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Elective English—III

Notes authority on them, examining them with minute precision. He wrote a natural history of his
area and his autobiographical sketches are a fascinating record of all the people he knew, very
sharply and amusingly recollected. He believed in them, trusted their instincts, and respected
their loyalties and traditions. In addition, he believed in the power of nature to inspire, to
protect, to nurture and to delight. Some critics have stressed that Clare identifies poetry and
nature – not just allowing that poetry can record nature but also that they are the same creative,
imaginative impulse.
The outlook of the child was privileged in Clare as it was in others of the Romantics. His poems
frequently feature “noising children” whose enthusiasm for life is portrayed as exemplary – and
though his village youths will often rob a nest, they will put in a hard day’s work and take
pleasure in it. He wrote in his autobiographical sketches that he had found “nothing but poetry
about childhood, nothing of poetry about manhood” - a classic Romantic sentiment.
Like many of the Romantics, Clare had a conventional set of religious beliefs. Unlike many of
them, he did not bring nameless neo Grecian deities into his work although his personification
of nature and the seasons sometimes suggest that he saw them as real entities and he could be
vague. In his autobiography, he wrote, “I feel a beautiful providence ever about me.” He tended
to stick to a simple belief in God, was a fan of John Wesley and had a particular aversion for
religious cant or hypocrisy. “Act justly, speak truth, love mercy” was the basis of his creed; in
matters of religion, he said, “With the old dish that was served to my forefathers I am content.
I never did like the runnings and racings after novelty in anything.” (His poetry notably reveres
the ancient and the traditional, whether this is people, customs, old buildings, even long-standing
stretches of wood.) He was superstitious but a little ashamed of being so.
Clare’s was an unexpectedly complex personality. To an extent, he led something of a fantasy
life, visualising himself as a Dick Whittington, the poor boy who rose to fame, not sure, where
he fitted in. He had a strong sense of his vocation as a poet and of the mission of poetry itself.
His autobiographical writings reveal him as refreshingly honest, sensible, self-deprecating,
intelligent and funny, capable of some very sophisticated writing, which was characterised by
long, finely turned sentences. He was, by his own admission, scruffy and awkward, often diffident
in the presence of strangers, absent-minded and disposed to be easily led and sometimes, he felt,
duped. “My whole life has been a first of April,” he wrote gloomily in his journal. He confessed
that he had a “heated spirit” which inclined him to bursts of temper. Weak health, physical and
later mental, overshadowed his life from birth. His love life could be complicated: though he
seems to have worked hard at his marriage to Martha (Patty) Turner (he said that he “esteemed
her by choice”) and was clearly devoted to their children, he might not have married her but for
her pregnancy and he never forgot his first love, Mary Joyce. It is thought that Mary’s family
considered him a poor match for her and he met Patty soon after the break-up of his relationship
with Mary. However, in his asylum years, he frequently referred to Mary as his wife and several
of his love poems mention her by name. She died unmarried shortly after his mental health
began to break down irretrievably.
The poems themselves differ quite markedly in quality from each other. Clare has often been
compared with Thomas Hardy, and like him, he has composed some verses which seem little
more than childish ditties; whereas some of his poems not only deal with profound subject
matter but feature majestic lines, precise diction, evocative imagery and elevated and sustained
argument. Most have the ring of truth about them if only in the accurately observed detail of his
surroundings. Clare’s preference was for “the verse that mild and bland/Breathes of green
fields and open sky”; and this, in general, he achieves in his own work.

8.6 Love Lives beyond the Tomb – Poem

Love lives beyond
The tomb, the earth, which fades like dew—

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