Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

WRITTEN IN NORTHAMPTON COUNTY ASYLUM by JOHN CLARE

Poet Analysis

First Line: I AM: YET WHAT I AM NONE CARES OR KNOWS
Last Line: THE GRASS BELOW -- ABOVE THE VAULTED SKY.
Subject(s): ALIENATION (SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY); DEATH; DEPRESSION, MENTAL; INSANITY; RELIGION; SOLITUDE; ESTRANGEMENT; OUTCASTS; DEAD, THE; MENTALLY DEPRESSED; MENTAL DISTRESS; MADNESS; MENTAL ILLNESS; THEOLOGY; LONELINESS;
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 shadows in love's frenzied, stifled throes: --
And yet I am, and live -- like vapours tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
Even the dearest, that I love the best,
Are strange -- nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes, where man hath never trod,
A place where woman never smiled 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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