John Clare Short Poems

Famous Short John Clare Poems. Short poetry by famous poet John Clare. A collection of the all-time best John Clare short poems

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Evening Primrose  

 When once the sun sinks in the west,
And dewdrops pearl the evening's breast;
Almost as pale as moonbeams are,
Or its companionable star,
The evening primrose opes anew
Its delicate blossoms to the dew;
And, hermit-like, shunning the light,
Wastes its fair bloom upon the night,
Who, blindfold to its fond caresses,
Knows not the beauty it possesses;
Thus it blooms on while night is by;
When day looks out with open eye,
Bashed at the gaze it cannot shun,
It faints and withers and is gone.

What Is Life?  

 Resembles Life what once was held of Light,
Too ample in itself for human sight ?
An absolute Self--an element ungrounded--
All, that we see, all colours of all shade
[Image]By encroach of darkness made ?--
Is very life by consciousness unbounded ?
And all the thoughts, pains, joys of mortal breath,
A war-embrace of wrestling Life and Death ?

The Cuckoo  

 Cuckoos lead Bohemian lives, 
They fail as husbands and as wives, 
Therefore they cynically disparage 
Everybody else's marriage.

I Am  

 Poem by Anne-Marie Derése, translated by Judith Skillman.

I am the red brand
on the shoulder of the condemned,
the gallows and the rope,
the ax and the block,
the whip and the cross. 
I am the lion's tooth
in the flesh of the gazelle.
In my veins I have
the blood of the slave trader. 

Hangman,
I have deserved the hunger of the wolves. 

My victims have left me nothing
but their deaths.

The Flood  

 I thought my true love slept; 
Behind her chair I crept 
And pulled out a long pin; 
The golden flood came out, 
She shook it all about, 
With both our faces in.

Ah! little wren, I know 
Your mossy, small nest now 
A windy, cold place is; 
No eye can see my face, 
Howe'er it watch the place 
Where I half drown in bliss.

When I am drowned hald dead, 
She laughs and shakes her head; 
Flogged by her hair-waves, I 
Withdraw my face from there; 
But never once, I swear, 
She heard a mercy cry.