John Clare, Autumn, and Writing Without Fear of Repetition
A few days ago Reddit user u/Rare_Entertainment92 posted Autumn by John Clare. The post was an image of a page from a book and I, preferring to get easily copyable text, searched "john clare autumn" on DuckDuckGo and Google.
An hour later I concluded that John Clare had a serious thing for Autumn, having found fourteen Autumn-related poems of his. Of those fourteen, two poems don't have the word Autumn in the title, but one of those two has the word Autumn in the body of the poem. The other twelve poems have the word Autumn in the title and of those twelve, seven poems are simply titled "Autumn".
What follows is the poem that got me started on falling into the pile of leaves that is John Clare's autumnal poetry. Thanks to u/Rare_Entertainment92 for tripping me up so thoroughly.
Autumn
The thistledown's flying, though the winds are all still,
On the green grass now lying, now mounting the hill,
The spring from the fountain now boils like a pot;
Through stones past the counting it bubbles red-hot.
The ground parched and cracked is like overbaked bread,
The greensward all wracked is, bents dried up and dead.
The fallow fields glitter like water indeed,
And gossamers twitter, flung from weed unto weed.
Hill-tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun,
And the rivers we're eying burn to gold as they run;
Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air;
Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.
by John Clare
An hour later I concluded that John Clare had a serious thing for Autumn, having found fourteen Autumn-related poems of his. Of those fourteen, two poems don't have the word Autumn in the title, but one of those two has the word Autumn in the body of the poem. The other twelve poems have the word Autumn in the title and of those twelve, seven poems are simply titled "Autumn".
What follows is the poem that got me started on falling into the pile of leaves that is John Clare's autumnal poetry. Thanks to u/Rare_Entertainment92 for tripping me up so thoroughly.
Autumn
The thistledown's flying, though the winds are all still,
On the green grass now lying, now mounting the hill,
The spring from the fountain now boils like a pot;
Through stones past the counting it bubbles red-hot.
The ground parched and cracked is like overbaked bread,
The greensward all wracked is, bents dried up and dead.
The fallow fields glitter like water indeed,
And gossamers twitter, flung from weed unto weed.
Hill-tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun,
And the rivers we're eying burn to gold as they run;
Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air;
Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.
by John Clare