Verse

A beautiful poem by John Clare, there are times in life when everyone feels this way, though this is not my current mental state. I generally do not read poems but today i just stumbled upon a site and thoroughly enjoyed reading them. This also reminded me that i had not written a poem in quite some time. Used to write quite a few of them before as an hobby but now i guess i have lost the habit. The thing about poems i love is that , unlike a story a poem will mean something different for every person that reads it. It is subject to everyone's intepretation and experience. Thus any poem written by any person can have lots of significance and the writer might not even know about it .

I Am

by John Clare


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 oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am, and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness 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 e'en the dearest - that I loved the best -
Are strange - nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has 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.

--------------------------------------------------

I remember this poem very well. Had it in school and thoroughly loved it . I guess we had to learn it by heart and i remember my teacher took 2 days to explain it to the whole class line by line. I loved those school days especialy the 6th and 7th Stds. The innocence was still there and used to love being tucked in bed on a rainy day with an Enid blyton or Hardy boys book in hand.

Daffodils

by William Wordsworth


I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.


Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of the bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.


The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:


For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

------------------------------------------------

Another classic by William Wordsworth , having lived in a city my whole life and in a city like Mumbai being close to nature is an apparation. My dream house is a house in the hills surrounded by unpopulated hills lush and green with little streams to wade through and mud paths to travel upon. The house should look down upon a valley and it should snow occasionally in the winters. Someday i might be able to own such a house.....

The world is too much with us

by William Wordsworth


The world is too much with us ; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers :
Little we see in Nature that is ours ;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon !
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon ;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers ;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune ;
It moves us not. – Great God ! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn ;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea ;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

------------------------------------------------------------