COUNTRY LIFE IN THE POETRY OF JOHN CLARE 
 
 BY 
 
 MILDRED M. COEN 
 
 THESIS 
 
 FOR THE 
 
 DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS 
 
 IN 
 
 ENGLISH 
 
 COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
 1922 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
 ^ (XSV^LA-MS ^- ^ 
 
 2 - 3 
 
 .I9^.?7T 
 
 THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT THE THESIS PREPARED UNDER MY SUPERVISION BY 
 ENTITLED 1 A*r fj/.. 
 
 IS APPROVED BY ME AS FULFILLING THIS PART OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE 
 
 J S /A 
 
 DEGREE OF. 
 
 HEAD OF DEPARTMENT OF. 
 
 
 500254 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 I '» 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Table of Contents 
 
 page 
 
 1. Part 1 Economic Conditions in the Time of John Clare 1 
 
 2. Part 11 The Life of John Clare 7 
 
 3. Part 111 Country Life in the Poetry of John Clare 14 
 
 4. Bibliography 25 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/details/countrylifeinpoeOOcoen 
 
- 1 - 
 
 PART 1 
 
 Economic Conditions in the 
 Time of Clare 
 
 About forty years before the birth of the Poet Clare, 
 
 ( 1793 ) there began in England a land revolution which by 
 the end of the eighteenth century pauperized a great part 
 of the rural population. Up until 1750 fully half of the 
 land of England was worked in ft common " , or in accordance 
 with what was known as the open field system. This open 
 field system means that there were special fields set aside 
 for plow land. These fields were dividedAvery small strips 
 which were alternately cultivated and left unplowed. Besides 
 this plow land, there was a definite <aure a of grazing land, 
 known as the commons. *Hth the coming of enclosures this 
 open field system was abolished. ( By the term 1 enclosure ’ 
 is meant that all the strips of any one man scattered 
 throughout the holdings of the village were given to him 
 in equivalent in a singl e , consolidated acreage , which he had 
 to fence, ditch, etc. Or again, the termsapulies to a 
 large district, as very frequently the commons, that was fenced 
 in for the wealthy landowner’s sheep-fens. ) 
 
 An enclosure began with a private bill introduced into 
 
 Parliament often by a wealthy landlord. This bill, showing 
 
 the advantages of enclosing, was sent to a committee , whose 
 leader or chairman m£ght have been the selfsame landlord who 
 had prooosed the bill. After being co sidered and passed 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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- 2 - 
 
 uron by the house of lords, which was in turn composed of 
 wealthy landowners only, the bill was put into the hands of 
 a commission to be executed. Such a commission, perhaps headed 
 by the nobleman wanting the enclosure , descended upon the dis- 
 trict and distributed the land according to their wishes. 
 
 Enelosures no doubt increased the national wealth 
 immensely in the long run. Of course, no modern system of 
 farming could survive in which an acre was dawiddd into ten 
 or more strips each with a different crop and different 
 owner. And modern methods were just then being introduced 
 into England, and were finding an obstacle in the old system 
 that was almost identical with the Anglo-Saxon system of 
 a thousand years earlier. But the change was too rapid and 
 altered the character of the national life of England to 
 such a degree that it wrought untold hardships for more 
 than half a century. The people of the villages were robbed 
 of the barest means of making a living. Just as today the 
 small manufacture hag no chance against the big one in his 
 line, so then the small landowner could not compete against 
 the wealthy ones, especially since new and expensive machin- 
 ery and fertilizers were becoming more and more essential. 
 
 The wealthy landowners improved their estates so that they 
 might raise the rent and make a profit that could be com- 
 pared to the profit made by the fast-rising merchant aris- 
 tocracy. The rent on these improved farms was so high that 
 the small farmer had to give up farming altogether. The 
 commons were enclosed and in a majority of the cases want to 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 .* Hp| <»'i » i 1 » - ' 4 -'' *flj ij| B;it IgM ||.J 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
- 3 - 
 
 the wealthy landowners who raised a better grade of sheep 
 with heavier wool on the pasturage thus afforded: but the 
 
 small farmer and in fact all the rest of the agricultural 
 population did not have a place to graze a coy;. The small 
 sum of money given them for the loss of their rights in graz- 
 ing stock on the commons and gathering wood from the waste, 
 was soon spent for the bare necessities of living; and when 
 this was spent, the economic independence of the laboring 
 population was gone. 
 
 The enclosures were thus fatal to three classes of the 
 rural population: the small farmer, who had at most thirty 
 acres; the cotter or cottager, who had perhaps five: and the 
 laborer who had less than that or none. The process of 
 enclosing their allottments after the consolidation mentioned, 
 was so expensive that it could not be borne except by a man 
 with some capital to start on. The man who was called upon by 
 the enclosing committee to promp^y ditch and fence his 
 little land, and who could not do so, was compelled to sell 
 at v;hatever price he could get. The small farmer of thirty 
 acres might possibly have borne this expense b lithe received 
 no adequate recompense for his rights of common; and such 
 advantages as he received from the consolidation of his 
 thirty acres could not make amends for the loss of common 
 rights. For , without pasture he could not keep sheep,* v/ith 
 no sheep he could not fertilize his "and; without fertilizer 
 the land soon wore out. The small farmer then could emigrate 
 to America, or go to an industrial town, or become a day 
 laborer. Thus it 7/as that a smal 1 , independent farmer in a 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
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- 4 - 
 
 few years became a laborer and in another few years was 
 perhaps thrown upon parish relief. Th 
 
 ^he effect upon the cottager can best be described by 
 saying that before the enclosures he was a laborer with 
 land; and after the enclosure he was a laborer without land. 
 
 For the inability to fence and ditch his holdings operated 
 even more sternly in his cs.se than in that of the small farmer. 
 A great part of the land , moreover , that was enclosed was turned 
 to pasture by the large owners, and the laborers formerly 
 employed on it were dischanged. Where fifteen men farmed, 
 one man<- herded. -‘-he cottager and the laborer were thus made 
 dependent on wages alone at a time when competition for work 
 was beating wages down to a starvation level. The squatter 
 was a poor alien on the land, settled on the waste, built 
 
 a cottage, and got together a few geese ,pe rhaps a cow and 
 a horse; and began to cultivate the land. With the coming of 
 the enclosure he lost his common right; and thus unrooted he 
 could start on a wandering journey of beggary. 
 
 Perhaps we can get an idea of the misery and universal 
 wretchedness of the rural population if we quote a few words 
 from an eye-witness , Gobbett , in his PARISH REGISTER: 
 
 rr Their dwellings are little better than pig-beds; and 
 the looks would indicate that their food in not nearly the 
 equal of that of a pig. The wretched hovels are stuck upon 
 little plots of ground by the road-side where the space was 
 
 wider than the road demanded. Yesterday morning was 
 
 a sharj) frost; and this had set the poor creatures digging up 
 their little plots of potatoes. In my whole life I never saw 
 

 
 
 
 
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-o~ 
 
 such wretchedness , not even among the plantation negroes. ,T 
 The laborer, to keep from starving , often turned to 
 ooaching and petty thievery. But the noblemen had their^ 
 parks enclosed against trespassers. Spring-guns were set up 
 on the estates. Poaching offenses were made punishable by 
 death, or at the least by transportation to Australia. The 
 poor might seek charity from the parish pauper work-house. 
 
 Or they might starve. 
 
 Many reforms to better these conditions were proposed, 
 
 mainly because the English Aristocracy had just seen 
 
 a 
 
 in a sister nation what desperate proletariat could do if 
 pushed to extremes of misery. The reform that was adopted 
 goes under the name of The Speenhamland System. In brief, 
 it provided that if a laborer did not receive a certain 
 minimum wage ( which was set on a sliding scale to corres- 
 pond to the price of wheat ), he was to be given from the 
 parish relief to make up the set amount. Nothing was done to 
 force the employer to pay this minimum wage; and since he 
 could depend upon the parish having to pay it, he seldom 
 did give the laborer a living wage. The result was that 
 those who were not already paupers speedily became so. The 
 scheme was the culmination of a series of strokes that 
 pauperized an already impoverished nation. 
 
 The laborer was separated from the 3 and bp the enclosures 
 in a greater degree than can be readily realized. Before the 
 industrial and agrarian revolutions, Arthur -'oung estimated 
 that out of a population of 8, 500, 000, the agricultural portion 
 was 2, 800, 000, or one-fourth of the total number. In the 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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- 6 - 
 
 second decade of the nineteenth century the total number 
 engaged of farms and dairies was 1,300,000: that is 
 not half the actual number engaged in the century before; 
 while the proportion had sunk from one person in four to 
 one in twenty-five. 
 
 The main features of this land change were; the 
 open field system was abolished; the plow and grazing 
 lands were enclosed; small farms were consolidated into 
 larger ones; new methods and machinery were introduced; 
 and the laborer was separated from the land. It was in 
 tnis change of rural conditions that the poet John Clare 
 
 was born and reared in Northamptonshire, which was 
 
 a purely agricultural district and felt the misery and 
 universal pauperization that went with the agrarian 
 revolution. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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-7- 
 
 PART 11 
 
 The Life Of John Clare (.1793-1864) 
 
 John Glare was born in the little village of Helpstone 
 in Northamptonshire , in 1793. His family, one of the poor- 
 est in the village, was enrolled in the parish pauper list. 
 When the poet 7/as seven, his father by the greatest priva- 
 tions sent him to a certain rr Lame-School " ; but the 
 money could not be ppared to keep him there very long, and 
 ^ohn was hired out to tend the geese and sheep on the com- 
 mons. He saved up his few pennies during the next two or 
 three years; and again,at the age of ten, went to school for 
 a few months. This was all the formal education that the 
 poet received; for at twelve he was already working regu- 
 larly in the fields. With hardly strength enough for the 
 slightest labor, so small and weak-armed that his father 
 made him a special flail to thresh ?/ith,he must have endured 
 sufferings of body and spirit those years. 
 
 When he was thirteen, the reading of Thomson* s 
 r * Seasons rr led him to believe that he was a poet himself. 
 
 He had already showed a poetic temperament: as a very young 
 
 child he Hcl set out one day to walk towards the horizon, 
 
 A 
 
 that he might touch it. As he grew older he was unusually 
 credulous of supernatural things , fancying all kinds of 
 ghosts and goblins in the swamps ready to attack him. -hen, 
 when he read the rr Seasons ,T ,he scribbled down an a piece 
 of paper the lines which were afterwards known as " The 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
- 8 - 
 
 Morning Walk. rr He wrot4 other verses on scraps of paper 
 which he would stuff into a hole in the wall. When his mother 
 would find them, she used them for lighting the fires. The 
 poet showed some of his verses to a Mr. Thomas r orter 
 living near Helpst one , and was advised to learn grammar. The 
 attempt to do this kept him from writing any more poems 
 for several years. 
 
 During these years, Clare engaged in various forms 
 of day labor to suoport himself. Por a time he worked among 
 the gardeners in Burghley Park ,v/hc9Phe acquired the habit 
 of carousing and drinking. He ran away for a few r months 
 but after wandering about, went back home to work on a 
 farm, ^ater he found work at a lime -kiln; where , though 
 the work was hard, he found time to write half a dozen poems 
 ih the course of a day. It was at this time, in 1817, that 
 he met Martha Turner, the rT ^atty n of some of his poems ,-mm 
 whom he married after many hesitations and differences. 
 
 Between the meeting with atty and his marriage, 
 three years later, Clare became almost a beggar,and put 
 down his name, as his father did, on the pauper list, 
 claiming relief from the parish. The money he had saved 
 when he worked at the lime-kiln had been spent on the 
 printing of a hundred copies of a prospectus, which he 
 called: n Proposals for Publishing by Subscriptions a 
 Collection of Original Trifles on Miscellaneous Subjects, 
 Religious and Moral, in Verse, by John Clare of Helpstone. rT 
 He intended to raise money on this subscription and get 
 married. As the title might indicate , only seven subscribers 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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-9- 
 
 coulcL be found; and it seemed as if the poems would never 
 be printed. But by good luck they fell into the hands of 
 a Stamford bookseller called Drury, who sent them to London 
 to his relative, Mr. Taylor, a prominent printer. Taylor 
 saw the value of the poems, and announced them in the first 
 issue of his new rr London Magazine " . On January 16,1320, 
 he published the rr Poems Descriptive of Rural ^ife, and 
 Scenery, by John Glare, a Northamptonshire Peasant. rT Ee 
 attached an introduction that was almost an appeal to 
 charity . 
 
 ■‘■he success of the poems was immediate. Praise came 
 from the Quarterly Review that had attacked A eats. Madame 
 Vestris recited some of the poems at Govent Gardens; 
 
 Rossini set one of them to music. The poet was taken to 
 London under the guidance of his editor, Mr. Tailor, who took 
 him to theatres and dinner parties. There , because of his 
 naive rusticity in dress , manner , and speech, he became as 
 popular as his rural verses. At his first visit, he gained 
 the friendship of two life-long friends, Lord Radstock and 
 Mrs. Emmerson. Subscriptions were raised; the money was 
 invested for him; and Glare found himself with an income 
 of forty-five pounds a year. 
 
 §n that amount the poet thought he could Jive 
 without working. In the day he would wander about the com- 
 mons writing poems; at night he sat in the inn-parlors 
 receiving his admirers. In 1821 he brought out another 
 book, n The Village Minstrel. ,T Gilchrist and Taylor 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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- 10 - 
 
 had fought the battles of the first volume; hut Gilchrist 
 at this time was busily engaged in a literary battle be- 
 tween the editors of Pope and Byron and the Quarterly 
 Review. Phis second volume of Glare's was left neglected. 
 The next year he made a second trip to London. The poet 
 stayed there long enough to get acquainted with the taverns 
 and gay theatres, and to fall in love with an actress and 
 ^young wife of a friend. H e met Gifford and Murray, and 
 supped with Lamb. 
 
 The freedom and gaity of London had done Glare no 
 good when he came back to Eelpstone; the trip had merely 
 made him discontented and lonely. n owever, he wrote verses 
 copiously and tried to make better bargains in selling 
 them. He was not successful at this, and the little money 
 he had soon dwindled away. Stinting himself in food that 
 his ever increasing family and old parents might have 
 enough to eat, he became seriously ill. £i e went to London 
 again, and receiving medical aid, became better rapidly. 
 
 On this visit, he met all the /leading literary 
 men as they gathered for dinner parties at the home of the 
 editor , Taylor. Mr. Martin , Glare ' s biographer , gives the 
 poet's naive reaction to the ,T Lions rT on the times. Like 
 a child he sat spell-bound listening to their talk, while 
 he felt keenly h disappointment that they were not as he 
 had imagined them in his day-dreams. At such parties he 
 met Hazlitt, Reynol ds , Coleridge ,£anb , ^ary, the translator 
 of Dante, and many others notables. 
 

 
 
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- 11 - 
 
 As soon as he was strong enough and. returned to 
 Helpstone.he got a job digging ditches and draining marshes; 
 but he was too p^psrr to do the work. °ickness , poverty , cares , 
 came faster and faster. His thought's naturally came to 
 him in verse; but the circumstances of his life prevented 
 him from developing to the extent he otherwise might. 
 Sometimes his poverty and his cares , some times drink, 
 sometimes starvation, prevented him from writing at all. 
 
 Out under the ooen sky he felt free. " There was a fav- 
 orite spot where he delighted to sit, and where the hallowed 
 vein of poetry flowed freely. This spot was the hollow oak 
 on the border of Helpstone heath, called Jj ea Close Oak. Hew 
 human beings ever came to this place; inside this oak the 
 poet used to sit for hours in silent meditations , forgetting 
 everything at out him and unmindful of the waning day and 
 the mantle of darkness falling over the earth, " ( Martin's 
 
 Tr Life of John Clare.") 
 
 A few years of prosperity relieved the ever- oppressed , 
 poverty-cramped life of the poet, during these few years 
 there was scarcely a wish left unfulfilled , save the one of 
 wanting a strip of arth and to be kind: of his own land. A 
 poor crop and more sickness brough him back into the dire 
 want of his fo m r years, fhe Earl Fitzwilliam gave him 
 a few acres of land and a small cottage; but the change 
 from the spot where he had always lived was more than he 
 
 could bear, and signs of approaching insanity became more 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 no tic e able . ^he Earl proposed to send him to an asylum, since 
 it was decided that the poet had lost his mind. Mr. Taylor 
 with some interested friends arranged to send him to a 
 private asylum managed by a Dr. Allen, at ^igh Bridge. 
 Homesickness for his wife and children made him run away, 
 after he had been at Xi igh Bridge for four years, treated 
 with the utmost kindness. His experiences on this journey, 
 as described afterwards in a letter, were of the most pathetic 
 kind. For ninety hours he had nothing to eat, save a few 
 tobacco crumbs he had found in his pocket and the green 
 grass by the roadside, ^ying on the road from hunger, with 
 bruised and bleeding feet, he was picked up on the road- 
 side by his wife. Two county physicians came and signed 
 the certificate that was to shut him up in the Northamp- 
 tonshire Insane Asylum for the remaining twenty-two years 
 of his life. 
 
 At this place Glare was treated with the utmost 
 respect. The officials placed him in a ward with the 
 private patients , paying honor to him as well as to them- 
 selves by recognizing the poet in the pauper. In a recess 
 in one of the big windows, he s ^ent the greater part of 
 the years , writing and think ng. When he became very weak 
 and infirm, he was wheeJed about in the gardens, ^n Friday 
 ^ay 20,1864 he died. A he superintendent of the asylum 
 wrote to the Earl FitzwilJiam for the small sum necessary 
 to carry out the wish of the poet that he be buried in 
 his native soil. The Earl refused; but some kind friends 
 raised the sum. Glare now lies under a broad sycamore tree 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
- 13 - 
 
 in the little cemetery of Eelpstone 
 but the green grass and the eternal 
 
 " with nothing above 
 vault of heaven. ,T 
 
- 14 - 
 
 PART III 
 
 Country Life in the Poetry 
 of 
 
 John Clare 
 
 Altho John Clare was a peasant suffering from pov- 
 erty all his life, his poetry was not written with a pro- 
 pagandist ic hut with an artistic purpose, fhe literature of 
 the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries dealing with country 
 life was either artistic or social in purpose. Ebenezer 
 Elliott t living at the same time as Clare, wrote poems with 
 
 a social purpose for the repeal of the Corn ^aws,and the 
 
 lowering of the import duties on raw material. Although 
 Elliott was actually benefitted by the Corn ^aws, yet he 
 wrote against them most bitterly. John Clare f on the other 
 hand , impoverished all his life by the Corn -^aws and other 
 similar measures .wrote nothing dealing with a change in the 
 agricultural situation. Both writers are to be praised for 
 their honesty, for their ability to detach themselves from 
 immediate personal interests, and for their fidelity to 
 their artistic and social purposes. 
 
 The poems of Clare may be divided into three classes: 
 the Love Poems, the Hature Poems, and the Poems dealing with 
 social life. In all the poet’s writings he is dominated by 
 an artistic purpose rather than by a desire to reform or 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
- 15 - 
 
 change conditions. We should expect this to he so in the 
 
 Love Poems, which form the hulk of his work. Yet, we may learn 
 
 something of the country life from these poems, if we take 
 
 them, written by a peasant as they are, to be typical of the 
 
 sentiments felt by all the rural laborers. In spite of 
 
 the material hardships and privations, there is a simplicity 
 
 and sweetness in the peasant's love, an inner life of tender 
 
 emotions and warmth of feel ing > that is in stark contrast 
 
 with external hardships. Clare, in the love poems , expresses 
 
 these sentiments of the peasant. The poem best illustrating 
 
 the simple love is one entitled, " My Love, thou art a 
 
 Nosegay Sweet. ’’ 
 
 And When, my Nosegay, thou shalt die. 
 
 And heaven’s flower shall prove thee; 
 
 My hopes shall follw to the sky. 
 
 And everlasting love thee. 
 
 The ballad entitled ,f William and Mary, ” in which two 
 rural swains are talking of their sweethearts , shews an ele- 
 vated emotion and respect for the objects of their love, that 
 is deep felt and natural. 
 
 I fit rive to please her morning, noon, and night. 
 
 Poro=# her in harvest when the nuts are brown, 
 
 I take my crook to pull the branches down. 
 
 The garland and the wreath for her 1 bind 
 Compos’d of all the fairest flowers I find. 
 
 And finally, a few lines sh&wing the simplicity of the pea- 
 sant’s imagery and comparisons. 
 
 Clare’s Poems: Ed. Gale, pp. 36. 
 

 
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-16- 
 
 1 Tis Spring, my Love, ’tis Soring, 
 
 And the birds begin to sing; 
 
 If it were winter, left alone with you, 
 
 ^our bonny form and face, 
 l?ould make a Bummer place, 
 
 And be the fairest flower that ever grew. 
 
 Besides the sweet and simple love-life of the peasants, 
 the poet expresses their thoughts about the beauties of 
 nature. Nature must have afforded delights that did much to 
 make up for the poverty of the peasant’s lack of material 
 comfort. Glare expresses these delights of the inarticulate 
 peasants when he describes their sent iment s , as well as the 
 beauties of their native scenes. 
 
 0 Native endearments i I wou'd not forsake thee, 
 
 1 would not forsake thee for sweetest of scenes. 
 
 Your skies may be gloomy,and misty your mornings. 
 
 Your flat swampy vallies unwholesome may be; 
 
 Still, refuse of nature .without her adomings. 
 
 Thou art dear as this heart in my bosom to me. 
 
 The poet finds beaut?/ in the common, ordinary .natural ob- 
 jects of the low fen and the marshy country of his birth. 
 
 But in these scenes he saw only the le s gloomy and oppres- 
 sive aspects. The commons may have been brown and barren, but 
 Glare remembers them when they were green and dotted with 
 wild flowers. He wrote with fancy, feeling, and reflection 
 atoout these simple objects of nature, ^n his fancy he lived 
 the life of insects, which to many are simp]y annoyances ,but 
 which to him are fairies, with colored hoods and burnished 
 wings , di sguised in a sort of splendid masquerade , rocked to 
 
 sleep in the smooth velvet of the hedge-rose , or slumbering 
 like princes in the heath’s purple hood, secure from rain, 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
- 17 - 
 
 from dropping dews, in their beds and painted wails. A jolly 
 and royal life this seems .this life of a band of play-fel- 
 lows mocking the sunshine with their glittering wings, or 
 drinking golden wine and metheglin from the cup of the 
 
 £ lower . In a ref'ective mood, he sees into the eternal 
 mysteries of nature .beneath the forms and symbols of out- 
 ward appearances. Cowslips of golden blooms will come and go 
 as fresh two thousand years from no?/ as they are today. 
 Brooks, bees, birds, from age to age, these will sing when 
 ^all the ambitious things of earth have passed away. 
 
 There are two characteristics in the nature poems of 
 Clare: truth in the painting of the objects, and tenderness 
 in his sentiments toward them. The poet is both truthful and 
 tender when he paints a bird's nest, a nest often seen but 
 never disturbed. The nest of the pettichaps , close to the 
 rut-galled Tjapon-road , so snugly contrived , although without 
 a clump of grass to keep it warm or a shielding thistle 
 spreading its spear in protection, is ouilt like an oven... 
 
 Scarcely admitting two fingers in. 
 
 Hard to discern the bird s snug entrance win: 
 
 ’ Tis lined with feathers warm as silken stole, 
 
 Softer than seats of down for painless ease. 
 
 And jfull of eggs, scarce bigger e’en than peas; 
 k-ere s one that’s del icate .with spots so small 
 As ddst.and of a faint and pinky rdd; 
 
 Well, let them be, and Safety guard them well 
 
 A green grasshopper’s jump might break the shell. 
 
 The other objects of nature that delighted the peasants, 
 
 and were poetised by Clare were ants, clever blossoms, and 
 
 perhaps an early butterfly. Again, we find an intimacy with 
 
 the furry animals of the commons. — 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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- 18 - 
 
 And the little clurabling mouse 
 Gnarls the dead leaves for her house. 
 
 No other poet has such a collection of insects and animals. 
 
 The little gay'imoth. lovely to view 
 A- dancing with lily-white wings in the dew; 
 
 He whisked o’er the water-edge flirt : .ng and airy 
 And perched on the down-headed grass like a fairy. 
 And there came the snad# from shell peeping out, 
 
 As cautious and fearful as thieves in the rout. 
 
 ’■‘■he sly jumping frog, too, had ventured to ramp, 
 
 And the glow-worm had just ’gun to light up his 
 
 lamp . 
 
 Thus we can get an idea of the country life from the 
 love poems, which showed the tender emotional love-life of 
 the laborer, in spite of his mental poverty and material 
 hardships. Likewise, in the nature poems, the poet shows the 
 beatifies of nature in the country, -‘-he peasant delighted in 
 these beauties; he is rich in poetic sentiments and intimate 
 
 observations, though he is poor if we judge poverty to 
 
 be a lack of food and clothing. 1 f the Poet had any resent- 
 ment of the social and economic situation, we should expect 
 to find it in the poems dealing with Social Life. 
 
 CftjbbeSs lines in the ’ Village ”,that describe a 
 
 boy fainting in the fields from exhaustion, are memorable, 
 might have 
 
 Such lineSy\come aptly from Glare, who as a laborer , fainted 
 
 ' • 
 
 from exhaustion and hunger, and often went without food. 
 
 These lines of Crabbe’s tire exactly descriptive of the 
 
 miseries of the poor, as experienced by Clare himself. 
 
 He strives to Ijoin his fellows in the field, 
 
 Till long-contending nature droops at last. 
 
 Declining health rejects the poor repast. 
 
 Eis cheerless spouse the coming i anger sees, 
 
 And mutual murmurs urge the slow disease. 
 

 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
- 19 - 
 
 Eowever we never find a trace of bitterness in the poems 
 
 riff social life written by Glare. Instead, he describes the 
 
 hay-making time in this manner: 
 
 And meadows, they are mad with noise 
 Of laughing maids and shouting boys, 
 
 Making up the withering hay 
 
 With merry hearts as light as play. 
 
 All his life the poet longed for a spot of ground of 
 his own; but enclosures made this an impossibility. Yet, 
 when Clare wrote about enclosures, it is not about a personal 
 wrong or injustice that he speaks; but about the loss of 
 beauty or of something dear to his heart that had been, but 
 now was gone. 
 
 Whenever I must along the Plain, 
 
 And mark where once they grew, 
 
 Remembrance waked her busy train. 
 
 And brings past scenes to view. 
 
 The green’s gone , too — ah, lovely scene l 
 
 No more the kingcup gay 
 
 Shall shine in yellow o’er the green. 
 
 And shed its golden ray; 
 
 No more the he^rdsman's early call 
 Shall bring the cows to feed; 
 
 No more the milk-maid’s evening brawl 
 In ” Come Mull ” tones succeed. 
 
 Both milk-maid T s shouts and herdsman’s call 
 Have vanished from the green; 
 
 The kingcup’s yellow, shade and all. 
 
 Shall never more be seen; 
 
 But the thick-cultur & tribe that grow 
 Will so efface the scene. 
 
 That aftertime willfhardly know 
 It ever was a green. 
 
 In this same connection, in the ,? Village Minstrel, ” 
 we find these lines lamenting the absence of old scenes 
 and objects of beauty that are gone. 
 

 
 
 
 
~ 20 - 
 
 There once were springs, when daisies' silver studs 
 Like sheets _of sncw on every pasture spread; 
 
 There once w»°sumners where the crow-flower buds 
 Like golden sunbeams that sheltered Lubin's head; 
 There fallen trees the naked moors bewail, 
 
 And scarce a bush is left to the tell the mournful 
 
 tale . 
 
 Although the poet never wrote to reform agricui tural 
 
 conditions, he is often realistic. He even denounces them 
 
 occasionally, but his prevailing tone is lamentation for 
 
 the passing of the meadow-blooms and pasture-flowers 
 
 for the trimmed hedge-fences and well-kept lawns. 
 
 Enclosures came and every path was stopt. 
 
 Each tyrant fix'd his sign where paths were found 
 To hint a trespass who might cross the ground. 
 
 
 
 But who can tell the anguish f his mind, 
 
 w hen reformation's formidable foes 
 
 With civil wars 'gainst natures peace combined. 
 
 And desolation Struck her deadly blows 
 As curst improvement 'gan his fields inclose; 
 
 Oh greens, and fields, and trees, farewell , farewell .' 
 His he art -wrung pains, his unavailing woes 
 Ho words can utter, and no tongue can tell, 
 
 "'hen ploughs destroy'd the green, when groves of 
 
 willow fell. 
 
 Glare sees the hut of clay where the widow lives; 
 he sees the poor house, and feels the sting that must be 
 the feeling of the pauper when he acceots charity from the 
 
 parish. 
 
 Yon parish-hut, where want is shov'd to die, 
 
 He never views them but his tear would start; 
 
 He passed not by the doors without a sigh, 
 
 And felt for every woe of work-house misery, 
 does 
 
 Heithep^the old dame at the parish cottage, as she stands in 
 the door viewing the children play, and remembering her past 
 youth neither does she escape the poet's eye. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
- 21 - 
 
 She turns from echoes of her younger years 
 And nips the portion of her snuff with tears. 
 
 The poet sees another old woman gathering cress, to make a 
 
 savory salad for Luxury's whim. For her labor the old 
 
 woman will get a penny and a frown. These objects of nature 
 
 were just as natural for Glare to write about, as the 
 
 brown leaves falling in the autumn instead of the green 
 
 leaves coming out in the spring. The dismal as well as the 
 
 sunny days , the joys as well as the sorrows, he shows in his 
 
 Picture of the country life. 
 
 However realistic the poet may be, he is dominated 
 
 by his artistic purpose; and foi this purpose he chose scenes 
 
 in the country that amused or aroused tender emotions in 
 
 him. Ee shunned , oerhaps sub-consciously , the things that 
 
 brought up feelings of there being injustice in the world. 
 
 Eis peasants never lack enough food, or some kind of a hut 
 
 th&t they dall home. In the wood-cutter's cabin the " care- 
 ful wife displays her frugal hoard, and both partake in 
 
 comfort though they are poor. " His country laborer , work- 
 ing on some enclosed farm, is a religious man, not the drunken, 
 ignorant peasant who spends his few pennies at seme tavern 
 while his wife and children starve. This laborer^Glare 
 
 deoicts goirg out with his children on a Sunday afternoon. 
 
 And oft|he takes his family abroad 
 
 On short excursions o'er the fields and plain 
 
 Making each object on the road 
 
 An insect , spring of grass, or ear of grain; 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
- 22 - 
 
 Endeavor ing thus most simply to maintain 
 
 That the same power that bids the mite to crawl 
 
 That browns the wheat-land in its summer stain, 
 
 That power which formed the simple flower withal, 
 Formed all that lives and grows uoon this earthly 
 
 ball. 
 
 Clare writes that his purpose is not to lament the sor- 
 rows but to show the joys; and we may take the dominant 
 motive of the poet from the following lines: 
 
 But useless naming what distress reveals, 
 
 As every child of want fee.ls all that Lubin feels. 
 
 In accordance with this purpose, in the rT Village Minstrel ,r , 
 his longest poem, he gives us a variegated picture of 
 idyllic country life. 
 
 In the Spring the country hums with new life. On 
 his way to plow the field?, the peasant feels the Spring- 
 time in the air; the birds sing merrily as they build their 
 nests; the blue-raeadow-daisy peeps farther out from the 
 grass; while the white lambs grazing on the green commons 
 look like the last remnants of the winter's snow. The milk- 
 maid hums a love song as she weaves a garland to crown the 
 first returning cow. The housewives gossip about the hens 
 and the geese; w ile on Sunday after church the men talk 
 about the good and the bad signs of the weather for the 
 growing grain. 
 
 x hen the Spring passes into summer, with its gentle , 
 quiet breezes. A droning insect disturbed by a shrill sound 
 of the hay-maker T s scythe ceases for a moment his course; 
 a butterfly rests on a stalk and is swayed to and fro by the 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
breeze. x 'he laborer , returning home in the long summer 
 
 twilight .remembers the ghost stories told the past winter; 
 
 and as the night comes on he hears the swashing sound of 
 
 the drowned Amy's boots. Mid-summer is ushered in with its 
 
 feast, and every heart is jumping with joy. In brand-new 
 
 clothes the swain goes to the place of merriment , eager to 
 
 meet his sun-tanned lass. x he woodsman and the thresher, 
 
 children and kin from tne neighboring village, are all 
 
 present. At the cotter's house, Joe tunes his fiddle for the 
 
 dance. When the fiddler is paid, the place is cleared for the 
 
 merry games that follow the feast. 
 
 Great sport for them was jumping in a sack. 
 
 For beaver hat bedecked in ribbons blue; 
 
 Soon one jumos down through he's broke his neck 
 And tries to risd and wondrous sport they make. 
 
 And monstrous fun it makes to hunt the pig; 
 
 As soapt and larded through the crowd he flies. 
 
 And badger-baiting here, and fighting cocks-- 
 And wrestlers join to tug each other down. 
 
 At night the men go to the ale-house to drink , smoke , and 
 make merry until the money's all gone. 
 
 Eesolv'd to keep it merry while it's here 
 
 As toil comes every day and feasts but once a year. 
 
 Autumn, with corn gleanings and merry tales, brings its 
 
 joy and feasts. As the old women gather the last of the 
 
 harvest, they get over -heated. Stopping to catch their 
 
 breath, the amuse the children with stories or Jack the 
 
 Giant-Killer , Cincerilla, and Thumbs. rt hen the harvest work 
 
 is done, another feast, known as the Harvest-Supper .follows. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
- 24 - 
 
 Beer , smoking, and harmless pranks usher out the season of 
 mists and mellow fruitfulness. 
 
 Autumn breezes turn into sharper and more stinging 
 blasts; the moors and leas grow bare; the trees are stript 
 of leaves; winter is come. Though sombre and desolate, the 
 peasant delights in watching the storm, as great clouds 
 
 it 
 
 float faster and faster as the wind drives them before . 
 The woodsman, returning home on a winter night with a load 
 of fire-wood , looks like a moving snow-bank, "he supper is 
 readme* stewing on the hook; the children, bright-eyed 
 with happiness , prattle about his knees to welcome him 
 home. After supper with the hearth swept cl ean, stories , songs , 
 and prayer end the day. 
 
 n And thus i/y wedlock’s joy the laborer drowns 
 
 his care a 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 V, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
-25- 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 1. Cunningham, Wm. "Growth of English Industry and Commerce." 
 
 3 vols. Sd. 1907. 
 
 Vpl. 1. Early and Middle Ages. 
 
 Vol.2. Mercantile System 
 Vol.3. Laissez Faire 
 
 2. Gibbens,H de B. "Industrial History of England. "ed. 1895. 
 
 3. Johnson , A. W. "Disappearance of the Small Landowner." 
 
 ed. 1901. 
 
 4. Hammond, J.H. and Barbara. "The English Village" ed.1914. 
 
 5. Martin, Frederick, "Life of John Clare," ed. 1865. 
 
 6. Cherry, J.L. "Life and Remains of John Clare." ed. 1872. 
 
 7. Clare, John. "Village Minifctrel." vol l&ll. ed.1822. 
 
 8. Symons .Arthur . " ^oerns by John Clare." ed. 1909. 
 
 9. Gale, Norman, " Poems by John Clare." ed. 1901.