Friday, June 28, 2013

Suppose it were Friday lxxi: becoming the field ii


  And man, that noble insect, restless man
  Whose thoughts scale heaven in its mighty span,
  Pours forth his living soul in many a shade
  And taste runs riot in her every grade.
  While the low herd, mere savages subdued,
  With nought of feeling or of taste imbued
  Pass over sweetest scenes a careless eye
  As blank as midnight in its deepest dye;
  From these, and different far in rich degrees,
  Minds spring as various as the leaves of trees
  And Edens make where deserts spread before.


























John Clare
"I Am,"
  The Selected Poetry
  of John Clare
Jonathan Bate, editor
  The Midsummer Cushion
  Shadows of Taste [fragment]
circa 1830
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003©




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