WRITTEN IN NORTHAMPTON COUNTY ASYLUM
by: John Clare (1793-1864)
- AM! yet
what I am who cares, or knows?
- My friends forsake me like a memory lost.
- I am the self-consumer of my woes;
- They rise and vanish, an oblivious host,
- Shadows of life, whose very soul is lost.
- And yet I am -- I live -- though I am toss'd
-
- Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
- Into the living sea of waking dream,
- Where there is neither sense of life, nor joys,
- But the huge shipwreck of my own esteem
- And all that's dear. Even those I loved the best
- Are strange -- nay, they are stranger than the rest.
-
- I long for scenes where man has never trod--
- For scenes where woman never smiled or wept--
- There to abide with my Creator, God,
- And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
- Full of high thoughts, unborn. So let me lie,--
- The grass below; above, the vaulted sky.
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POEMS BY JOHN CLARE |
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