The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #173260 Message #4202357
Posted By: GUEST,henryp
11-May-24 - 08:35 AM
Thread Name: English tunes & poems by John Clare
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare
Overnight, in the eyes of the law, enclosure turned local people hunting for food into poachers. If caught, they now faced severe penalties; after all, it was the landowners who sat in judgement on them! While there are many songs about poachers - and the punishment of transportation - songs about the enclosures themselves are elusive.
These are the final lines of 'The Mores', to complete the lines given above. They express Clare's thoughts and feelings about the new walls and boundaries. On some estates, the villagers were obliged to build the walls that kept them out! Clare's lines are continuous; the breaks are mine to make them a little easier to read.
Fence now meets fence in owners’ little bounds Of field and meadow large as garden grounds In little parcels little minds to please With men and flocks imprisoned ill at ease
Each little path that led its pleasant way As sweet as morning leading night astray Where little flowers bloomed round a varied host That travel felt delighted to be lost
Nor grudged the steps that he had ta-en as vain When right roads traced his journeys and again - Nay, on a broken tree he’d sit awhile To see the mores and fields and meadows smile
Sometimes with cowslaps smothered - then all white With daiseys - then the summer’s splendid sight Of cornfields crimson o’er the headache bloomd Like splendid armys for the battle plumed
He gazed upon them with wild fancy’s eye As fallen landscapes from an evening sky These paths are stopt - the rude philistine’s thrall Is laid upon them and destroyed them all
Each little tyrant with his little sign Shows where man claims earth glows no more divine But paths to freedom and to childhood dear A board sticks up to notice ‘no road here’
And on the tree with ivy overhung The hated sign by vulgar taste is hung As tho’ the very birds should learn to know When they go there they must no further go
Thus, with the poor, scared freedom bade goodbye And much they feel it in the smothered sigh And birds and trees and flowers without a name All sighed when lawless law’s enclosure came
And dreams of plunder in such rebel schemes Have found too truly that they were but dreams