Happy birthday, Clare.

Hilton, John Clare, 1820

John Clare was born on this day in 1793.

I AM!

            I am—yet what I am none cares or knows; 

My friends forsake me like a memory lost: 

I am the self-consumer of my woes— 

They rise and vanish in oblivious host, 

Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes 

And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed 

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 life’s esteems; 

Even the dearest that I loved 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 wept 

There to abide with my Creator, God, 

And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, 

Untroubling and untroubled where I lie

The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

John Clare