Careless Rambles by John Clare. John Clare

       PREFACE

      I stumbled on the name John Clare a few years ago in a book review. It was in the opening pages of Christopher Hitchins book God Is Not Great: “If you read John Clare’s imperishable rural poems you will catch the music of what I mean to convey.” Imperishable rural poems. Reading this I felt an immediate and overwhelming impulse to follow the name John Clare. I had heard of this poet. His name was imbedded in my subconscious, but it was not until later that I recalled the sing-song poem Little Trotty Wagtail.

      Coming across the Hitchens review and reading that particular sentence was like catching a side-long peripheral glance of a bird in flight, that just as easily could have been missed. I took to my computer to research what I could find of Clare. Before the night was out I felt I knew the direction I was headed in for the next year or so.

      The path’s even covered with insects—each sort Flock by, crowds in the smiles of the morning to sport: There’s the cricket in brown and his cousin in green, The grasshopper dancing, and o’er them is seen The ladybird dressed like a hunter in red, Creeping out from the blossom with whom she went bed. So good little girls, now disturb not their play And you, Freddy, stop till they hop far away, For to kill them in sport, as many folks will, And call it a pastime ’tis cruel and ill, As their lives are as sweet of enjoyment as ours And they dote like yourselves upon sunshine and flowers.

      Like a Jain monk gently sweeping the floor for insects, so as not to accidently step on them, Clare penned these lines with a deep compassion to identify with the natural