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Saturday 20 March 2021

Saturday Rave: The Shepherd's Calendar. March. By John Clare.

 Spring, the sweet spring

Is the year's pleasant thing


...or so says the sane, if unwise, Thomas Nashe. 

But John Clare, who was called mad, tells it like it really is:


March month of "many weathers" wildly hums

In hail & snow & rain & threatning comes...


...Yet winter seems half weary of its toil

& round the ploughman on the elting soil

Will thread a minutes sunshine wild & warm

Thro the ragged places of the swimming storm

& oft the shepherd in his path will spy

The little daisy in the wet grass lye

That to the peeping sun enlivens gay

Like Labour smiling on a holiday


photo by Willow

Anyone who's lived through an English winter knows the joy of spotting a daisy at last! 

John Clare is the poet-genius of small things. How glorious that nearly two hundred years after that daisy gave him a jolt of hope and joy his vision is still shining through the darkness of this year.

Word To Use Today: elting. This is a dialect word and means softening, or muddy. It comes from the Old Norse elta which means to knead.





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