Clare on the natural world in poetry
When glow worms found in lanes remote
Is murdered for its shining coat And put in flowers that nature weaves Wi hollow shapes and silken leaves ("January -- A Cottage Evening") 
The hedghog from its hollow root Sees the wood moss clear of snow And hunts each hedge for fallen fruit ("February -- A Thaw") The green wood pecker of its home That early in the spring began Far from the sight of troubling man And bord their round holes in each tree ("May") Each morning now the weeders meet To cut the thistle from the wheat And ruin in the sunny hours Full many wild weeds of their flowers Corn poppys that in crimson dwell Calld 'head achs' from their sickly smell And carlock yellow as the sun That oer the may fields thickly run And 'iron weed' ("May") A huge blue bird will often swim Along the wheat when skys grow dim Wi clouds--slow as the gales of spring In motion wi dark shadowd sing Beneath the coming storm it sails And lonly chirps the wheat hid quails ("May") Insects as small as dust are never done Wi' glittering dance and reeling in the sun And green wood fly and blossom haunting bee ("June") 
But such as every farmers garden yield Fine cabbage roses painted like her face And shining pansys trimmd in golden lace And tall tuft larkheels featherd thick wi flowers And woodbines climbing oer the door in bowers And London tufts of many a mottld hue And pale pink pea and monkshood darly blue And white and purple jiliflowers that stay Lingering in blossom ("June") I found a ball of grass among the hay And proged it as I passed and went away And when I looked I fancied somthing stirred And turned agen and hoped to catch a bird When out an old mouse bolted in the wheat With all her young ones hanging at her teats She looked so odd and so grotesque to me I ran and wondered what the thing could be And pushed the knapweed bunches where I stood When the mouse hurried from the crawling brood The young ones squeaked and when I went away She found her nest again among the hay ("[The Mouse's Nest]") 
The turkeys wade the close to catch the bees In the old border full of maple trees And often lay away and breed and come And bring a brood of chelping chickens home The turkey gobbles loud and drops his rag And struts and sprunts his tail and drags His wing on ground and makes a huzzing noise ("[Turkeys]" Robinson, Eric and David Powell, eds. The Oxford Authors: John Clare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. |