I Am

John Clare 1793 (Helpston) – 1864 (St Andrew's Hospital)



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 shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd 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.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 27, 2023

43 sec read
548

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABAXBB CXCADD EFEFGG
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 748
Words 141
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6

John Clare

John Clare was an English poet in his time he was commonly known as the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet more…

All John Clare poems | John Clare Books

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