Spring by John Clare

As I was looking through some books in the Boston Public Library I stumbled on a collection of poems by the Englishman John Clare (1793-1846). His meditations on nature and its spirituality place him in the same category as Henry Thoreau. Check out this poem titled "Spring."

                                      Spring

Pale sun beams gleam
That nurture a few flowers
Pilewort and daisey and a sprig o'green
On whitethorn bushes
In the leaf-strewn hedge

These harbingers
Tell spring is coming fast
And these the schoolboy marks
And wastes an hour from school
Agen the old pasture-hedge

Cropping the daisey
And the pilewort flowers
Pleased with the Spring and all he looks upon
He ope's his spelling-book
And hides her blossoms there

Shadows fall dark
Like black in the pale Sun
And lye the bleak day long
Like blackstock under hedges
And bare wind-rocked trees

Tis'dull but pleasant
In the hedge-bottom lined
With brown seer leaves the last
Year littered there and left
Mopes the hedge-sparrow

With trembling wings and cheeps
Its welcome to pale sunbeams
Creeping through and further on
Made of green moss
The nest and green-blue eggs are seen

All tokens spring and every day
Green and more green hedges and close
And everywhere appears
Still 'tis but March
But still that March is spring