Books: Life and Remains of John Clare
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J. L. Cherry >> Life and Remains of John Clare
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THE VANITIES OF LIFE
[The reader has been made acquainted with the circumstances under
which this poem was written. It was included by Mr. J. H. Dixon in
his "Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England" (edited by Robert
Bell), with the following prefatory note:--
"The poem was, probably, as Clare supposes, written about the
commencement of the 18th century, and the unknown author appears to
have been deeply imbued with the spirit of the popular devotional
writers of the preceding century, as Herbert, Quarles, &c., but seems
to have modelled his smoother and more elegant versification after
that of the poetic school of his own times."
Montgomery's criticism on publishing it in the "Sheffield Iris" was
as follows:--
"Long as the poem appears to the eye, it will abundantly repay the
trouble of perusal, being full of condensed and admirable thought, as
well as diversified with exuberant imagery, and embellished with
peculiar felicity of language. The moral points in the closing
couplets of the stanzas are often powerfully enforced."]
"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."--Solomon.
What are life's joys and gains?
What pleasures crowd its ways,
That man should take such pains
To seek them all his days?
Sift this untoward strife
On which the mind is bent:
See if this chaff of life
Is worth the trouble spent.
Is pomp thy heart's desire?
Is power thy climbing aim?
Is love thy folly's fire?
Is wealth thy restless game?
Pomp, power, love, wealth, and all
Time's touchstone shall destroy,
And, like base coin, prove all
Vain substitutes for joy.
Dost think that pride exalts
Thyself in other's eyes,
And hides thy folly's faults,
Which reason will despise?
Dost strut, and turn, and stride,
Like a walking weathercock?
The shadow by thy side
Will be thy ape, and mock.
Dost think that power's disguise
Can make thee mighty seem?
It may in folly's eyes,
But not in worth's esteem,
When all that thou canst ask,
And all that she can give,
Is but a paltry mask
Which tyrants wear and live.
Go, let thy fancies range
And ramble where they may;
View power in every change,
And what is the display?
--The county magistrate,
The lowest shade in power,
To rulers of the state,
The meteors of an hour:--
View all, and mark the end
Of every proud extreme,
Where flattery turns a friend,
And counterfeits esteem;
Where worth is aped in show,
That doth her name purloin,
Like toys of golden glow
Oft sold for copper coin.
Ambition's haughty nod
With fancies may deceive,
Nay, tell thee thou'rt a god,
And wilt thou such believe?
Go, bid the seas be dry;
Go, hold earth like a ball,
Or throw her fancies by,
For God can do it all.
Dost thou possess the dower
Of laws to spare or kill?
Call it not heavenly power
When but a tyrant's will,
Think what thy God would do,
And know thyself a fool,
Nor, tyrant-like, pursue
Where He alone can rule.
Dost think, when wealth is won,
Thy heart has its desire?
Hold ice up to the sun,
And wax before the fire;
Nor triumph o'er the reign
Which they so soon resign:
Of this world weigh the gain,
Insurance safe is thine.
Dost think life's peace secure
In houses and in land?
Go, read the fairy lure,
And twist a cord in sand;
Lodge stones upon the sky,
Hold water in a sieve,
Nor give such tales the lie,
And still thine own believe.
Whoso with riches deals,
And thinks peace bought and sold,
Will find them slipping eels,
That slide the firmest hold:
Though sweet as sleep with health
Thy lulling luck may be,
Pride may o'erstride thy wealth,
And check prosperity.
Dost think that beauty's power
Life sweetest pleasure gives?
Go, pluck the summer flower,
And see how long it lives:
Behold, the rays glide on
Along the summer plain
Ere thou canst say they're gone:
Know such is beauty's reign.
Look on the brightest eye,
Nor teach it to be proud;
View next the clearest sky,
And thou shalt find a cloud;
Nor call each face ye meet
An angel's, 'cause it's fair,
But look beneath your feet,
And think of what ye are.
Who thinks that love doth live
In beauty's tempting show,
Shall find his hopes ungive,
And melt in reason's thaw.
Who thinks that pleasure lies
In every fairy bower,
Shall oft, to his surprise,
Find poison in the flower.
Dost lawless pleasures grasp?
Judge not they'll bring thee joy:
Their flowers but hide the asp,
Whose poison will destroy.
Who trusts a harlot's smile,
And by her wiles is led,
Plays, with a sword the while
Hung dropping o'er his head.
Dost doubt my warning song?
Then doubt the sun gives light,
Doubt truth to teach thee wrong,
Think wrong alone is right;
And live as lives the knave,
Intrigue's deceiving guest;
Be tyrant, or be slave,
As suits thy ends the best.
Or pause amid thy toils
For visions won and lost,
And count the fancied spoils,
If e'er they quit the cost:
And if they still possess
Thy mind, as worthy things,
Pick straws with Bedlam Bess,
And call them diamond rings.
Thy folly's past advice,
Thy heart's already won,
Thy fall's above all price,
So go, and be undone;
For all who thus prefer
The seeming great for small
Shall make wine vinegar,
And sweetest honey gall.
Would'st heed the truths I sing,
To profit wherewithal,
Clip folly's wanton wing,
And keep her within call.
I've little else to give,
But thou canst easy try;
The lesson how to live
Is but to learn to die.
MARCH
[From HONE'S "Year Book"]
The insect world, now sunbeams higher climb,
Oft dream of Spring, and wake before their time:
Bees stroke their little legs across their wings,
And venture short flights where the snow-drop hings
Its silver bell, and winter aconite
Its buttercup-like flowers that shut at night,
With green leaf furling round its cup of gold,
Like tender maiden muffled from the cold:
They sip and find their honey-dreams are vain,
Then feebly hasten to their hives again.
The butterflies, by eager hopes undone,
Glad as a child come out to greet the sun,
Beneath the shadows of a sunny shower
Are lost, nor see to-morrow's April flower.
THE OLD MAN'S LAMENT
Youth has no fear of ill, by no cloudy days annoyed,
But the old man's all hath fled, and his hopes have met their doom:
The bud hath burst to flower, and the flower been long destroyed,
The root also is withered; I no more can look for bloom.
So I have said my say, and I have had my day,
And sorrow, like a young storm, creeps dark upon my brow;
Hopes, like to summer clouds, have all blown far away,
And the world's sunny side is turned over with me now,
And I am left a lame bird upon a withered bough.
I look upon the past: 't is as black as winter days,
But the worst is not yet over; there are blacker, days to come.
O, I would I had but known of the wide world's many ways,
But youth is ever blind, so I e'en must meet my doom.
Joy once gave brightest forecasts of prospects that are past,
But now, like a looking glass that's turned to the wall,
Life is nothing but a blank, and the sunny shining past
Is overcast in glooms that my every hope enthrall,
While troubles daily thicken in the wind ere they fall.
Life smiled upon me once, as the sun upon the rose;
My heart, so free and open, guessed in every face a friend:
Though the sweetest flower must fade, and the sweetest season
close,
Yet I never gave it thought that my happiness would end,
Till the warmest-seeming friends grew the coldest at the close,
As the sun from lonely night hides its haughty shining face,
Yet I could not think them gone, for they turned not open foes,
While memory fondly mused, former favours to retrace,
So I turned, but only found that my shadow kept its place.
And this is nought but common life, which everybody finds
As well as I, or more's the luck of those that better speed.
I'll mete my lot to bear with the lot of kindred minds,
And grudge not those who say they for sorrow have no need.
Why should I, when I know that it will not aid a nay?
For Summer is the season; even then the little fly
Finds friends enow, indeed, both for leisure and for play;
But on the winter window it must crawl alone to die:
Such is life, and such am I--a wounded, stricken fly.
SPRING FLOWERS
Bowing adorers of the gale,
Ye cowslips delicately pale,
Upraise your loaded stems;
Unfold your cups in splendour; speak!
Who decked you with that ruddy streak
And gilt your golden gems?
Violets, sweet tenants of the shade,
In purple's richest pride arrayed,
Your errand here fulfil;
Go, bid the artist's simple stain
Your lustre imitate--in vain--
And match your Maker's skill.
Daisies, ye flowers of lowly birth,
Embroiderers of the carpet earth,
That stud the velvet sod,
Open to Spring's refreshing air,
In sweetest smiling bloom declare
Your Maker and your God.
POEM ON DEATH
[This poem, like that entitled "The Vanities of Life," is an
imitation. In his Diary, Clare says--
"Wednesday, July 27, 1825.
Received the 28th No. (June the 28th) of the 'Every-Day Book,' in
which is inserted a poem of mine which I sent under the assumed name
of James Gilderoy, from Sunfleet, as being the production of Andrew
Marvell, and printed in the 'Miscellanies' of the Spalding
Antiquaries (the members of the Spalding Club). I shall venture again
under another name after a while."
Hone accepted the contribution without detecting the disguise, but
Clare's next venture of the same description, "A Farewell and
Defiance to Love," which he says in his Diary, he "fathered on Sir
John Harrington," was unsuccessful.]
Why should man's high aspiring mind
Burn in him with so proud a breath,
When all his haughty views can find
In this world yields to Death?
The fair, the brave, the vain, the wise,
The rich, the poor, and great, and small,
Are each but worm's anatomies
To strew his quiet hall.
Power may make many earthly gods,
Where gold and bribery's guilt prevails,
But Death's unwelcome, honest odds
Kick o'er the unequal scales.
The flatter'd great may clamours raise
Of power, and their own weakness hide,
But Death shall find unlooked-for ways
To end the farce of pride.
An arrow hurtel'd e'er so high,
With e'en a giant's sinewy strength,
In Time's untraced eternity
Goes but a pigmy length;
Nay, whirring from the tortured string,
With all its pomp of hurried flight,
'T is by the skylark's little wing
Outmeasured in its height.
Just so man's boasted strength and power
Shall fade before Death's lightest stroke,
Laid lower than the meanest flower,
Whose pride o'er-top't the oak;
And he who, like a blighting blast,
Dispeopled worlds with war's alarms
Shall be himself destroyed at last
By poor despised worms.
Tyrants in vain their powers secure,
And awe slaves' murmurs with a frown,
For unawed Death at last is sure
To sap the Babels down.
A stone thrown upward to the skye
Will quickly meet the ground agen;
So men-gods of earth's vanity
Shall drop at last to men;
And Power and Pomp their all resign,
Blood-purchased thrones and banquet halls.
Fate waits to sack Ambition's shrine
As bare as prison walls,
Where the poor suffering wretch bows down
To laws a lawless power hath passed;
And pride, and power, and king, and clown
Shall be Death's slaves at last.
Time, the prime minister of Death!
There's nought can bribe his honest will.
He stops the richest tyrant's breath
And lays his mischief still.
Each wicked scheme for power all stops,
With grandeurs false and mock display,
As eve's shades from high mountain tops
Fade with the rest away.
Death levels all things in his march;
Nought can resist his mighty strength;
The palace proud, triumphal arch,
Shall mete its shadow's length.
The rich, the poor, one common bed
Shall find in the unhonoured grave,
Where weeds shall grow alike o'er head
Of tyrant and of slave.
THE WANTON CHLOE--A PASTORAL
Young Chloe looks sweet as the rose,
And her love might be reckoned no less,
But her bosom so freely bestows
That all may a portion possess.
Her smiles would be cheering to see,
But so freely they're lavished abroad
That each silly swain, like to me,
Can boast what the wanton bestowed.
Her looks and her kisses so free
Are for all, like the rain and the sky;
As the blossom love is to the bee,
Each swain is as welcome as I.
And though I my folly can see,
Yet still must I love and adore,
Though I know the love whispered to me
Has been told to so many before.
'T is sad that a bosom so fair,
And soft lips so seemingly sweet,
Should study false ways, to ensnare,
And breathe in their kisses deceit.
But beauty's no guide to the best:
The rose, that out-blushes the morn,
While it tempts the glad eye to its breast,
Will pierce the fond hand with a thorn.
Yet still must I love, silly swain!
And put up with all her deceit,
And try to be jealous, in vain,
For I cannot help thinking her sweet.
I see other swains in her bower,
And I sigh, and excuse what I see,
While I say to myself, "Is the flower
Any worse when it's kissed by the bee?"
THE OLD SHEPHERD
'T is pleasant to bear recollections in mind
Of joys that time hurries away--
To look back on smiles that have passed like the wind,
And compare them with frowns of to-day.
'T was the constant delight of Old Robin, forsooth,
On the past with clear vision to dwell--
To recount the fond loves and the raptures of youth,
And tales of lost pleasures to tell.
"'T is now many years," like a child, he would say,
"Since I joined in the sports of the green--
Since I tied up the flowers for the garland of May,
And danced with the holiday queen.
My memory looks backward in sorrowful pride,
And I think, till my eyes dim with tears,
Of the past, where my happiness withered and died,
And the present dull, desolate years.
I love to be counting, while sitting alone,
With many a heart-aching sigh,
How many a season has rapidly flown,
And springs, with their summers, gone by,
Since Susan the pride of the village was deemed,
To whom youth's affections I gave;
Whom I led to the church, and beloved and esteemed,
And followed in grief to the grave.
Life's changes for many hours musings supply;
Both the past and the present appear;
I mark how the years that remain hurry by,
And feel that my last must be near.
The youths that with me to man's summer did bloom
Have dwindled away to old men,
And maidens, like flowers of the Spring, have made room
For many new blossoms since then.
I have lived to see all but life's sorrows pass by,
Leaving changes, and pains, and decay,
Where nought is the same but the wide-spreading sky,
And the sun that awakens the day.
The green, where I tended my sheep when a boy,
Has yielded its pride to the plough;
And the shades where my infancy revelled in joy
The axe has left desolate now.
Yet a bush lingers still, that will urge me to stop--
(What heart can such fancies withstand?)
Where Susan once saw a bird's nest on the top,
And I reached her the eggs with my hand:
And so long since the day I remember so well,
It has stretched to a sizable tree,
And the birds yearly come in its branches to dwell,
As far from a giant as me.
On a favourite spot, by the side of a brook,
When Susan was just in her pride,
A ripe bunch of nuts from her apron she took,
To plant as she sat by my side.
They have grown up with years, and on many a bough
Cluster nuts like their parents agen,
Where shepherds no doubt have oft sought them ere now,
To please other Susans since then.
The joys that I knew when my youth was in prime,
Like a dream that's half ended, are o'er;
And the faces I knew in that changeable time
Are met with the living no more.
I have lived to see friends that I loved pass away
With the pleasures their company gave:
I have lived to see love, with my Susan, decay,
And the grass growing green on her grave."
TO A ROSEBUD IN HUMBLE LIFE
Sweet, uncultivated blossom,
Reared in Spring's refreshing dews,
Dear to every gazer's bosom,
Fair to every eye that views;--
Opening bud, whose youth can charm us,
Thine be many a happy hour:
Spreading rose, whose beauties warm us--
Flourish long, my lovely flower.
Though pride look disdainful on thee,
Scorning scenes so mean as thine,
Although fortune frown upon thee,
Lovely blossom, ne'er repine:
Health unbought is ever with thee,
Which their wealth can never gain;
Innocence doth garments give thee,
Such as fashion apes in vain.
When fit time and reason grant thee
Leave to quit the parent tree,
May some happy hand transplant thee
To a station suiting thee.
On some lover's faithful bosom
May'st thou then thy sweets resign;
And may each unfolding blossom
Open charms as sweet as thine.
Till that time may joys unceasing
Thy bard's every wish fulfil.
When that's come may joys increasing
Make thee blest and happier still.
Flourish fair, thou flower of Jessies,
Pride of each admiring swain--
Envy of despairing lasses--
Queen of Walkherd's lovely plain.
THE TRIUMPHS OF TIME
[From "The Champion"]
Emblazoned Vapour! Half-eternal Shade!
That gathers strength from ruin and decay;--
Emperor of empires! (for the world hath made
No substance that dare take thy shade away;)
Thy banners nought but victories display:
In undisturbed success thou'rt grown sublime:
Kings are thy subjects, and their sceptres lay
Round thy proud footstool: tyranny and crime
Thy serving vassals are. Then hail, victorious Time!
The elements that wreck the marble dome
Proud with the polish of the artisan--
Bolts that crash shivering through the humble home,
Traced with the insignificance of man--
Are architects of thine, and proudly plan
Rich monuments to show thy growing prime:
Earthquakes that rend the rocks with dreadful span,
Lightnings that write in characters sublime,
Inscribe their labours all unto the praise of Time.
Thy palaces are kingdoms lost to power;
The ruins of ten thousand thrones thy throne;
Thy crown and sceptre the dismantled tower,
A place of kings, yet left to be unknown,
Now with triumphing ivy overgrown--
Ivy oft plucked on Victory's brow to shine--
That fades in crowns of kings, preferring stone;
It only prospers where they most decline,
To flourish o'er their fate, and live alone in thine.
Thy dwellings are in ruins made sublime.
Impartial Monitor, no dream of fear,
No dread of treason for a royal crime,
Deters thee from thy purpose: everywhere
Thy power is shown: thou art arch-emperor here:
Thou soil'st the very crowns with stains and rust;
On royal robes thy havoc doth appear;
The little moth, to thy proud summons just,
Dares scarlet pomp to scorn, and eats it into dust.
Old shadows of magnificence, where now--
Where now and what your grandeur? Come and see
Busts broken and thrown down, with wreathless brow,
Walls stained with colours, not of paint, but thee.
Moss, lichens, ferns, and lonely elder tree;
That upon ruins gladly climb to bloom,
And add a beauty where't is vain to be,
Like to the soft moonlight in a prison's gloom,
Or lovely maid in youth death-smitten for the tomb.
Pride may build palaces and splendid halls;
Power may display its victories and be brave;
The eye finds weakest spots in strongest walls,
And meets no strength that can out-wear the grave.
Nature, thy handmaid and imperial slave,
The pomp of splendour's finery never heeds:
Kings reign and die: pride may no respite crave;
Nature in barrenness ne'er mourns thy deeds:
Graves, poor and rich alike, she overruns with weeds.
In thy proud eye, imperial Arbiter,
An insect small to prize appeareth man;
His pomp and honours have o'er thee no spell,
To win thy purpose from the little span
Allotted unto life in Nature's plan;
Trifles to him thy favour can engage;
High he looks up, and soon his race is run;
While the small daisy upon Nature's page,
On which he sets his foot, gains endless heritage.
Look at the farces played in every age
By puny empires, vaunting vain display,
And blush to read the historian's fulsome page,
Where kings are worshipped like to gods in clay.
Their pride the earth disdained and swept away,
By thee, a shadow, worsted of their all--
Legions of soldiers, battle's dread array--
Kings' speeches--golden bribes--nought saved their fall;
All 'neath thy feet are laid, thy robe their funeral pall.
How feeble and how vain, compared to thine,
The glittering pageantry of earthly kings,
Though in their little light they would outshine
Thy splendid sun: yet soon thy vengeance flings
Its gloom around their crowns, poor puny things.
What then remains of all that great hath been?
A tattered state, that as a mockery clings
To greatness, and concludes the idle scene--
In life how mighty thought, and found in death how mean.
Thus Athens lingers on, a nest of slaves,
And Babylon's an almost doubted name:
Thou with thy finger writ'st upon their graves,
On one obscurity, the other shame.
The richest greatness or the proudest fame
Thy sport concludeth as a farce at last:
They were and would be, but are not the same:
Tyrants, that made all subject where they passed,
Become a common jest for laughter at the last.
Here where I stand thy voice breathes from the ground
A buried tale of sixteen hundred years,
And many a Roman fragment, littered round,
In each new-rooted mole-hill reappears.
Ah! what is fame, that honour so reveres?
And what is Victory's laurel-crowned event
When thy unmasked intolerance interferes?
A Caesar's deeds are left to banishment,
Indebted e'en to moles to show us where he went.
A mighty poet them, and every line
Thy grand conception traces is sublime:
No language doth thy god-like works confine;
Thy voice is earth's grand polyglot, O Time!
Known of all tongues, and read in every clime,
Changes of language make no change in thee:
Thy works have worsted centuries of their prime,
Yet new editions every day we see--
Ruin thy moral theme, its end eternity.
A satirist, too, thy pen is deadly keen;
Thou turnest things that once did wonder claim
To jests ridiculous and memories mean;--
The Egyptian pyramids, without a name,
Stand monuments to chaos, not to fame--
Stone jests of kings which thou in sport did'st save,
As towering satires of pride's living shame--
Beacons to prove thy overbearing wave
Will make all fame at last become its owner's grave.
Mighty survivors! Thou shalt see the hour
When all the grandeur that the earth contains--
Its pomp, its splendour, and its hollow power--
Shall waste like water from its weakened veins,
And not a shadow or a myth remain--
When names and fames of which the earth is full,
And books, with all their knowledge urged in vain--
When dead and living shall be void and null,
And Nature's pillow be at last a human skull.
E'en temples raised to worship and to prayer,
Sacred from ruin in all eyes but thine,
Are laid as level, and are left as bare,
As spots with no pretensions to resign;
Nor lives one relic that was deemed divine.
By thee, great sacrilegious Shade, all, all
Are swept away, and common weeds enshrine
That place of tombs and memories prodigal--
Itself a tomb at last, the record of its fall.
All then shall mingle fellowship with one,
And earth be strewn with wrecks of human things,
When tombs are broken up and memory's gone
Of proud aspiring mortals, crowned as kings,
Mere insects, sporting upon waxen wings
That melt at thy all-mastering energy;
And, when there's nought to govern, thy fame springs
To new existence, conquered, yet to be
An uncrowned partner still of dread eternity.
'T is done, o'erpowering Vision! And no more
My simple numbers chronicle thy fame;
'T is gone: the spirit of my voice is o'er,
Adventuring praises to thy mighty name.
To thee an atom am I, and in shame
I shrink from these aspirings to my doom;
For all the world contains to praise or blame
Is but a garden hastening out of bloom
To fill up Nature's wreck-mere rubbish for the tomb.
Imperial Moralist! Thy every page,
Like grand prophetic visions, doth instal
Truth for all creeds. The savage, saint, and sage
In unison may answer to thy call.
Thy voice as universal, speaks to all;
It tells us what all were and are to be;
That evil deeds will evil hearts enthral,
And God the just maintain the grand decree,
That whoso righteous lives shall win eternity.
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