John Clare:
(13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864).
English poet. The son of a farm labourer, he became known for his celebrations of the English countryside and his sorrows at its disruption.
His work underwent major re-evaluation in the late 20th century; he is now often seen as a major 19th-century poet. His biographer Jonathan Bate called Clare “the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self.”
I love to see the cottage smoke curl upwards through the trees. The pigeons nestled round the cote on November days like these.
So dull and dark are the November days. The lazy mist high up the evening curled, and now the morn quite hides in the smoke and haze. The place we occupy seems all the world.
