The best poems by John Clare selected by Dr Oliver Tearle

John Clare (1793-1864) has been called the greatest nature poet in the English language (by, for instance, his biographer Jonathan Bate), and yet his life – particularly his madness and time inside an asylum later in his life – tends to overshadow his poetry. So here we’ve picked ten of John Clare’s best poems which offer an introduction to his idiosyncratic style and wonderful eye for detail, especially concerning the natural world. For a good edition of John Clare’s poetry, we recommend John Clare: Major Works from Oxford University Press.

‘First Love’.

I ne’er was struck before that hour
With love so sudden and so sweet,
Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower
And stole my heart away complete …

First love is powerful and stays with us, but it can be painful as well as joyous or liberating. This poem, one of John Clare’s most widely anthologised, captures this dual nature of first love and the way in which it is a loss of something – namely, innocence – as well as a gaining of something new and special.

‘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 shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed …

‘I am – yet what I am none cares or knows’. As opening lines go, it teeters on the edge of self-pity, and it’s a brave poet who will risk that charge – and a fine poet who can pull the rest of his poem back from the brink of such self-indulgent wallowing that might be expected to follow. John Clare’s ‘I Am’ manages this, making it a fine and especially interesting example of Romantic poetry, exploring the individual self and the poet’s own place in the world.

‘The Thunder Mutters’.

The thunder mutters louder & more loud
With quicker motion hay folks ply the rake
Ready to burst slow sails the pitch black cloud
& all the gang a bigger haycock make …

In this short poem, Clare turns his thoughts to that most ominous and powerful of natural phenomena: the rumble or ‘mutter’ of thunder. The effect that the rumbling of thunder has upon the natural world, that perennial theme in Clare’s poetry, is here evoked with his keen eye – and ear – for detail.

‘The Badger’.

The badger grunting on his woodland track
With shaggy hide and sharp nose scrowed with black
Roots in the bushes and the woods, and makes
A great high burrow in the ferns and brakes …

How many great poems about badgers are there in English literature? Clare’s ‘The Badger’ is perhaps the greatest of this small and select group. ‘The Badger’ is written in rhyming couplets, also known as heroic couplets – and although Clare describes the way the badger is hunted and caught, he imbues the creature with a quiet heroism and nobility. After describing the badger’s appearance and habits, Clare then details how the badger is caught, trapped, and baited.

‘The Yellowhammer’s Nest’.

Just by the wooden brig a bird flew up,
Frit by the cowboy as he scrambled down
To reach the misty dewberry—let us stoop
And seek its nest—the brook we need not dread …

As John Clare wrote so often about nature, it comes as little surprise that he also turned his beautifully close attention to small details to the world of birds. This poem shows Clare’s wonderful sensitivity to vowel sounds, as he explores the patterns found within nature by focusing on the nest of the bird, which is described as ‘poet-like’.

‘Little Trotty Wagtail’.

Little trotty wagtail, he went in the rain,
And tittering, tottering sideways he near got straight again.
He stooped to get a worm, and look’d up to catch a fly,
And then he flew away ere his feathers they were dry …

Another wonderful bird poem from Clare, written – like many of Clare’s finest poems – in the quietly dignified rhyming couplets he uses so well elsewhere too. Almost childlike in his innocent admiration of the little bird, Clare’s speaker captures the movements of the bird with disarming simplicity: ‘He waddled in the water pudge and waggle went his tail / And chirrupt up his wings to dry upon the garden rail’.

‘I Love to See the Summer Beaming Forth’.

I love to see the summer beaming forth
And white wool sack clouds sailing to the north
I love to see the wild flowers come again
And mare blobs stain with gold the meadow drain …

What a joyous opening line for this poem, written in heroic couplets, with ‘beaming’ sending out to both brightness (the bright beams or rays of sunlight) and happiness (a beaming smile etc.). Few English poets have captured the joys of the natural world with such delirious invention and skill as John Clare.

‘Autumn’.

The thistledown’s flying, though the winds are all still,
On the green grass now lying, now mounting the hill,
The spring from the fountain now boils like a pot;
Through stones past the counting it bubbles red-hot …

As one of English literature’s finest nature poets, John Clare often wrote about the seasons. His poem ‘Autumn’ showcases his rare talents, and repays closer analysis: consider the wonderful line ‘Hill-tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun’. The image of the fallow fields glittering like water – their surface shimmering in the sun like the surface of a lake or the sea – is inspired.

‘Emmonsail’s Heath in Winter’.

I love to see the old heath’s withered brake
Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling,
While the old heron from the lonely lake
Starts slow and flaps its melancholy wing …

We’ve had poems about summer and autumn, so how about one of Clare’s winter poems? And this is one of Clare’s most admired, its subject being – as the title makes clear – a heath during the wintry season when its ‘withered brake / Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling’. Its fourteen lines are suggestive of a sonnet, but Clare breaks with tradition by employing his own rhyme scheme, which helps to capture the surprising features of the heath in its winter aspect.

‘The Secret’.

I loved thee, though I told thee not,
Right earlily and long,
Thou wert my joy in every spot,
My theme in every song …

This little poem is not his John Clare’s most famous, but it’s worth sharing here because it so perfectly puts into words the power of untold love. ‘I loved thee, though I told thee not’: undoubtedly we could all tell a similar story, especially during those powerful years when we’re in the grip of first love.

Discover more classic poetry with these great Romantic poems, these Coleridge poems, and these classic baby poems.

The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. He is the author of, among others, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History and The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem.