John Clare (1793-1864): I am

I  a m

I AM: yet what I am none cares or knows,
    My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer oof my woes,
    They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am, anmd live with shadows tost

Into the nothingsness of scorn and noise,
    Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
    But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And eén the dearest─that I loved thes best─
Are strange─nay─ rather stranger than te rest.

I long for scenes where man has ever trod,
    A place where woman never smiled or wept;
There to abide with my Creator, God,
    And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below─above the vaulted sky.

JOHN CLARE (1793-1864).