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”

“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.”

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

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

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

“Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rude And fled to the silence of sweet solitude. Where the flower in green darkness buds, blossoms, and fades, Unseen of all shepherds and flower-loving maids— The hermit bees find them but once and away. There I'll bury alive and in silence decay.”

“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.”

“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.”

“A maidenhead, the virgin's troubleIs well-compare-d to a bubbleon a navigable riverSoon 'tis touched t'is gone forever”

“Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rudeAnd fled to the silence of sweet solitude.”

“Language has not the power to speak what love inditesThe soul lies buried in the Ink that writes”

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

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

“I wish I was what I have beenAnd what I was could beAs when I roved in shadows greenAnd loved my willow treeTo gaze upon the starry skyAnd higher fancies buildAnd make in solitary joyLoves temple in the field”

“I am gennerally understood tho I do not use that awkward squad of pointings called commas colons semicolons etc.”

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

“O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away”

“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—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.”