Wednesday, November 07, 2007

 

November (II)

John Clare, Written in November:
Autumn I love thy latter end to view
In cold novembers day so bleak and bare
When like lifes dwindld thread worn nearly thro
Wi lingering pottering pace and head bleached bare
Thou like an old man bids the world adieu
I love thee well and often when a child
Have roamd the bare brown heath a flower to find
And in the moss clad vale and wood bank wild
Have cropt the little bell flowers paley blue
That trembling peept the sheltering bush behind
When winnowing north winds cold and blealy blew
How have I joyd wi dithering hands to find
Each fading flower and still how sweet the blast
Woud bleak novembers hour Restore the joy thats past
What is Clare's bell flower? Is it Campanula rotundifolia (shown above)? Is it the same as the "blue heath-bell" which Clare in The Wild-Flower Nosegay calls "last-lingering of the flowery kind"?
And when the summer's swarms, half-nameless, fled,
  And autumn's landscape faded bleak and wild,
When leaves 'gan fall and show their berries red,
  Still with the season would I be beguil'd

Lone spots to seek, home leaving far behind,—
  Where wildness rears her lings and teazle-burs,
And where, last-lingering of the flowery kind,
Blue heath-bells tremble 'neath the shelt'ring furze.



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