John Clare Quotes

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 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.

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

The wild swan hurries hight and noises loud
With white neck peering to the evening clowd.
The weary rooks to distant woods are gone.
With lengths of tail the magpie winnows on
To neighbouring tree, and leaves the distant crow
While small birds nestle in the edge below.

My illness was love, though I knew not the smart,
But the beauty of love was the blood of my heart.

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.

I long for scenes where man has never trod; ... There to abide with my Creator, God.

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.

Yet simple souls, their faith it knows no stint:
Things least to be believed are most preferred.
All counterfeits, as from truth's sacred mint,
Are readily believed if once put down in print

While snow the window-panes bedim,
The fire curls up a sunny charm,
Where, creaming o'er the pitcher's rim,
The flowering ale is set to warm;
Mirth, full of joy as summer bees,
Sits there, its pleasures to impart,
And children, 'tween their parent's knees,
Sing scraps of carols o'er by heart.

I'm John Clare now. I was Byron and Shakespeare formerly.

I loved thee, though I told thee not,
Right earlily and long, thou wert joy of my ever spot
theme of my every song.

Invitation to Eternity

Say, wilt thou go with me, sweet maid,
Say, maiden, wilt thou go with me
Through the valley-depths of shade,
Of bright and dark obscurity;
Where the path has lost its way,
Where the sun forgets the day,
Where there's nor light nor life to see,
Sweet maiden, wilt thou go with me?

Where stones will turn to flooding streams,
Where plains will rise like ocean's waves,
Where life will fade like visioned dreams
And darkness darken into caves,
Say, maiden, wilt thou go with me
Through this sad non-identity
Where parents live and are forgot,
And sisters live and know us not?

Say, maiden, wilt thou go with me
In this strange death of life to be,
To live in death and be the same,
Without this life or home or name,
At once to be and not to be -
That was and is not - yet to see
Things pass like shadows, and the sky
Above, below, around us lie?

The land of shadows wilt thou trace,
Nor look nor know each other's face;
The present marred with reason gone,
And past and present both as one?
Say, maiden, can thy life be led
To join the living and the dead?
Then trace thy footsteps on with me:
We are wed to one eternity.

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.

The thorn tree just began to bud
And greening stained the sheltering hedge,
An many a violet beside the wood
Peeped blue between the withered sedge;
The sun gleamed warm the bank beside,
'Twas pleasant wandering out a while
Neath nestling bush to lonely hide,
Or bend a musings o'er a stile.

Tasteful illumination of the night, Bright scattered, twinkling star of spangled earth.

Loud is the summer's busy song
The smallest breeze can find a tongue,
While insects of each tiny size
Grow teasing with their melodies,
Till noon burns with its blistering breath
Around, and day lies still as death.

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

I am the self-consumer of my woes,

So dull and dark are the November days. The lazy mist high up the evening curled, And now the morn quite hides in smoke and haze; The place we occupy seems all the world.

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

Evening Primrose

When once the sun sinks in the west,
And dewdrops pearl the evening's breast;
Almost as pale as moonbeams are,
Or its companionable star,
The evening primrose opes anew
Its delicate blossoms to the dew;
And, hermit-like, shunning the light,
Wastes its fair bloom upon the night,
Who, blindfold to its fond caresses,
Knows not the beauty it possesses;
Thus it blooms on while night is by;
When day looks out with open eye,
Bashed at the gaze it cannot shun,
It faints and withers and is gone.

O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away

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

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

When trouble haunts me, need I sigh?No, rather smile away despair

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.

How oft a summer shower has started me; to seek the shelter of a hollow tree

Old noted oak! I saw thee in a mood Of vague indifference; and yet with me Thy memory, like thy fate, hath lingering stood For years, thou hermit, in the lonely sea Of grass that waves around thee!

Throw not my words away, as many do;They're gold in value, though they're cheap to you.

My fears are agitated to an extreme degree and the dread of death involves me in a stupor of chilling indisposition.

A maidenhead, the virgin's trouble
Is well-compare-d to a bubble
on a navigable river
Soon 'tis touched t'is gone forever

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

I am, as far as my politics reaches, 'King and Country' - no 'Innovations in Religion and Government' say I.

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

To-morrow comes, true copy of to-day,And empty shadow of what is to be;Yet cheated Hope on future still depends,And ends but only when our being ends.

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 shades in love and death's oblivion lost; And yet I am, and live with shadows tost.

He could not die when trees were green, for he loved the time too well.

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 vapours 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.

And fairy month of waking mirth
From whom our joys ensue
Thou early gladder of the earth
Thrice welcome here anew
With thee the bud unfolds to leaves
The grass greens on the lea
And flowers their tender boon receives
To bloom and smile with thee.

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

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!

How frail the bloom, how short the stay
That terminates us all!
Today we flourish green and gay,
Like leaves tomorrow fall.

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 had a variety of minds about me and all of them unsettled.

I hate the very noise of troublous man
Who did and does me all the harm he can.
Free from the world I would a prisoner be
And my own shadow all my company.

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.