John Clare Quotes

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. ~ John Clare

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. ~ John Clare

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. ~ John Clare

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. ~ John Clare

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

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 ~ John Clare

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

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. ~ John Clare

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. ~ John Clare

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. ~ John Clare

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

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

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. ~ John Clare

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. ~ John Clare

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

[John Clare's] father was a casual farm labourer, his family never more than a few days' wages from the poorhouse. Clare himself, from early childhood, scraped a living in the fields. He was schooled capriciously, and only until the age of 12, but from his first bare contact fell wildly in love with the written word. His early poems are remarkable not only for the way in which everything he sees flares into life, but also for his ability to pour his mingled thoughts and observations on to the page as they occur, allowing you, as perhaps no other poet has done, to watch the world from inside his head. Read The Nightingale's Nest, one of the finest poems in the English language, and you will see what I mean.
("John Clare, poet of the environmental crisis 200 years ago" in The Guardian.) ~ George Monbiot

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

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

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

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. ~ John Clare

I am the self-consumer of my woes, ~ John Clare

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. ~ John Clare

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. ~ John Clare

What are the great poetical names of the last hundred years or so? Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Landor, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Morris, Rossetti, Swinburne - we may stop there. Of these, all but Keats, Browning, Rossetti were University men, and of these three, Keats, who died young, cut off in his prime, was the only one not fairly well to do. It may seem a brutal thing to say, and it is a sad thing to say: but, as a matter of hard fact, the theory that poetical genius bloweth where it listeth, and equally in poor and rich, holds little truth. As a matter of hard fact, nine out of those twelve were University men: which means that somehow or other they procured the means to get the best education England can give. As a matter of hard fact, of the remaining three you know that Browning was well to do, and I challenge you that, if he had not been well to do, he would no more have attained to write Saul or The Ring and the Book than Ruskin would have attained to writing Modern Painters if his father had not dealt prosperously in business. Rossetti had a small private income; and, moreover, he painted. There remains but Keats; whom Atropos slew young, as she slew John Clare in a mad-house, and James Thomson by the laudanum he took to drug disappointment. These are dreadful facts, but let us face them. It is - however dishonouring to us as a nation - certain that, by some fault in our commonwealth, the poor poet has not in these days, nor has had for two hund ~ Virginia Wolf

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

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

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. ~ John Clare

I had a variety of minds about me and all of them unsettled. ~ John Clare

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! ~ John Clare

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! ~ John Clare

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

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

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. ~ John Clare

O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away ~ John Clare

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. ~ John Clare

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

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 ~ John Clare

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. ~ John Clare

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

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. ~ John Clare

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

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. ~ John Clare

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. ~ John Clare

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 ~ John Clare

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

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. ~ John Clare

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. ~ John Clare

I found the poems in the fields And only wrote them down ~ John Clare

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

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

Maya Angelou observed you cant use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. Sadly,too often creativity is smothered rather than nurtured. There has to be climate in which new ways of thinking,perceiving, questioning are encouraged. ~ John C. Maxwell

We love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19). When we don't love or feel joy or peace or passion, it's because we do not know his love or his joy or peace or passion. He is a person, not a magic pill you take when your life or your soul is broken. He is a person. He is a person you talk to and listen to and love and respect. He's someone you decide to spend time with and dream with, whom you follow and learn from and hurt with, and to whom you ask things - someone you choose over anybody else, over anything else. He is a person - the person who defines my life, sweeps in and changes me. When I let him in. We all want to be free, joyful, and peaceful, but we get reluctant to hand God everything. But that is part of the path to the things he promises us. ~ Jennie Allen

What plan?" said Jace.
"I always have a plan," said Julian calmly.
Dru lifted her coffee cup. "It's great to have you back, Jules. I missed your lunatic schemes."
Helen was on her feet now. Aline appeared to be trying not to giggle. ~ Cassandra Clare

Jazz is not the popular culture. Jazz is in the same position in our culture as classical music. A very small minority of people really love it. ~ John Corigliano

She went up to his bedroom door and listened to the wildly twanging bed springs as they reached a crescendo as they built toward a finale worthy of Grieg's 'In the Hall of the Mountain King ~ John Kennedy Toole

Put least trust in him who is foremost to praise you, nor judge of a road till it draw to the end. ~ John Boyle O'Reilly

All really great pictures exhibit the general habits of nature, manifested in some peculiar, rare, and beautiful way. ~ John Ruskin

There are disappointments in all men's lives, even those who have achieved their ambition, and there are compensations. ~ John Christopher

Listening to people howl in misery is not one of my favourite pastimes. ~ John Green

In everything I do, I find some of myself, or a lot of myself, and put it into the role. ~ John Barrowman

All great changes are irksome to the human mind, especially those which are attended with great dangers and uncertain effects. ~ John Adams

Nothing you can know that isn't known Nothing you can see that isn't shown Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be It's easy ~ John Lennon

Education has no more serious responsibility than the making of adequate provision for enjoyment of recreative leisure not only for the sake of immediate health, but for the sake of its lasting effect upon the habits of the mind. ~ John Dewey

I always wanted it to be multi-cam from the beginning. In the first seeds of the idea, I wanted a live audience, multi-cam show. That was very important for me. ~ John Mulaney

By forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive Nature accomplishes her beneficent designs - now a flood of fire, now a flood of ice, now a flood of water; and again in the fullness of time an outburst of organic life ... ~ John Muir

Thank God that it is not a matter of intellect, because if the recognition of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ were a matter of intellect and ability, then the way of salvation would not be a fair one. People with brains would have a great advantage over everybody else, and those who were ignorant and had not much intellectual power, would not be able to understand and grasp the truth. Consequently, they would not be saved and it would be a salvation for certain special intellectual people only. But thank God it is not that at all! In this matter of the recognition of the Lord Jesus Christ we are all exactly on a level, we are all in the same position. The greatest brain is never big enough to understand and to grasp it, but the Holy Spirit can enable the most ignorant unintelligent to understand. ~ D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

No war or battle sound Was heard the world around. ~ John Milton

And as a few strokes on the nose will make a puppy head shy, so a few rebuffs will make a boy shy all over. But whereas a puppy will cringe away or roll on its back, groveling, a little boy may cover his shyness with nonchalance, with bravado, or with secrecy. And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist - or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it. ~ John Steinbeck

[John H.] Sununu promised Republicans that the relatively obscure [David H.] Souter would be a 'home run for conservatives,' but this prediction could not have been more wrong. Souter ended up being one of the liberal members of the Court during the late 1990s and the 2000s, which prompted a 'no more Souters' mantra among conservatives. ~ Joan Biskupic

He glanced at the screen. It was from Mark.
CAN'T FIND TY.
Julian frowned and thumbed a reply while jogging up the steps after Emma. DID YOU LOOK IN HIS BEDROOM?
There was an ornate knocker on the front door in the shape of a wild-haired, wild-eyed Green Man. Emma lifted it and let it fall as Julian's phone beeped again.
DO YOU TAKE ME FOR A BUFFOON? OF COURSE I DID.
"Jules?" Emma said. "Is everything all right?"
"Buffoon?" he muttered, his fingers flying over the touch pad.
WHAT DOES LIVVY SAY?
"Did you just mutter 'buffoon'? Emma demanded. Julian could hear footsteps approaching from the other side of the door. 'Julian, try to act not weird, okay? ~ Cassandra Clare

You can give yourself a headache trying to decipher the tattoos on a naked man who's leaping up and down on a bed. ~ John Irving

The spelling of 'Wrenne' was a very common form of the family name, and it seems very likely that John Wrenne belonged to this family, who were much connected with S. George's, Windsor. OLD FAMILY MOTTO. William Wren was in Henry VIII.'s time the head of the family; ~ Lucy Phillimore

We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

Isabelle looked at him thoughtfully. "Did you seriously jump thirty feet out of a Malachi Configuration? Did he, Alec?"
"He did," Alec confirmed. "I've never seen anything like it."
"I've never seen anything like this." Jace lifted a ten-inch dagger from the floor. One of Isabelle's pink brassiers was spread on the wickedly sharp tip. Isabelle snached it off, scowling. ~ Cassandra Clare

I started Pilates. I'm the only guy in there. They plot before I get there: 'How can we make John look ridiculous?' Because every exercise involved my legs up, like I'm in the stirrups or something. ~ John Stamos

Taking a deep breath, he got ready to die.
He hoped that Tamara and Aaron had made it past the Chaos-ridden, out the window, and back on the path toward the Magisterium.
He hoped that, since Havoc was Chaos-ridden, the Enemy wouldn't be too hard on him for not being an evil zombie dog.
He hoped his dad wouldn't be too mad at him for going to the Magisterium and getting killed, just the way he had always been warned he would.
He hoped Master Rufus wouldn't give his spot to Jasper. ~ Cassandra Clare

I sing the progress of a deathless soul. ~ John Donne

I found some time ago that I have to be careful, while working on a novel, what I read. ~ John Sladek

A new idea, inconsistent with some of the beliefs which he holds, means the necessity of rearranging his mind; and this process is laborious, requiring a painful expenditure of brain-energy. To him and his fellows, who form the vast majority, new ideas, and opinions which cast doubt on established beliefs and institutions, seem evil because they are disagreeable. ~ John Bagnell Bury

Never look back's a good motto in our line of business. Too many bloody ghosts following. ~ Jaime Delano

Lawyers must pry into the recesses of the human heart, and become well acquainted with the whole moral world, that they may discover the abstract reason of all laws. ~ Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Sometimes, because of its immediacy, television produces a kind of electronic parable. Berlin, for instance, on the day the Wall was opened. Rostropovich was playing his cello by the Wall that no longer cast a shadow, and a million East Berliners were thronging to the West to shop with an allowance given them by West German banks! At that moment the whole world saw how materialism had lost its awesome historic power and become a shopping list. ~ John Berger

Nothing can hurt you except sin; nothing can grieve me except sin; nothing can defeat you except sin. Therefore, be on your guard, my Mansoul. ~ John Bunyan

The scientists who do climate research understand that much of the ever increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere since 1850 must be attributed to burning those fossil fuels to produce the energy that drives industrialization. ~ John Olver

The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope. ~ John Buchan

But peaceful was the night Wherein the Prince of Light His reign of peace upon the earth began. ~ John Milton

There is a psychic cost children bear when they grow up in fear. ~ John Niven

You can get really good reads on your dreams if you think of every character in them as actually being you. ~ John Darnielle

Writing is, among things, the place where we can help ourselves cope with the dark parts of our living ~ John Aubrey

A collection of short stories is generally thought to be a horrendous clinker; an enforced courtesy for the elderly writer who wants to display the trophies of his youth, along with his trout flies. ~ John Cheever

Take an umbrella, it's raining. ~ John Patrick

Use your finger to trace the scar upon my chest- I lied - it wasn't a knife wound, but a scrape from a nail sliding under a fence to see you ... ~ John Geddes

Chris. So, when the battle was over, Christian said, "I will here give thanks to Him that hath delivered me out of the mouth of the lion; to Him that did help me against Apollyon." And so he did, saying: "Great Satan, the captain of this fiend, Designed my ruin; therefore to this end He sent him harnessed out: and he with rage That hellish was, did fiercely me engage; But blessed angels helped me; and I, By dint of sword, did quickly make him fly: Therefore to God let me give lasting praise, And thank and bless His holy name always. ~ John Bunyan