JOHN+CLARE

POETRY John Clare I Am 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 oblivious host,

Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;

And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,

Into the living sea of waking dreams,

Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,

But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;

And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--

Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;

A place where woman never smil'd or wept;

<span style="color: #800080; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 27.5px; text-align: center;">There to abide with my creator, God,

<span style="color: #800080; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 27.5px; text-align: center;">And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:

<span style="color: #800080; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 27.5px; text-align: center;">Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;

<span style="color: #800080; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 27.5px; text-align: center;">The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

**<span style="color: #800080; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 15px; text-align: center;">by John Clare **