The Soul of John Clare: Poet of nature

Insane, free, and lost to the world

John Clare (Creative Commons CC by NC)

The countryside in which John Clare was born was an unrestricted pastoral world. The enclosing of the common land was now beginning and the roaming youth who listened attentively to the tales of the old shepherdess and the folk songs of his father could not evade the transforming impulse that pushed farmhands and herders into new, grimy…