Page 106 - DENG202_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_III

Unit 8: Love Lives beyond the Tomb by John Clare

and that must be found where nature joins in harmony with love? The answer is: Love is Notes
everywhere, even in death, even in the tomb, even in flowers and dew.
The trick to understanding “Where Spring and lovers meet?” is to know exactly what syntax
(sentence structure) it is part of. Is it a question that stands alone as an individual question all on
its own? Or is it the last part of a larger question? If it is part of a larger question, what is the
overall context? And, furthermore, is there an answer in the text to whatever the question
actually is?

One difficulty in sorting this out is that this poem was written after 1860, as part of what Blunden
and Porter call Clare’s “Asylum Poems.” Clare was permanently admitted to a hospital after
1841 for treatment of delusions following years of peasant labour, inadequate earnings and
feelings of dislocation because he no longer thought, spoke or acted like a peasant though he
continued to work and live the peasant life he was born into. The Asylum Poems are rarely
dated and were not kept in chronological order. “Love Lives Beyond the Tomb” is one that is
undated, yet, based on handwriting, subject and paper, Blunden and Porter place it after 1860;
thus, Clare had been hospitalised at least twenty years when he wrote it.
The punctuation and orthography (spelling of words) had always been irregular in Clare’s
poems because he clung to his peasant dialect. The Asylum Poems continue this pattern and add
a further complication by variations in structure. This all is relevant to “Love Lives Beyond the
Tomb” because of its chronological position in Clare’s corpus of work. What this means is that
it takes a little effort to see how the lines go together to convey his meaning. Let us look at the
things to ask and work out the meaning of “Where Spring and lovers meet?”
1. Is it a question that stands alone as an individual question? No, it is not. It looks that way
because of the orthographically odd capitalization of “What”.

2. Is it the last part of a larger question? Yes, the punctuation that precedes “What” is a
comma, not an end-stop. Thus it is part of the larger sentence that comes before it:
And where is voice,
So young, so beautiful and sweet
As nature’s choice,
Where Spring and lovers meet?

3. What is the overall context of the larger question? In the preceding stanza, Clare has just
explained where love is heard using the beautiful compound metaphor of warm sunbeams
and soft angels’ wings bringing love and music to the listener’s heart on the wind. Now
Clare is asking, by using a metonymy and an analogy, where to find the one he loves in
the symbolic place where spring and lovers are met in harmonious accord. The syntax is
creative, but the punctuation is helpful. Re-read the poetic sentence like this paraphrase:
And where is voice (being so young, so beautiful and as sweet as nature’s perfect choice)
in the place of harmony between spring and lovers?
The metonymy is “voice.” In this type of metonymy, “voice” stands in for, substitutes for,
the voice of the one he loves: it is the one he loves that he looks for, not the voice
[metonymy: a substitute of one representative characteristic for the whole thing]. Perhaps
his beloved sings angelically, so he thinks of her as his “voice.”

The analogy is “[as] sweet as nature’s choice”. He is making a comparison between the
choicest nectars of nature and his beloved, who he says is as sweet as nature’s choicest
nectars (“choice”: metonymy).
4. Is there an answer in the text to the question? Yes, there is. He says that wherever “voice”
is, their love lives beyond the tomb, the flowers, and the dew – their love lives beyond the
confinement of the asylum.

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