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 shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed”

“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.”

“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 found the poems in the fields,And only wrote them down.”

“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 best way to avoid a bad action is by doing a good one, for there is no difficulty in the world like that of trying to do nothing.”

“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.”