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Voicework of CloudMountain Alan Drake |
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| John Clare |
(1793 - 1864)
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Mouse's Nest
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I found a ball of grass among the hay And progged it as I passed and went away; And when I looked I fancied somthing stirred, And turned again and hoped to catch the bird — When out an old mouse bolted in the wheats With all her young ones hanging at her teats; She looked so odd and so grotesque to me, I ran and wondered what the thing could be, And pushed the knapweed bunches where I stood; Then the mouse hurried from the craking brood. The young ones squeaked, and when I went away She found her nest again among the hay, The water o'er the pebbles scarce could run And broad old cesspools glittered in the sun. |
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From Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery
printed for Taylor & Hessey and E. Dury, 1820. John Clare is described in the editor's introduction to this book as the poorest poet of all-time, "the least favoured by circumstances, and the most destitute of friends, of any [poet] that ever existed." It may well be the truth. Clare was so poor that he couldn't afford to buy paper. He wrote on whatever he could find: bark, scraps of clothing and whatever paper could come by. He spent the last decades of his life in an insane asylum. Although critics of 19th Century focused on his extreme poverty and madness, fortunately his work has more recently undergone an enlightened re-appraisal, for he is now recognized as one of the most powerful and original poets in the British canon. He was most certainly the most modern of all the Romantics. |
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