THE SHEPHERD’S TREE

Huge elm, with rifted trunk all notched and scarred,
Like to a warrior’s destiny, I love
To stretch me often on thy shadowed sward,
And hear the laugh of summer leaves above;
Or on thy buttressed roots to sit, and lean
In careless attitude, and there reflect
On times and deeds and darings that have been -
Old castaways, now swallowed in neglect,
While thou art towering in thy strength of heart,
Stirring the soul to vain imaginings
In which life’s sordid being hath no part.
The wind of that eternal ditty sings
Humming of future things, that burn the mind
To leave some fragment of itself behind.




John Clare, the nineteenth-century Northamptonshire poet, mirrored Robert Burns in his deep love of nature.

Young Lambs

by John Clare (1920)


The spring is coming by a many signs;
The trays are up, the hedges broken down,
That fenced the haystack, and the remnant shines
Like some old antique fragment weathered brown.
And where suns peep, in every sheltered place,
The little early buttercups unfold
A glittering star or two—till many trace
The edges of the blackthorn clumps in gold.
And then a little lamb bolts up behind
The hill and wags his tail to meet the yoe,
And then another, sheltered from the wind,
Lies all his length as dead—and lets me go
Close bye and never stirs but baking lies,
With legs stretched out as though he could not rise.

by John Clare