John Clare 1793 - 1864

I'm teaching this guy's poetry for the first time at the moment, to A Level students. He's on the new syllabus too so I expect I'll get to know him quite well over time. I have to say I'm becoming a fan. What interests me are his more 'frustrated' poems about rural life at the beginning of the 19th Century, how he witnessed the very fabric of his existence being torn apart by the Agrarian Revolution and Enclosure.

In his poem Remembrances, Clare reflects on his childhood days:

When I used to lie and sing by old Eastwell's boiling spring
When I used to tie the willow boughs together for a 'swing'
And fish with crooked pins and thread and never catch a thing

And then on how these days are gone forever:

Then the fields were sudden bare and the sky got overcast
And boyhoods pleasing haunts like a blossom in the blast
Was shrivelled to a withered weed and trampled down and done
Till vanished was the morning spring and set that summer sun
And winter fought her battle strife and won

It got me thinking and reminiscing about the summers of my youth, cycling with rod strapped to the crossbar, yesterday's bait still on the hook, the few quiet miles to this place...



...where 'me and my mates' would spend day after day fishing and being twelve years old.

I wonder if I'll let my own son do the same when he's twelve?