Experience. New York: Norton, 1957.

Lever, J. W. The Elizabethan Love Sonnet. London: Methuen, 1956.

Lewis, C. Day. The Lyric Impulse. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965. Lunt, W, E. History of England. London: Harper, 1928.

Marchand, Leslie. Byron: A Portrait. London: John Murry, 1971.

Merriam, H. G. Edward Moxon: Publisher of Poets. New York: Columbia University Press, 1939. Mumby, F. A. Publishing and Bookselling: A History from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. New York: Bowker, 1931.

Muir, Edwin. Essays on Literature and Society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 19^5.

Murry, John Middleton. "The Case of John Clare." John Clare and Other Studies. London: Peter Nevill, 195®. PP. 19-24. . "The Poetry of John Clare." Countries of the Mind: Essays in Literary Criticism. London: Oxford University Press, 1931. pp. ¿9-82,

Read, Herbert. Reason and Romanticism: Essays in Literary Criticism. New York: Russell and Russell, 1963. ______. Wordsworth. London: Faber and Faber, 1930.

Shaw, Robert. "John Clare's 'Paradise Lost' and Regained." Northamp­ tonshire Past and Present. Ill, 5 (1964), pp. 201-202. Shelley, Percy Pysshe, The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, in 8 vols, ed. H. B. Forman. London: Reeves and Turner, I876- 1880.

Some British Romantics, eds, James Logan, John Jordan, and Northrop Fry. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1966. Spenser, Edmund. The Works of Edmund Spenser, eds. Edwin Greenlow, C. G. Osgood, F, M, Paddleford, and Ray Heffner. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1947. 203

Symonds, Arthur. The Romantic Movement in English Poetry. London: Constable, 1909.

Thomas Dylan. The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, ed. Ralph Maud. New York: New Directions, 19^5.

Tibble, J, W. and Anne. John Clare: A Life. London: Cobden-Sanderson 1932.

______John Clare: His Life and Poetry. London; Heinemann, 195^.

Unwin, Rayner, The Rural Muse: Studies in the Peasant Poetry of England. London: Allen and Unwin, 1954. 204

Appendix I

Sonnet Forms Used In Poems Descriptive

Pattern Number of times

abab cddc ceec ee 1

abba cddc effe gg 1

abab cdcd efef gg 5 abab cdcd ee fgfg 4

abab acac aded e 1

ababab cdcd efef 1 ababba cdcd efef 1

abab acac cdcdcd i abbab ceded efef 1 ababba caacac dd 1 abab bebe cdcd ee 1 ababba cbcc bdbd 1 205

Appendix II

Pattern Number of Times

abab aaccdd efef 1

abab bccb eded ff 1 ababab aa cdc ede 1

abab cc dede fdfd 1

abab cdcd cc bdbd 1

abab cdcd aa efef 1

aba bb cdc dd efef 3 abab cdcd efef ee 1 abab bcbc ded fef 1

abab bcdb dd efef 1 abab cdcd ee fgfg 6

aba bb cdc dd cece 1 abab cdcd efef gg 6

abab cdcd bb efef i aba bb cdc ee dfbf 1 ababcdcd dede ed 1 abab cdcd ee bfbf 1 abab bcbc cd efef 1 abab aa baba cdcd 1 abab bcbc cdcd ee 1 ababab cbcb dbdb 1 abab bcbc cbcb dd 1 206

Pattern Number of Times

abe bde efef gfgf 1

abab bebe ee efef 1

aabb ccdd eeff gg 1

aba bebe cdcd ede 1

abab bdbd bb dede 1

abab aede adad ee 1

abab aedd cd ecec 1 abab cdcd efef aa 1

abba bedb bd efef 1 abab bebe cdcdcd 1 abab bebe dd ecec 1 abba baac adde ee 1 abab bebd efdf gg 1 abba bed ede fefe 1 abab ebeb ede efe 1 abab ee ded efe ff 1 abab aa cdcd efef 1 abba cade ddeeff 1 abab cddc ceec ff 1 abab bebe dede ff 1 abab bebb cdcd ee 1 aabb ccdd ee fgfg 1 20?

Appendix III

Pattern Number of Times abab cbcb dcdcdc 1

aabb ccdd eeff gg 18 abab cbcb de dede 1 ababab cdcd efef 1 abab cdcd efef gg 14 abab ac dede efef 1 abab cdcd ee fgfg 2 aba bb cdc dd efef 1 aba abe acac dede 1 abab cdc ede efef 1 abab acac de efef 1 abba bccb eba dab 1 ababab cb ededed 1 abab cdcd eeffgg 1 abab cc aede eded 1 abab aabc dcdcdc 1 abab aebc dede ee 1 abab acac adad ee i abab acac adad ee Í abab cdcd efgf hh 1 aa bcbc dede fefe 1 abab acac ddcd ee 1 ‘ ababacac de efef 1 208

Pattern Number of Times

abab caca dede ff 1 aba abc bd ece dcd 1

ababab aa bcbc bb 1

abab baca acac dd 1

ab aba ccdd efc ef 1

abab bcbc dd efef 1

abab abc bac bdbd 1 aba bcb cc cacaca 1 abab caca adad ee 1 aba aba bcbc deed 1 ababab cae ded ee 1 abab cdcd ebed ff 1 abab aede dede ff 1 abed adad cd cèce 1 abab cdcd dc dede 1 ababab ebeb cc cc 1 abab acac bcbc cb 1 abab ac dede efef 1 abab bcbc cdcd ee 1 abab ac dcd efe ff 1 abba cdcd efef gg 1 abab cc dede dfdf 1 abab aebe ddbd ee 1 abab bed ede efef 1 209

Pattern Number of Times abab babe de deed 1 abab cdcd efef ee 1 abab acac dd efef 1 abab eded efg hfh 1 abab bc ded efe ff 1 aa bea ded aeae ff 1 abab edee fef ded 1