"The Mouse's Nest' and "Solitude" [by John Clare, 1793-1864]

The Mouse’s Nest

I found a ball of grass among the hay
And proged it as I passed and went away
And when I looked I fancied something stirred
And turned again and hoped to catch the bird
When out an old mouse bolted in the wheat
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
When the mouse hurried from the crawling 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.

*

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

*

Clare on grammar: “do I write intelligable I am generally understood tho I do not use that awkward squad of pointings called commas colons semicolons &c & for the very reason that altho they are drilled hourly daily weekly by every boarding school Miss who pretends to gossip in correspondence they do not know their proper exercise for they even set grammarians at loggerheads and no one can asign them their proper places.”

Comments

[Joseph Gerver]

Nice! I had never heard of this fellow.

[Kenneth Rosen]

These two are wonderful, plus his brief on schoolhouse grammar. Force me to think Clare sweet but not naive. I'll go back and try again, and not for the 1st time!

[David Schloss]

Clare at his best, as he was in your more previous posting of his work, is wonderful. Unlike the often blowhard Shelley and Wordsworth among the Romantics. Clare is alive.