Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/767

 I

��JOHN CLARE

627 Written in Northampton County Asylum

RAM ' yet what I am who cares, or knows ? My friends forsake me like a memory lost. I am the self-consumer of my woes,

They rise and vanish, an oblivious host, Shadows of life, whose very soul is lost. And yet I am I live though I am toss'd

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, Into the living sea of waking dream,

Where there is neither sense of life, noi joys, But the huge shipwreck of my own esteem

And all that 's dear. Even those I loved the best

Are strange nay, they are stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod For scenes where woman never smiled or wept

There to abide with my Creator, God, And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,

Full of high thoughts, unborn. So let me lie,

The grass below, above, the vaulted sky.

��FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS 62 8 Dirge

LM on the bosom of thy God, Fair spirit, rest thec now' E'en while with ours thy footsteps trod, His seal was on thy brow.

��c

�� �