John Clare

[glenn]

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 oblivion's host
Like shadows in love-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 love the best
Are strange--nay stranger than the rest.

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.

by--John Clare

[heartfelt7]

I am reading an interesting book about Rumi, with lots of poems that may or may not be his so I don't feel comfortable quoting any of it. But it has a poem in it about being down, spilling sad energy everywhere, scorning loss, angry at the world (not Rumi's style), but then states he is "iron resisting the most enormous magnet there is." Very interesting, and this poem reminds me of that.

[glenn]

Actually, I found this poem on an old Beliefnet thread, "Quips and Quotes." There is a ton of cool poetry there!

community.beliefnet.com/go/thread/view/44021/13227009/Quips_and_Quotes

Can't remember for sure (my old memory), but steppewanderer might have been me in a former life. lol

I don't know an awful lot about Clare, just that he was one of the few English poets of his day that came from the common stock of people -- not a noble or wealthy land owner.

If I understand correctly, he lived and wrote his poetry right at the beginning of the industrial revolution in England. So it is probably fair to say that a lot of his grief and despair and anger are directed at the changes he saw happening around him. I don't think he was a big fan of the mechanized world that was replacing the pastoral world he grew up in.

I read somewhere that Clare sometimes wrote poetic rants. Not sure if this poem here qualifies as that, exactly. To me, it was more about the feeling of isolation that can accompany living in a world that is rapidly changing.

[heartfelt7]

Exactly. The world of today can make anyone go into poetical rants. I try not to go down that road, and would rather accept and adapt to the changes no matter how rapidly they are coming. But it is hard sometimes. Thank you for the beliefnet site. I will enjoy looking into that.