Which is the most impressive and moving of Clare’s asylum poems?

Authors Avatar

Poems pre1914

Which is the most impressive and moving of Clare’s asylum poems?

 Born July 13th 1793, John Clare was very weak and his twin had unfortunately died in infancy. He was so weak and fragile that his mother did not think that he would survive. He was the son of a poor labourer and did not come from a wealthy background. He was not given many provisions such as books. For his eleventh birthday he received a book on poetry from his uncle, this was the start of John Clare’s career. This book stimulated his mind and was the first book of many to be read. The one poem that motivated John Clare to write poetry himself was ‘ The Seasons’ by James Thomson. This was the one poem that made John Clare willing to do more than just read. When his first collection of poems was published it sold very well and he became a minor celebrity and gave him a small fortune. He then went on to write another collection of poems, when this was published the value of his poems were questioned by a reviewer and John Clare was forced to move back to his house in the country. It was at this time that he first became despondent, and then slowly his depression turned into mental illness. His wife Martha ‘Penny’ Turner could no longer cope to look after him and his children so he was entered into an asylum. It was here that he entered ‘the land of shadows’ where he thought he was, Byron, Burns, Lord Nelson or a famous boxer. He somehow managed to escape the asylum and he walked all the way back to his home. He was sent to another asylum where he lived until he unfortunately died. Clare wrote approximately 150 poems of which ‘I Am’ and ‘ To John Clare’ are just two of them and these are the two poems that my essay will be based on.

  I Am

I am- yet what I am, none cares or knows;

 My friends forsake me like a memory lost: -

Join now!

I am the self-consumer of my woes; -

 They rise and vanish in oblivion’s host.

Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes: -

And yet I am, and live – like vapours tost.

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise. –

  Into the living sea of waking dreams,

Where there is neither sense of life or joys.

 But the vast shipwreck of my lifes esteems:

Even the dearest, that I love the best

Are strange – nay, rather stranger than the rest.

 I long for scenes, where man hath never trod

 A place where woman never smiled or ...

This is a preview of the whole essay