Country Life in the Poetry of John Clare
Although John Clare was a peasant suffering from poverty all his life,
his poetry was not written with a propagandistic but with an artistic
purpose. The literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
dealing with country life was either artistic or social in purpose.
Ebenezer Elliott, living at the sane time as Clare, wrote poems with a
social purpose—for the repeal of the Corn Laws, and the lowering of the
import duties on raw material. Although Elliott was actually benefitted
by the Corn Laws, yet he wrote against them most bitterly. John Clare,
on the other hand, impoverished all his life by the Corn Laws and other
similar measures, wrote nothing dealing with a change in the agricultural
situation. Both writers are to be praised for their honesty, for their
ability to detach themselves from immediate personal interests, and for
their fidelity to their artistic and social purposes.
The poems of Clare may be divided into three classes: the Love Poems, the
Nature Poems, and the Poems dealing with social life. In all the poet’s
writings he is dominated by an artistic purpose rather than by a desire
to reform or change conditions. We should expect this to be so in the
Love Poems, which form the bulk of his work. Yet, we may learn something
of the country life from these poems, if we take them, written by a
peasant as they are, to be typical of the sentiments felt by all the
rural laborers. In spite of the material hardships and privations, there
is a simplicity and sweetness in the peasant’s love, an inner life of
tender emotions and warmth of feeling, that is in stark contrast with
external hardships. Clare, in the love poems, expresses these sentiments
of the peasant. The poem best illustrating the simple love is one
entitled, “My Love, thou art a Nosegay Sweet.”—
And when, my Nosegay, thou shalt die,
And heaven’s flower shall prove thee;
My hopes shall follow to the sky,
And everlasting love thee.
The ballad entitled “William and Mary,” {15} in which two rural swains
are talking of their sweethearts, shows an elevated emotion and respect
for the objects of their love, that is deep felt and natural.
I strive to please her morning, noon, and night.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
For her in harvest when the nuts are brown,
I take my crook to pull the branches down.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
The garland and the wreath for her I bind
Compos’d of all the fairest flowers I find.
And finally, a few lines showing the simplicity of the peasant’s imagery
and comparisons.—
’Tis Spring, my Love, ’tis Spring,
And the birds begin to sing;
If it were winter, left alone with you,
Your bonny form and face,
Would make a Summer place,
And be the fairest flower that ever grew.
Besides the sweet and simple love-life of the peasants, the poet
expresses their thoughts about the beauties of nature. Nature must have
afforded delights that did much to make up for the poverty of the
peasant’s lack of material comfort. Clare expresses these delights of
the inarticulate peasants when he describes their sentiments, as well as
the beauties of their native scenes.
O Native endearments! I would not forsake thee,
I would not forsake thee for sweetest of scenes.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Your skies may be gloomy, and misty your mornings,
Your flat swampy vallies unwholesome may be;
Still, refuse of nature without her adornings,
Thou art dear as this heart in my bosom to me.
The poet finds beauty in the common, ordinary, natural objects of the low
fen and the marshy country of his birth. But in these scenes he saw only
the less gloomy and oppressive aspects. The commons may have been brown
and barren, but Clare remembers them when they were green and dotted with
wild flowers. He wrote with fancy, feeling, and reflection about these
simple objects of nature. In his fancy he lived the life of insects,
which to many are simply annoyances, but which to him are fairies, with
colored hoods and burnished wings, disguised in a sort of splendid
masquerade, rocked to sleep in the smooth velvet of the hedge-rose, or
slumbering like princes in the heath’s purple hood, secure from rain,
from dropping dews, in their beds and painted walls. A jolly and royal
life this seems, this life of a hand of play-fellows mocking the sunshine
with their glittering wings, or drinking golden wine and metheglin from
the cup of the honey flower. In a reflective mood, he sees into the
eternal mysteries of nature, beneath the forms and symbols of outward
appearances. Cowslips of golden blooms will come and go as fresh two
thousand years from now as they are today. Brooks, bees, birds, from age
to age, these will sing when all the ambitious things of earth have
passed away.
There are two characteristics in the nature poems of Clare: truth in the
painting of the objects, and tenderness in his sentiments toward them.
The poet is both truthful and tender when he paints a bird’s nest, a nest
often seen but never disturbed. The nest of the pettichaps, close to the
rut-galled wagon-road, so snugly contrived, although without a clump of
grass to keep it warm or a shielding thistle spreading its spear in
protection, is built like an oven. . . .
Scarcely admitting two fingers in,
Hard to discern the bird’s snug entrance win:
’Tis lined with feathers warm as silken stole,
Softer than seats of down for painless ease,
And full of eggs, scarce bigger e’en than peas;
Here’s one that’s delicate, with spots so small
As dust, and of a faint and pinky red;
Well, let them be, and Safety guard them well—
A green grasshopper’s jump might break the shell.
The other objects of nature that delighted the peasants, and were
poetised by Clare were ants, clover blossoms, and perhaps an early
butterfly. Again, we find an intimacy with the furry animals of the
commons.—
And the little clumbling mouse
Gnarls the dead leaves for her house.
No other poet has such a collection of insects and animals.
The little gay moth lovely to view
A-dancing with lily-white wings in the dew;
He whisked o’er the water-edge flirting and airy
And perched on the down-headed grass like a fairy.
And there came the snail from shell peeping out,
As cautious and fearful as thieves in the rout.
The sly jumping frog, too, had ventured to ramp,
And the glow-worm had just ’gun to light up his lamp.
Thus we can get an idea of the country life from the love poems, which
showed the tender emotional love-life of the laborer, in spite of his
mental poverty and material hardships. Likewise, in the nature poems,
the poet shows the beauties of nature in the country. The peasant
delighted in these beauties; he is rich in poetic sentiments and intimate
observations, though he is poor—if we judge poverty to be a lack of food
and clothing. If the Poet had any resentment of the social and economic
situation, we should expect to find it in the poems dealing with Social
Life.
Crabbe’s lines in the “Village”, that describe a boy fainting in the
fields from exhaustion, are memorable. Such lines might have come aptly
from Clare, who as a laborer, fainted from exhaustion and hunger, and
often went without food. These lines of Crabbe’s are exactly descriptive
of the miseries of the poor, as experienced by Clare himself.—
He strives to join his fellows in the field,
Till long-contending nature droops at last.
Declining health rejects the poor repast.
His cheerless spouse the coming anger sees,
And mutual murmurs urge the slow disease.
However we never find a trace of bitterness in the poems of social life
written by Clare. Instead, he describes the hay-making time in this
manner:
And meadows, they are mad with noise
Of laughing maids and shouting boys,
Making up the withering hay
With merry hearts as light as play.
All his life the poet longed for a spot of ground of his own; but
enclosures made this an impossibility. Yet, when Clare wrote about
enclosures, it is not about a personal wrong or injustice that he speaks;
but about the loss of beauty or of something dear to his heart that had
been, but now was gone.
Whenever I must along the Plain,
And mark where once they grew,
Remembrance wakes her busy train,
And brings past scenes to view.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
The green’s gone, too—ah, lovely scene!
No more the kingcup gay
Shall shine in yellow o’er the green.
And shed its golden ray;
No more the herdsman’s early call
Shall bring the cows to feed;
No more the milk-maid’s evening brawl
In “Come Mull” tones succeed.
Both milk-maid’s shouts and herdsman’s call
Have vanished from the green;
The kingcup’s yellow, shade and all,
Shall never more be seen;
But the thick-cultur’d tribe that grow
Will so efface the scene,
That aftertime will hardly know
It ever was a green.
In this same connection, in the “Village Minstrel,” we find these lines
lamenting the absence of old scenes and objects of beauty that are gone.—
There once were springs, when daisies’ silver studs
Like sheets of snow on every pasture spread;
There once were summers where the crow-flower buds
Like golden sunbeams that sheltered Lubin’s head;
There fallen trees the naked moors bewail,
And scarce a bush is left to the tell the mournful tale.
Although the poet never wrote to reform agricultural conditions, he is
often realistic. He even denounces them occasionally, but his prevailing
tone is lamentation—for the passing of the meadow-blooms and
pasture-flowers—for the trimmed hedge-fences and well-kept lawns.
Enclosures came and every path was stopt.
Each tyrant fix’d his sign where paths were found
To hint a trespass who might cross the ground.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
But who can tell the anguish of his mind,
When reformation’s formidable foes
With civil wars ’gainst nature’s peace combined,
And desolation struck her deadly blows
As curst improvement ’gan his fields inclose;
Oh greens, and fields, and trees, farewell, farewell!
His heart-wrung pains, his unavailing woes
No words can utter, and no tongue can tell,
When ploughs destroy’d the green, when groves of willow fell.
Clare sees the hut of clay where the widow lives; he sees the poor house,
and feels the sting that must be the feeling of the pauper when he
accepts charity from the parish.
Yon parish-hut, where want is shov’d to die,
He never views them but his tear would start;
He passed not by the doors without a sigh,
And felt for every woe of work-house misery.
Neither does the old dame at the parish cottage, as she stands in the
door viewing the children play, and remembering her past youth—neither
does she escape the poet’s eye.
She turns from echoes of her younger years
And nips the portion of her snuff with tears.
The poet sees another old woman gathering cress, to make a savory salad
for Luxury’s whim. For her labor the old woman will get a penny and a
frown. These objects of nature were just as natural for Clare to write
about, as the brown leaves falling in the autumn instead of the green
leaves coming out in the spring. The dismal as well as the sunny days,
the joys as well as the sorrows, he shews in his picture of the country
life.
However realistic the poet may be, he is dominated by his artistic
purpose; and for this purpose he chose scenes in the country that amused
or aroused tender emotions in him. He shunned, perhaps sub-consciously,
the things that brought up feelings of there being injustice in the
world. His peasants never lack enough food, or some kind of a hut that
they call home. In the wood-cutter’s cabin the “careful wife displays
her frugal hoard, and both partake in comfort though they are poor.” His
country laborer, working on some enclosed farm, is a religious man, not
the drunken ignorant peasant who spends his few pennies at some tavern
while his wife and children starve. This laborer, Clare depicts going
out with his children on a Sunday afternoon.
And often takes his family abroad
On short excursions o’er the fields and plain
Making each object on the road
An insect, spring of grass, or ear of grain;
Endeavoring thus most simply to maintain
That the same power that bids the mite to crawl
That browns the wheat-land in its summer stain,
That power which formed the simple flower withal,
Formed all that lives and grows upon this earthly ball.
Clare writes that his purpose is not to lament the sorrows but to show
the joys; and we may take the dominant motive of the poet from the
following lines:
But useless naming what distress reveals,
As every child of want feels all that Lubin feels.
In accordance with this purpose, in the “Village Minstrel”, his longest
poem, he gives us a variegated picture of idyllic country life.
In the Spring the country hums with new life. On his way to plow the
fields, the peasant feels the Spring-time in the air; the birds sing
merrily as they build their nests; the blue-meadow-daisy peeps farther
out from the grass; while the white lambs grazing on the green commons
look like the last remnants of the winter’s snow. The milk-maid hums a
love song as she weaves a garland to crown the first returning cow. The
housewives gossip about the hens and the geese; while on Sunday after
church the men talk about the good and the bad signs of the weather for
the growing grain.
Then the Spring passes into summer, with its gentle, quiet breezes. A
droning insect disturbed by a shrill sound of the hay-maker’s scythe
ceases for a moment his course; a butterfly rests on a stalk and is
swayed to and fro by the breeze. The laborer, returning home in the long
summer twilight, remembers the ghost stories told the past winter; and as
the night comes on he hears the swashing sound of the drowned Amy’s
boots. Mid-summer is ushered in with its feast, and every heart is
jumping with joy. In brand-new clothes the swain goes to the place of
merriment, eager to meet his sun-tanned lass. The woodsman and the
thresher, children and kin from the neighboring village, are all present.
At the cotter’s house, Joe tunes his fiddle for the dance. When the
fiddler is paid, the place is cleared for the merry games that follow the
feast.
Great sport for them was jumping in a sack,
For beaver hat bedecked in ribbons blue;
Soon one jumps down though he’s broke his neck
And tries to rise and wondrous sport they make,
And monstrous fun it makes to hunt the pig;
As soapt and larded through the crowd he flies.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
And badger-baiting here, and fighting cocks—
And wrestlers join to tug each other down.
At night the men go to the ale-house to drink, smoke, and make merry
until the money’s all gone.
Resolv’d to keep it merry while it’s here
As toil comes every day and feasts but once a year.
Autumn, with corn gleanings and merry tales, brings its joy and feasts.
As the old women gather the last of the harvest, they get over-heated.
Stopping to catch their breath, they amuse the children with stories or
Jack the Giant-Killer, Cincerilla, and Thumbs. When the harvest work is
done, another feast, known as the Harvest-Supper, follows. Beer,
smoking, and harmless pranks usher out the season of mists and mellow
fruitfulness.
Autumn breezes turn into sharper and more stinging blasts; the moors and
leas grow bare; the trees are stript of leaves; winter is come. Though
sombre and desolate, the peasant delights in watching the storm, as great
clouds float faster and faster as the wind drives them before it. The
woodsman, returning home on a winter night with a load of fire-wood,
looks like a moving snow-bank. The supper is ready stewing on the hook;
the children, bright-eyed with happiness, prattle about his knees to
welcome him home. After supper with the hearth swept clean, stories,
songs, and prayer end the day.
“And thus in wedlock’s joy the laborer drowns his care.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Cunningham, Wm. “Growth of English Industry and Commerce.” 3 vols.
3d. 1907.
Vol. 1. Early and Middle Ages.
Vol. 2. Mercantile System.
Vol. 3. Laissez Faire.
2. Gibbens, H de B. “Industrial History of England,” ed. 1895.
3. Johnson, A. W. “Disappearance of the Small Landowner.” ed. 1901.
4. Hammond, J. H. and Barbara. “The English Village” ed. 1914.
5. Martin, Frederick, “Life of John Clare,” ed. 1865.
6. Cherry, J. L. “Life and Remains of John Clare.” ed. 1872.
* * * * *
7. Clare, John. “Village Minstrel.” vol. I & II. ed. 1822.
8. Symons, Arthur. “Poems by John Clare.” ed. 1909.
9. Gale, Norman. “Poems by John Clare.” ed. 1901.
FOOTNOTES.
{15} Clare’s Poems: Ed. Gale, pp. 36.