The Poems of John Clare :: :: University of Virginia Library

When we look back on what we were
And feel what we are now,
A fading leaf is not so drear
Upon a broken bough;
A winter seat without a fire,
A cold world without friends,
Doth not such chilly glooms impart
As that one word portends.

Like withered wreaths in banquet halls
When all the rout is past,
Like sunshine that on ruins falls,
Our pleasures are at last;
The joy is fled, the love is cold,
And beauty's splendour too,
Our first believings all are old,
And faith itself untrue.

How oft we clomb the porch to cut
Our names upon the leads,
Though fame or anything akin
Was never in our heads;
Where hands and feet were rudely drawn
And names we could not spell,
We thought no artist in the world
Could ever do as well.

We twirled our tops that spun so well
They scarce could tumble down,
And thought they twirled as well again
When riddled on the crown;

And bee-spell marbles, bound to win
As by a potent charm,
Were often wetted in the mouth
To show the dotted swarm.

We pelted at the weathercock,
And he who pelted o'er
Was reckoned as a mighty man
And even something more.
We leapt across ‘cat-gallows sticks,’
And mighty proud was he
Who overshot the famous nicks
That reached above his knee.

And hopscotch too, a spur to joy—
We thought the task divine
To hop and kick the stone right out
And never touch a line.
And then we walked on mighty stilts,
Scarce seven inches high,
Yet on we stalked and thought ourselves
Already at the sky.

Our pride to reason would not shrink
In these exalted hours;
A giant's was a pigmy link
To statures such as ours.
We even fancied we could fly
—And fancy then was true:
So with the clouds upon the sky
In dreams at night we flew.

We shot our arrows from our bows,
Like any archers proud,
And thought when lost they went so high
To lodge upon a cloud;
And these seemed feats that none before
Ourselves could e'er attain,
And Wellington with all his feats
Felt never half so vain.

And oft we urged the barking dog,
For mischief was our glee,
To chase the cat up weed-green walls
And mossy apple-tree;
When her tail stood like a bottle brush
With fear—we laughed again.
Like tyrants, we could purchase mirth
And ne'er allow for pain.

Our fancies made us great and rich,
No bounds our wealth could fix,
A stool drawn round the room was soon
A splendid coach and six.
The magic of our minds was great,
And even pebbles, they,
Soon as we chose to call them gold,
Grew guineas in our play.

And carriages of oyster shells,
Though filled with naught but stones,
Grew instant ministers of state,
While clay kings filled their thrones.
Like Cinderella's fairy queen,
Joy would our wants bewitch;
If wealth was sought, the dust and stones
Turned wealth and made us rich.

The mallow seed became a cheese,
The henbanes loaves of bread,
A burdock leaf our table-cloth
On a table-stone was spread.
The bindweed flower that climbs the hedge
Made us a drinking-glass,
And there we spread our merry feast
Upon the summer grass.

A henbane root could scarcely grow,
A mallow shake its seeds;
The insects that might feed thereon
Found famine in the weeds.

But, like the pomp of princely taste
That humbler life annoys,
We thought not of our neighbours' wants
While we were wasting joys.

We often tried to force the snail
To leave his harvest horn
By singing that the beggar-man
Was coming for his corn.
We thought we forced the lady-cow
To tell the time of day,
'Twas one o'clock and two o'clock.
And then she flew away.

We bawled to beetles as they ran
That their children were all gone,
Their houses down and door-key hid
Beneath the golden stone.
They seemed to haste as fast again
While we shouted as they past
With mirth half mad to think our tale
Had urged their speed so fast.

The stonecrop that on ruins comes
And hangs like golden balls—
How oft to reach its shining blooms
We scaled the mossy walls!
And weeds—we gathered weeds as well,
Of all that bore a flower,
And tied our little posies up
Beneath the eldern bower.

Our little gardens there we made
Of blossoms all arow,
And though they had no roots at all
We hoped to see them grow;
And in the cart-rut after showers
Of sudden summer rain
We filled our tiny waterpots
And cherished them in vain.

We pulled the moss from apple-trees
And gathered bits of straws,
When weary twirling of our tops
And shooting of our taws.
We made birds' nests and thought that birds
Would like them ready made,
And went full twenty times a day
To see if eggs were laid.

The long and swaly willow row
Where we for whips would climb—
How sweet their shadows used to grow
In merry harvest time!
We pulled boughs down and made a swee,
Snug hid from toil and sun,
And up we tossed right merrily
Till weary with the fun.

On summer eves with wild delight
We bawled the bat to spy,
Who in the ‘I spy’ dusky light
Shrieked loud and flickered by.
And up we knocked our shuttlecocks
And tried to hit the moon,
And wondered bats should fly so long
And they come down so soon.

We sought for nuts in secret nook
We thought none else could find,
And listened to the laughing brook
And mocked the singing wind.
We gathered acorns ripe and brown
That hung too high to pull,
Which friendly winds would shake adown
Till all had pockets full.

Then, loading home at day's decline,
Each sought his corner stool;
Then went to bed till morning came
And crept again to school.

Yet there by pleasure unforsook
In nature's happy moods
The cuts in Fenning's spelling-book
Made up for fields and woods.

Each noise that breathed around us then
Was magic all and song;
Wherever pastime found us then
Joy never led us wrong.
The wild bees, in the blossom hung,
The coy bird's startled call
To find its home in danger—there
Was music in them all.

And o'er the first bumbarrel's nest
We wondered at the spell
That birds who served no prenticeship
Could build their nests so well;
And, finding linnets moss was green,
And finches choosing grey,
And every finchs nest alike,
Our wits were all away.

Then blackbirds lining theirs with grass
And thrushes theirs with dung—
So for our lives we could not tell
From whence the wisdom sprung.
We marvelled much how little birds
Should ever be so wise;
And so we guessed some angel came
To teach them from the skies.

In winter too we traced the fields
And still felt summer joys.
We sought our hips and felt no cold;
Cold never came to boys.
The sloes appeared as choice as plums
When bitten by the frost,
And crabs grew honey in the mouth
When apple time was past.

We rolled in sunshine lumps of snow
And called them mighty men,
And, tired of pelting Buonaparte,
We ran to slide agen;
And ponds for glibbest ice we sought
With shouting and delight,
And tasks of spelling all were left
To get by heart at night.

And when it came, and round the fire
We sat, what joy was there!
The kitten dancing round the cork
That dangled from a chair;
While we our scraps of paper burnt
To watch the flitting sparks,
And Collect books were often torn
For parsons and for clerks.

Naught seemed too hard for us to do
But the sums upon our slate,
Naught seemed too hard for us to win
But the master's chair of state.
The ‘Town of Troy’ we tried and made
When our sums we could not try,
While we envied e'en the sparrows wings
From our prison house to fly.

When twelve o'clock was counted out,
The joy and strife began,
The shut of books, the hearty shout,
As out of doors we ran.
Sunshine and showers who could withstand?
Our food and rapture they;
We took our dinners in our hands
To lose no time in play.

The morn when first we went to school—
Who can forget the morn
When the birch whip lay upon the clock
And our horn-book it was torn?

We tore the little pictures out,
Less fond of books than play,
And only took one letter home
And that the letter ‘A.’

I love in childhood's little book
To read its lessons through,
And o'er each pictured page to look
Because they read so true;
And there my heart creates anew
Love for each trifling thing—
Who can disdain the meanest weed
That shows its face at spring?

The daisy looks up in my face
As long ago it smiled;
It knows no change, but keeps its place
And takes me for a child.
The chaffinch in the hedgerow thorn
Cries ‘pink, pink, pink’ to hear
My footsteps in the early morn,
As though a boy was near.

I seek no more the finch's nest
Nor stoop for daisy flowers;
I grow a stranger to myself
In these delightful hours.
Yet when I hear the voice of spring
I can but call to mind
The pleasures which they used to bring,
The joys I used to find.

The firetail on the orchard wall
Keeps at its startled cry
Of ‘tweet, tut, tut,’ nor sees the morn
Of boyhood's mischief by;
It knows no change of changing time,
By sickness never stung,
It feeds on hope's eternal prime
Around its brooded young.

Ponds where we played at duck-and-drake,
Where the ash with ivy grew,
Where we robbed the owl of all her eggs
And mocked her as she flew,
The broad tree in the spinney hedge
'Neath which the gipsies lay,
Where we our fine oak-apples got
On the twenty-ninth of May—

These all remain as then they were
And are not changed a day,
And the ivy's crown's as near to green
As thine is to the grey;
It shades the pond, o'erhangs the stile,
And the oak is in the glen;
But the paths to joy are so worn out
I can't find one agen.

The merry wind still sings the song
As if no change had been;
The birds build nests the summer long,
The trees look full as green
As e'er they did in childhood's joy,
Though that hath long been by,
When I a happy roving boy
In the fields had used to lie,

To tend the restless roving sheep
Or lead the quiet cow.
Toils that seemed more than slavery then,
How more than freedom now,
Could we but feel as then we did
When joy, too fond to fly,
Would flutter round as soon as bid
And drive all troubles by.

But rainbows on an April cloud
And blossoms pluckt in May
And painted eves that summer brings
Fade not so fast away;

Though grass is green, though flowers are gay,
And everywhere they be,
What are the leaves on branches hung
Unto the withered tree?

Life's happiest gifts and what are they?
Pearls by the morning strung,
Which ere the noon are swept away,
Short as a cuckoo's song.
A nightingale's the summer is;
Can pleasure make us proud
To think when swallows fly away
They leave her in her shroud?