John Clare Quotes

And what is Life? — An hour-glass on the run,
A mist retreating from the morning sun,
A busy, bustling, still repeated dream;
Its length? — A minute’s pause, a moment’s thought;
And happiness? — A bubble on the stream,
That in the act of seizing shrinks to nought.

O I never thought that joys would run away from boys,
Or that boys would change their minds and forsake such summer joys;
But alack I never dreamed that the world had other toys

Remember us better than we are.

The rustling of leaves under the feet in woods and under hedges;
The crumpling of cat-ice and snow down wood-rides, narrow lanes, and every street causeway;
Rustling through a wood or rather rushing, while the wind halloos in the oak-toop like thunder;
The rustle of birds’ wings startled from their nests or flying unseen into the bushes;
The whizzing of larger birds overhead in a wood, such as crows, puddocks, buzzards;
The trample of robins and woodlarks on the brown leaves, and the patter of squirrels on the green moss;
The fall of an acorn on the ground, the pattering of nuts on the hazel branches as they fall from ripeness;
The flirt of the groundlark’s wing from the stubbles- how sweet such pictures on dewy mornings, when the dew flashes from its brown feathers.

Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rude
And fled to the silence of sweet solitude.
Where the flower in green darkness buds, blossoms, and fades,
Unseen of all shepherds and flower-loving maids — The hermit bees find them but once and away.
There I'll bury alive and in silence decay.

In mid-wood silence, thus, how sweet to be;
Where all the noises, that on peace intrude,
Come from the chittering cricket, bird, and bee,
Whose songs have charms to sweeten solitude.

O I never thought that joys would run away from boys,
Or that boys would change their minds and forsake such summer joys;
But alack I never dreamed that the world had other toys
To petrify first feelings like the fable into stone,
Till I found the pleasure past and a winter come at last,
Then the fields were sudden bare and the sky got overcast
And boyhood’s pleasing haunt like a blossom in the blast
Was shrivelled to a withered weed and trampled down and done,
Till vanished was the morning spring and set the summer sun
And winter fought her battle strife and won.

O lead me onward to the loneliest shade,
The darkest place that quiet ever made,
Where kingcups grow most beauteous to behold
And shut up green and open into gold.

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

I love to see the old heath's withered brake Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling, While the old heron from the lonely lake Starts slow and flaps its melancholy wing

The ivyed oaks dark shadow falls Oft picking up with wondering gaze Some little thing of other days Saved from the wreck of time.

To-morrow comes, true copy of to-day, And empty shadow of what is to be; Yet cheated Hope on future still depends, And ends but only when our being ends.

This world has suns, but they are overcast; This world has sweets, but they're of ling'ring bloom; Life still expects, and empty falls at last; Warm Hope on tiptoe drops into the tomb.

O how I feel, just as I pluck the flower And stick it to my breast — words can't reveal; But there are souls that in this lovely hour Know all I mean, and feel whate'er I feel.

I hid my love in field and town Till een the breeze would knock me down, The bees seemed singing ballads oer, The fly's bass turned a lion's roar; And even silence found a tongue, To haunt me all the summer long; The riddle nature could not prove Was nothing else but secret love.