I miss the hazel's happy green,
The bluebell's quiet hanging blooms,
Where envy's sneer was never seen,
Where staring malice never comes.

This and many other verses, not the least pathetic in our language,
were written by John Clare on June 20th, 1832, on the occasion of his
moving out of a small and crowded cottage in a village street to
a roomy, romantic farmhouse standing in its own grounds. Was this
ingratitude? ask rather, is the dyer's hand subdued to what it works
in?

Clare rapidly proceeded with his new collection of poems, destined
never to appear in his lifetime. In a thick oblong blank-book, divided
into four sections to receive Tales in Verse, Poems, Ballads and
Songs, and Sonnets, he copied his best work in a hand small but
clear, and with a rare freedom from slips of the pen. His proposals,
reprinted with a warm-hearted comment in the _Athenaeum_ of 1832, were
in these terms:

The proposals for publishing these fugitives being addressed to
friends no further apology is necessary than the plain statement of
facts. Necessity is said to be the mother of invention, but there
is very little need of invention for truth; and the truth is, that
difficulty has grown up like a tree of the forest, and being no longer
able to conceal it, I meet it in the best way possible by attempting
to publish them for my own benefit and that of a numerous and
increasing family. It were false delicacy to make an idle parade
of independence in my situation, and it would be unmanly to make
a troublesome appeal to favours, public or private, like a public