Introductory material

LIFE, LETTERS, ETC.

ASYLUM POEMS:

'T is Spring, My Love, 't is Spring Love of Nature The Invitation To the Lark Graves of Infants Bonny Lassie O! Phoebe of the Scottish Glen Maid of the Wilderness Mary Bateman When Shall We Meet Again? The Lover's Invitation Nature's Darling I'll Dream Upon the Days to Come To Isobel The Shepherd's Daughter Lassie, I Love Thee The Gipsy Lass At the Foot of Clifford Hill To My Wife—A Valentine My True Love is a Sailor The Sailor's Return Birds, Why Are Ye Silent? Meet Me Tonight Young Jenny Adieu My Bonny Alice and Her Pitcher The Maiden I Love To Jenny Lind Little Trotty Wagtail The Forest Maid Bonnny Mary O! Love's Emblem The Morning Walk To Miss C…. I Pluck Summer Blossoms The March Nosegay Left Alone To Mary The Nightingale The Dying Child Mary Clock-a Clay Spring Evening The Swallow Jockey and Jenny The Face I Love So Dearly The Beanfield Where She Told Her Love Milking O' the Kye A Lover's Vows The Fall of the Year Autumn Early Love Evening A Valentine To Liberty Approach of Winter Mary Dove Spring's Nosegay The Lost One The Tell-Tale Flowers The Skylark Poets Love Nature—A Fragment Home Yearnings My Schoolboy Days Love Lives Beyond the Tomb My Early Home Mary Appleby Among the Green Bushes To Jane The Old Year

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS:

Maying; or, A Love of Flowers Two Sonnets to Mary The Vanities of Life March The Old Man's Lament Spring Flowers Poem on Death The Wanton Chloe The Old Shepherd To a Rosebud in Humble Life The Triumphs of Time To John Milton The Birds and St. Valentine Farewell and Defiance to Love The Gipsy's Song Peggy Band To a Brook

PROSE FRAGMENTS:

A Confession of Faith Essay on Popularity Scraps for an Essay on Criticism and Fashion Scraps for an Essay on Criticism

OLD SONGS AND BALLADS:

Adieu to My False Love Forever O Silly Love! O Cunning Love! Nobody Cometh to Woo Fare Thee Well Mary Neele Love Scorned By Pride Betrayed The Maiden's Welcome The False Knight's Tragedy Love's Riddle The Banks of Ivory

GLOSSARY

Bedlam cowslip: the paigle, or larger kind of cowslip. Bents: tall, coarse, rushy stems of grass. Blea: high, exposed. Bleb: a bubble, a small drop. Clock-a-clay: the ladybird. Daffies: daffodils. Dithering: trembling, shivering. Hing: preterite of hang. Ladysmock: the cardamine pratensis. Pink: the chaffinch. Pooty: the girdled snail shell. Ramping: coarse and large. Rawky: misty, foggy. Rig: the ridge of a roof. Sueing: a murmuring, melancholy sound. Swaly: wasteful. Sweltered: over-heated by the sun. Twitchy: made of twitch grass. Water-Hob: the marsh marigold.

LIFE, LETTERS, ETC.

HELPSTONE

John Clare, son of Parker and Ann Clare, commonly called "the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet," was born at Helpstone, near Peterborough, on the 13th of July, 1793. The lowliness of his lot lends some countenance to the saying of "Melancholy" Burton, that "poverty is the Muses' patrimony." He was the elder of twins, and was so small an infant that his mother used to say of him that "John might have been put into a pint pot." Privation and toil disabled his father at a comparatively early age, and he became a pauper, receiving from the parish an allowance of five shillings a week. His mother was of feeble constitution and was afflicted with dropsy. Clare inherited the low vitality of his parents, and until he reached middle age was subject to depressing ailments which more than once threatened his life, but after that time the failure of his mental powers caused him to be placed in circumstances favourable to bodily health, and in his old age he presented the outward aspect of a sturdy yeoman.

Having endowed Clare with high poetic sensibility, Nature capriciously placed him amid scenes but little calculated to call forth rapturous praises of her charms. "Helpstone," wrote an old friend of the poet, lately deceased, "lies between six and seven miles NNW of Peterborough, on the Syston and Peterborough branch of the Midland Railway, the station being about half a mile from the town. A not unpicturesque country lies about it, though its beauty is somewhat of the Dutch character; far-stretching distances, level meadows, intersected with grey willows and sedgy dikes, frequent spires, substantial watermills, and farm houses of white stone, and cottages of white stone also. Southward, a belt of wood, with a gentle rise beyond, redeems it from absolute flatness. Entering the town by the road from the east you come to a cross, standing in the midst of four ways. Before you, and to the left, stretches the town, consisting of wide streets or roadways, with irregular buildings on either side, interspersed with gardens now lovely with profuse blooms of laburnum and lilac."

The cottage in which John Clare was born is in the main street running south. The views of it which illustrate his poems are not very accurate. They represent it as standing alone, when it is in fact, and evidently always has been, a cluster of two if not of three tenements. There are three occupations now. It is on the west side of the street, and is thatched. In the illustration to the second volume of "The Village Minstrel" (1821), an open stream runs before the door which is crossed by a plank. Modern sanitary regulations have done away with this, if it ever existed and was not a fancy of the artist.