Page:The English Peasant.djvu/306

 (Golden Hours, 1873.)

JOHN CLARE.

fair-haired boy, with bright, eager eyes, clad in well-patched smock and heavy clouted shoes, is running joyfully over a wild heath at early dawn. Every now and then he stops to take breath, and sometimes plucks a bluebell or a sprig of marjoram yet he presses onwards, over common and field, through wood land and park, down into the valley and up the hill; at first singing, but after a time often sinking down wearily by the wayside for the sun is getting fierce, and his strength is well-nigh gone.

Whither is the child bent? Yesternight and again this morning he saw hanging midway between heaven and earth a beautifu land. To reach it he set out breakfastless, but alas! the nearer h seems to get to it, the further off it appears; and now, as he gain the summit of the hill he has made such an effort to climb, a dark cloud has fallen, and the alluring vision is lost in dull, grey gloom.

Ready to faint from sheer exhaustion and distress of mind, some men working in the neighbourhood take pity upon him, give him a crust or two from their wallets, and set him out on his road home. Thither he returns at nightfall, to receive his punishment, and then to hide his sorrows in the dark, and to sob over the destruction of the bright illimitable hopes that delusive horizon had aroused in his imagination.

Just as the child is father to the man, so this early adventure of John Clare proved an omen of what his life would be. Again and 292