Written in Northampton County Asylum
John Clare 1793 (Helpston) – 1864 (St Andrew's Hospital)
I am! yet what I am who cares, or knows?
My friends forsake me like a memory lost.
I am the self-consumer of my woes;
They rise and vanish, an oblivious host,
Shadows of life, whose very soul is lost.
And yet I am—I live—though I am toss’d
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dream,
Where there is neither sense of life, nor joys,
But the huge shipwreck of my own esteem
And all that’s dear. Even those I loved the best
Are strange—nay, they are stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man has never trod—
For scenes where woman never smiled or wept—
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Full of high thoughts, unborn. So let me lie,—
The grass below; above, the vaulted sky.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 02, 2023
- 44 sec read
- 117 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABAXBB CDCDEE FGFGHH |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 768 |
Words | 148 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6 |
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"Written in Northampton County Asylum" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 23 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/22363/written-in-northampton-county-asylum>.
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