John Clare Quotes

O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away

Language has not the power to speak what love indites
The soul lies buried in the Ink that writes

In crime and enmity they lie
Who sin and tell us love can die,
Who say to us in slander's breath
That love belongs to sin and death.

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 vapours tossed

I found the poems in the fields,
And only wrote them down.

I sleep with thee, and wake with thee,
And yet thou are not there;
I fill my arms with thoughts of thee,
And press the common air.

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.

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 hid my love when young till I
Couldn't bear the buzzing of a fly;
I hid my life to my despite
Till I could not bear to look at light:
I dare not gaze upon her face
But left her memory in each place;
Where'er I saw a wild flower lie
I kissed and bade my love good-bye.

Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rude
And fled to the silence of sweet solitude.

Hill tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun,
And the rivers we're eying burn to gold as they run;
Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air;
Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.

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

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 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.

O take me from the busy crowd,
I cannot bear the noise!
For Nature's voice is never loud;
I seek for quiet joys.
The book I love is everywhere,
And not in idle words;
The book I love is known to all,
And better lore affords.

I find more pleasure in wandering the fields than in musing among my silent neighbours who are insensible to everything but toiling and talking of it and that to no purpose.