I am

I am

John clare (1793-1864)

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 tossed
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise
Into the living see 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