Poor outcast refugees of mother earthText in John Clare, Poems of the Middle Period: 1822-1837, edd. Eric Robinson et al., Vol. II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 34, where the editors point out that lines 11-14 = lines 71-74 of Clare's To a Fallen Elm.
Condemnd in vain for rest & peace to roam
Ye birds & beasts of fates despited birth
Forced from the wilds which nature left your home
By vile invasions of encroaching men
By whom wild natures nearly dispossest
—The rabbit has no waste to make his den
& the coy p[h]easant has not where to rest
& cawing rook as spring returns agen
Scarce finds a tree whereon to build its nest
Ah tyrant knaves while preaching freedoms laws
Crying down tyranny in stronger powers
You glut your vile unsatiated maws
& freedoms birthright in the weak devours
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Vile Invasions of Encroaching Men
John Clare (1793–1864), A Favourite Nook Destroyed: