John Clare Quotes

56 Sourced Quotes

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 am! yet what I am who cares, or knows?
My friends forsake me like a memory lost.

John Clare
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; And e'en the dearest—that I love the best— Are strange—nay, rather stranger than the rest.

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
Summer 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
Popularity is a hasty and busy talker, she catches hold of topics and offers them to fame without giving herself time to reflect whether they are true or false.

John Clare
Say maiden wilt thou go with me In this strange death of life-to-be To live in death and be the same Without this life or home or name At once to be and not to be

John Clare
Language has not the power to
speak what love indites:
The soul lies buried
in the ink that writes.

John Clare
Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air; Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.

John Clare
I live here among the ignorant like a lost man in fact like one whom the rest seemes careless of having anything to do with—they hardly dare talk in my company for fear I should mention them in my writings and I find more pleasure in wandering the fields than in musing among my silent neighbours who are insensible to everything but toiling and talking of it and that to no purpose.

John Clare
Old April wanes, and her last dewy morn Her death-bed steeps in tears; to hail the May New blooming blossoms neath the sun are born, And all poor April's charms are swept away.

John Clare
I love to see the old heath's withered brake
Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling,
While the old heron from the lonely lake
Starts slow and flaps its melancholy wing

John Clare
Arts may ply fantastic anatomy but nature is always herself in her wildest moods of extravagance.

John Clare
Till kicked and torn and beaten out he lies
And leaves his hold and cackles, groans, and dies.

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

John Clare
My life hath been one chain of contradictions,
Madhouses, prisons, whore-shops.

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

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

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
And what's more wonderful, when big loads foil
One ant or two to carry, quickly then
A swarm flock round to help their fellow-men.

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
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