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Photo of John Clare

Clare, John

John Clare was an English poet, born the son of a farm laborer who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation of its disruption. His poetry underwent a major re-evaluation in the late 20th century and he is often now considered to be among the most important 19th-century poets. His biographer Jonathan Bate states that Clare was "the greatest laboring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self". English poet

Email Poem - The WinterEmail Poem

The Winter's Spring

 The winter comes; I walk alone,
 I want no bird to sing;
To those who keep their hearts their own
 The winter is the spring.
No flowers to please—no bees to hum—
 The coming spring's already come.

I never want the Christmas rose
 To come before its time;
The seasons, each as God bestows,
 Are simple and sublime.
I love to see the snowstorm hing;
 'Tis but the winter garb of spring.

I never want the grass to bloom:
 The snowstorm's best in white.
I love to see the tempest come
 And love its piercing light.
The dazzled eyes that love to cling
 O'er snow-white meadows sees the spring.

I love the snow, the crumpling snow
 That hangs on everything,
It covers everything below
 Like white dove's brooding wing,
A landscape to the aching sight,
 A vast expanse of dazzling light.

It is the foliage of the woods
 That winters bring—the dress,
White Easter of the year in bud,
 That makes the winter Spring.
The frost and snow his posies bring,
 Nature's white spurts of the spring.



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