John Clare Quotes

56 Sourced Quotes

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

John Clare
He could not die when the trees were green,
For he loved the time too well.

John Clare
The wind and clouds, now here, now there,
Hold no such strange dominion As woman's cold, perverted will,
And soon estranged opinion.

John Clare
I hid my love in field and town
Till een the breeze would knock me down,
The bees seemed singing ballads oer,
The fly's bass turned a lion's roar;
And even silence found a tongue,
To haunt me all the summer long;
The riddle nature could not prove
Was nothing else but secret love.

John Clare
For Nature is love, and finds haunts for true love, Where nothing can hear or intrude; It hides from the eagle and joins with the dove, In beautiful green solitude.

John Clare
There is nothing but poetry about the existence of childhood real simple soul-moving poetry the laughter and joy of poetry and not its philosophy and there is nothing of poetry about manhood but the reflection and the remembrance of what has been—nothing more

John Clare
God hath often saw
Things here too dirty for the light of day;
For in a madhouse there exists no law
Now stagnant grows my too refined clay;
I envy birds their wings to fly away.

John Clare
Loud is the summer's busy song
The smallest breeze can find a tongue,
While insects of each tiny size
Grow teasing with their melodies,
Till noon burns with its blistering breath
Around, and day lies still as death.

John Clare
In politics and politicians' lies
The modern farmer waxes wondrous wise;

John Clare
Fixed in a white-thorn bush, its summer guest, So low, e'en grass o'er-topped its tallest twig, A sedge-bird built its little benty nest, Close by the meadow pool and wooden brig.

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

John Clare
Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rude / And flew to the silence of sweet solitude.

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

John Clare
Old noted oak! I saw thee in a mood Of vague indifference; and yet with me Thy memory, like thy fate, hath lingering stood For years, thou hermit, in the lonely sea Of grass that waves around thee!

John Clare
This world has suns, but they are overcast;
This world has sweets, but they're of ling'ring bloom;
Life still expects, and empty falls at last;
Warm Hope on tiptoe drops into the tomb.

John Clare
The ivyed oaks dark shadow falls
Oft picking up with wondering gaze
Some little thing of other days
Saved from the wreck of time.

John Clare
I hid my love when young till I
Couldn't bear the buzzing of a fly;
I hid my love to my despite
Till I could not bear to look at light:
I dare not gaze upon her face
But left her memory in each place;
Where eer I saw a wild flower lie
I kissed and bade my love good bye.

John Clare
Lover of swamps
The quagmire overgrown
With hassock tufts of sedge—where fear encamps
Around thy home alone
The trembling grass
Quakes from the human foot
Nor bears the weight of man to let him pass
Where he alone and mute
Sitteth at rest

John Clare
The present is the funeral of the past,
And man the living sepulchre of life.

John Clare
O how I feel, just as I pluck the flower
And stick it to my breast — words can't reveal;
But there are souls that in this lovely hour
Know all I mean, and feel whate'er I feel.

John Clare
Hopeless hope hopes on and meets no end,
Wastes without springs and homes without a friend.

John Clare
Superstition lives longer than books, it is engraved on the human mind 'til it becomes a part of its existence.

John Clare
They took me from my wife, and to save trouble
I wed again, and made the error double.

John Clare
Summers pleasures they are gone like to visions every one
And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on
I tried to call them back but unbidden they are gone
Far away from heart and eye and for ever far away.

John Clare
Love lives with Nature, not with lust. Go find her in the flowers.

John Clare