Selected Poems

‘All nature has a feeling: wood, brooks, fields
Are life eternal – and in silence they
Speak happiness’

John Clare produced some of English poetry’s most poignant and glorious lyrics. Writing not as an observer of nature, but out of an intimate knowledge of the wheatfields, hedgerows and ditches of his village in Northamptonshire, he described animals, insects, trees, rivers, sunlight and clouds with sublime sensitivity. But as enclosures and ‘improvements’ came in the early nineteenth century, dismembering the rural landscape, his later poems became infused with a sense of disorientation and loss, and scattered through with threads of madness. Clare’s genius has been rediscovered by fellow poets in every generation since his death, from Dylan Thomas to Ted Hughes.

This landmark edition, based on John Clare’s original manuscripts, is organized by theme, with an introduction discussing Clare’s work in the context of his tragic life. The volume also includes notes and a glossary.