and dreamt, and hoped. He told her how he loved the trees and flowers,
and the singing nightingales, and the lark rising into the skies, and the
humming insects, and the sailing clouds, and all the grand and beautiful
works of nature. But he never told her that he thought her more beautiful
than ought else in God's great world. This he never said in words, but
his eyes expressed it; and Mary, perhaps, understood the language of his
eyes. Mary always listened attentively, yet seldom said anything. Her
eyes hung upon his lips, and his lips hung upon her eyes, and thus both
worshipped the god of love.

The sweet dream lasted full six months--six glorious sunlit months of
spring and summer. Then the father of Mary Joyce heard of the frequent
meetings of his daughter with John Clare, and though looking upon both as
mere children, he sternly forbid her to see 'the beggar-boy' again. His
heart of well-to-do farmer revolted at the bare idea of his offspring
talking with the son of one who was not even a farm-labourer, but had to
be maintained as a pauper by the parish. Explaining this great fact to
his blue-eyed daughter, he deeply impressed its terrible importance upon
her soft little heart, making her think with a sort of shudder of the
pale boy who told her such pretty stories. Perhaps Mary nevertheless
preserved a lingering fondness for her little lover's memory, for though
many wooed her in after life, she never wedded, and died a spinster. As
for John Clare, he fretted long and deeply, and all his life thought of
Mary Joyce as the symbol, ideal, and incarnation of love. With the
exception of a few verses addressed to 'Patty,' his future wife, the
whole of Clare's love poetry came to be a dedication and worship of Mary.
As yet, in these youthful days of grief and affection, he wrote no
verses, though he felt a burning desire to give vent to his feelings in
some shape or other. Having lost his Mary, he carved her name into a
hundred trees, and traced it, with trembling hand, on stones, and walls,