to much that was painful in the subsequent part of his existence.

Once more a farm-labourer at Helpston, John Clare was all his own again.
Thomson's 'Seasons' never left his pocket; he read the book when going to
the fields in the morning, and read it again when eating his humble meal
at noonday under a hedge. The evenings he invariably spent in writing
verses, on any slips and bits of paper he could lay hold of. Soon he
accumulated a considerable quantity of these fugitive pieces of poetry,
and wishing to preserve them, yet ashamed to let it be known that he was
writing verses, he hid the whole at the bottom of an old cupboard in his
bedroom. What made him more timid than ever to confess his doings to
either friends or acquaintances, was their entire want of sympathy,
manifested to him on more than one occasion. It sometimes happened, on a
Sunday, that he would take a walk through the fields, in company with his
father and mother, or a neighbour; and seeing something particularly
beautiful, an early rose, or a little insect, or the many-hued sky, John
Clare would break forth into ecstasies, declaiming, in his own
enthusiastic way, on what he deemed the marvellous things upon this
marvellous earth. His voice rose; his eyes sparkled; his heart bounded
within him in intense love and admiration of this grand, this
incomprehensible, this ever-wonderful realm of the Creator which men call
the world. But whenever his companions happened to listen to this
involuntary outburst of enthusiasm, they broke out in mocking laughter. A
rose was to them a rose, and nothing more; an apple they valued higher,
as something eatable; and, perhaps, over plum-pudding they would have got
enthusiastic, too. As it was, poor John was a constant butt for all the
shafts of coarse ridicule; even his own parents, to whom he was attached
with the tendered affection, and who fully returned his love, did not
spare him. Old Parker Clare shook his head when he heard his son
descanting upon the beauties of nature, and reproved him on many