Who has not dreamed a world of bliss
On a bright sunny noon like this,
Couched by his native brook’s green maze,
With comrade of his boyish days,
While all around them seemed to be
Just as in joyous infancy?
Who has not loved, at such an hour,...

  AH! my heart is weary waiting,
    Waiting for the May,—
Waiting for the pleasant rambles
Where the fragrant hawthorn-brambles,
  With the woodbine alternating,
    Scent the dewy way.
  Ah! my heart is weary waiting,
    Waiting for the...

They come! the merry summer months of beauty, song, and flowers;
They come! the gladsome months that bring thick leafiness to bowers.
Up, up, my heart! and walk abroad; fling cark and care aside;
Seek silent hills, or rest thyself where peaceful waters glide;
Or,...

Up the dale and down the bourne,
  O’er the meadow swift we fly;
Now we sing, and now we mourn,
  Now we whistle, now we sigh.

By the grassy-fringèd river,
  Through the murmuring reeds we sweep;
Mid the lily-leaves we quiver,
  To their...

O Perfect Light, which shaid away
  The darkness from the light,
And set a ruler o’er the day,
  Another o’er the night—

Thy glory, when the day forth flies,
  More vively doth appear,
Than at mid day unto our eyes
  The shining sun is...

O Gentle, gentle summer rain,
  Let not the silver lily pine,
The drooping lily pine in vain
  To feel that dewy touch of thine,—
To drink thy freshness once again,
O gentle, gentle summer rain!

In heat the landscape quivering lies;
  The...

How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!

How it clatters along the roofs,
Like the tramp of hoofs!
How it gushes and struggles out
From the...

    UNTREMULOUS in the river clear,
Toward the sky’s image, hangs the imaged bridge;
    So still the air that I can hear
The slender clarion of the unseen midge;
  Out of the stillness, with a gathering creep,
Like rising wind in leaves, which now...

I Love at eventide to walk alone,
Down narrow glens, o’erhung with dewy thorn,
Where from the long grass underneath, the snail,
Jet black, creeps out, and sprouts his timid horn.
I love to muse o’er meadows newly mown,
Where withering grass perfumes the...

Poet: John Clare

No more the battle or the chase
  The phantom tribes pursue,
But each in its accustomed place
  The Autumn hails anew:
And still from solemn councils set
  On every hill and plain,
The smoke of many a calumet
  Ascends to heaven again.