John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864 / Northamptonshire / England)

Thanks for expressing my feelings in way I can´t. Only a name can be just Love.

Thanks for expressing my feelings in way I can´t. Only a name can be just Love.

I read all of Clare's poetry recently and it amazed me with its purity of expression. Take any genius and strip away his or her education and you will find Clare. He is the equal of Keats or Shelley. Indeed he is nearer the fount of poetry than they.

Because this John Clare poem reflects my own life experience to a degree, I find it quite touchingly sentimental. Moving one's memory in an enjoyable reverie!

Some guy in an online poker room urged me to read this poem-a 15 year old no less! -and I too have become wooed by it. As is mentioned above, the flow distracts me but I can see what Clare sees and that is beautiful. Haven...your interpretation was fantastic as well and helped me to better understand what Clare was saying so long ago. Thank you for sharing! !

I read the poem twelve years back but its last two lines are still echoing in my heart.

Joseph - compare Yeats:

First Love

THOUGH nurtured like the sailing moon
In beauty's murderous brood,
She walked awhile and blushed awhile
And on my pathway stood
Until I thought her body bore
A heart of flesh and blood.
But since I laid a hand thereon
And found a heart of stone
I have attempted many things
And not a thing is done,
For every hand is lunatic
That travels on the moon.
She smiled and that transfigured me
And left me but a lout,
Maundering here, and maundering there,
Emptier of thought
Than the heavenly circuit of its stars
When the moon sails out.

One difference is that the technique and the thought/feeling are not out of sync in Yeats' poem. You have to realise that a poem may be flawed technically, and those flaws subtract from its intention.

WOW - ZAP - Zing - WAM - BAM - OOPS - what more describes first love.

This is not the best of Clare – there is a fair amount of “fiddling the books” to achieve scansion and rhyme: “her face it bloomed”, “stole my heart away complete”, pale as deadly pale”. “eyesight quite away” – take away the underlined words and you have a more vigorous poetry - but the last verse is free of these – one feels the poetic passion more aroused – you then begin to believe more in the poem.

You could almost do without the first two verses, though “And when she looked, what could I ail? /My life and all seemed turned to clay.” is good – though “were” instead of “seemed” would be allowable.

Also: “sweet” in each of the first two lines” is too sweet! And how, in fact, did his beloved’s face “bloom”?

The poem creaks a little in pursuit of its form, and thus suspends the reader between belief and disbelief in the narrative.

The full stop at the end of the fifth line is wrong.

haven if i haven't read john's poem first i wouldn't know that is base
from somebody's poem...i tell you what yours is an expression of somebody
who truly experienced it... i admire you for that...inovation ha!