Saturday commute cv: With the quiet

  And if I touch aright that quiet tone, 
  That soothing truth that shadows forth their own,
  Then many a year shall grow in after days
  And still find hearts to love my quiet lays ..

  What an expedition, 
  we always find in
  reading Clare, he
  conceives his lan-
  guage to afford,
  and dares making.

  Not of return, not
  of invasion, of dis-
  covery anticipated;
  not as an exile, or
  an invalid. He walks
  free. His verse re-
  ceives him, nothing
  brittle there.

  I can wish to know
  no better.
  

 























John Clare
"I Am"
  The Selected Poetry
  The Eternity of Nature
  [fragment]
  1835
Jonathan Bate
  editor
op. cit.