I AM by JOHN CLARE | 19th Century poem analysis | John Clare I Am poetry ANALYSIS & CLOSE READING

 

I am yet what I am none cares or knows

My friends forsake me like a memory lost

I am the self-consumer of my woes

They rise and vanish in oblivion’s host

Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes

And yet I am and live like vapours tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise

Into the living sea of waking dreams

Where there is neither sense of life or joys

But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems

Even the dearest that I love the best

Are strange nay rather stranger than the rest

I long for scenes where man hath never 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