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 shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live - like vapors tossed
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange - nay, rather, stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man hath 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,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below - above the vaulted sky.
by John Clare
John Clare was born into a peasant family on 13 July 1793 in Helpston, England. Although he was the son of illiterate parents, Mr. Clare received some formal schooling. While earning money through manual labor such as ploughing and threshing, he published several volumes of poetry, including “Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery” (1820). John Clare passed on at 70 years of age on 20 May 1864 in Northampton, England. The John Clare online memorial is at https://goo.gl/eC9FjV.
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 shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live - like vapors tossed
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange - nay, rather, stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man hath 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,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below - above the vaulted sky.
by John Clare
John Clare was born into a peasant family on 13 July 1793 in Helpston, England. Although he was the son of illiterate parents, Mr. Clare received some formal schooling. While earning money through manual labor such as ploughing and threshing, he published several volumes of poetry, including “Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery” (1820). John Clare passed on at 70 years of age on 20 May 1864 in Northampton, England. The John Clare online memorial is at https://goo.gl/eC9FjV.
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