We mark National Poetry Day with John Clare’s Anticipating the Coming Autumn.
Clare was not strong on punctuation, and is likely frowned upon in these puritanical days where the ability to put your apostrophes in the right place is so important, and knowing how to analyse sentence structure sometimes seems more crucial than any meanings it might have. However, Clare’s ability to capture nature’s essence is hard to beat:
I love the fitfull gusts that shakes
The casement all the day
And from the mossy elm tree takes
The faded leaf away
Twirling it by the window-pane
With thousand others down the lane
I love to see the shaking twig
Dance till the shut of eve
The sparrow on the cottage rig
Whose chirp would make believe
That spring was just now flirting by
In summers lap with flowers to lie
I love to see the cottage smoke
Curl upwards through the naked trees
The pigeons nestled round the coat
On dull November days like these
The cock upon the dung-hill crowing
The mill sails on the heath agoing
The feather from the ravens breast
Falls on the stubble lea
The acorns near the old crows nest
Fall pattering down the tree
The grunting pigs that wait for all
Scramble and hurry where they fall