Page 105 - DENG202_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_III

Elective English—III

Notes 8.8 Analysis of the Poem

John Clare’s poetry can be difficult for three reasons. “Love Lives Beyond the Tomb” was
written after 1860 therefore falls within what Edmund Blunden and Alan Porter, editors of
John Clare: Poems Chiefly from Manuscript, call the “Asylum Poems” (4-6). This leads to the first
difficulty with understanding Clare’s poems. After a difficult peasant’s labouring life and some
small financial assistance from his London patrons, Clare’s family agreed to have him hospitalized
for delusions of having once been Shakespeare and Byron. Poems written during the asylum
years may have more challenging structural elements than his earlier poems.
This leads to a second difficulty. Clare was the son of illiterate peasant farmers from a village of
similarly illiterate farmers. He did not receive proper education. Yet his style featured some
unorthodox irregularities about punctuation. His publishers changed much of it yet only under
the pressure of protests from Clare who viewed the irregularities as the best way to express his
ideas; he called these editors the “awkward squad” (Blunden and Porter). This leads to the third
difficulty. While Clare spoke and wrote in the standard contemporary English of the educated,
he intentionally maintained elements of his village dialect directly incorporated in his poems
or indirectly incorporated through influence on syntax and expressions.
If we analyse the parts that are causing you trouble and give a small sample paraphrase, you
should be able to form your own paraphrase with little trouble.

I love the fond ... Eve’s dews ...: The only way to understand this is to get past the punctuation
irregularities. The whole should be read as though written like this:
I love the fond, the faithful, and the true. Love lives in sleep, ’tis happiness of healthy dreams.
Eve’s dews may weep, but love delightful seems.
First: “the fond” etc., refers to people who are fond of him, faithful to him and true to him
(or fond, faithful, true of and to each other).Second: “love lives ... dreams” means that, during his
asylum years, he may not be in the arms of love yet love lives in his sleeping dreams and that
gives him happiness. Third: “eve’s dews ...” refers to the dews that fall at evening (eve). He is
metaphorically comparing the evening dew to weeping eyes but he contradicts the sorrow
envisioned with the weeping by contrasting it to the delightful love he dreams about.
On earth’s green ... angels’ wing ...: This must be understood in terms of all that comes before it. The
whole section is this:
’Tis seen in flowers,
And in the even’s pearly dew
On earth’s green hours,
And in the heaven’s eternal blue.
‘Tis heard in spring
When light and sunbeams, warm and kind,
On angels’ wing
Bring love and music to the wind.
The first questions to ask are, “What does“’Tis seen” refer to? What is it that is seen?” The answer
comes from the stanzas above: “Love lives ... love delightful seems.” Thus what “’Tis seen” is
love. Next ask, “Where is love seen?” It is (’Tis) seen in flowers, in pearly dew on grass, in twilight
hours when grass looks freshly green from dew, inheaven’s eternal blue of darkened night. It is
also heard in the spring(birds’ songs), seen in light’s sunbeams. It is also seen on the wings of the
many angels (“angels’ wings”) that give love and music to the wind.
The last part is the puzzling “Where ...?” question. In paraphrase form, the question is: Where
is the voice of love that is so young, fair and sweet, that is nature’s choice of loveliest sounds,

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