Quotes from John Clare

And all the charms of face or voice Which I in others see, Are but the recollected choice Of what I feel for thee.

Love lives with Nature, not with lust. Go find her in the flowers.

For Nature is love, and finds haunts for true love, Where nothing can hear or intrude; It hides from the eagle and joins with the dove, In beautiful green solitude.

Still, I have been no one's enemy but my own. My easy nature, either in drinking or anything else, was always ready to submit to persuasions of profligate companions, who often led me into snares.

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

If life had a second edition, how I would correct the proofs.

I ne'er was struck before that hour with love so sudden and so sweet. Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower and stole my heart away complete

The present is the funeral of the past, And man the living sepulchre of life.

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.

Untroubling and untroubled where I lie—The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

Lover of swampsThe quagmire overgrownWith hassock tufts of sedge—where fear encampsAround thy home aloneThe trembling grassQuakes from the human footNor bears the weight of man to let him passWhere he alone and muteSitteth at rest

Summer pleasures they are gone like to visions every oneAnd the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh onI tried to call them back but unbidden they are goneFar away from heart and eye and for ever far away

I am! yet what I am who cares, or knows?My friends forsake me like a memory lost.

Forgive me if, in friendship's way, I offer thee a wreath of May.... [N]ourished by the dews of heaven.... So I have Ivy placed between, To prove that worth is ever green. The little blue Forget-me-not... Spring's messenger in every spot, Smiling on all—"Remember me!"

Say maiden wilt thou go with meIn this strange death of life-to-beTo live in death and be the sameWithout this life or home or nameAt once to be and not to be

Till kicked and torn and beaten out he liesAnd leaves his hold and cackles, groans, and dies.

There is nothing but poetry about the existence of childhood real simple soul-moving poetry the laughter and joy of poetry and not its philosophy and there is nothing of poetry about manhood but the reflection and the remembrance of what has been—nothing more

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.

O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away

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 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.

grammar in learning is like tyranny in government - confound the bitch I'll never be her slave.

Solitude There is a charm in Solitude that cheers A feeling that the world knows nothing of A green delight the wounded mind endears After the hustling world is broken off Whose whole delight was crime at good to scoff Green solitude his prison pleasure yields The bitch fox heeds him not -- birds seem to laugh He lives the Crusoe of his lonely fields Which dark green oaks his noontide leisure shields