Northampton, and the minds of Northamptonshire noblemen need no longer
be troubled that a poet was wandering in miserable happiness under
their park walls.

So far, the madness of Clare had been rather an exaltation of mind
than a collapse. Forsaken mainly by his friends--even Mrs. Emmerson's
letters ceased in 1837,--unrecognized by the new generation of writers
and of readers, hated by his neighbours, wasted with hopeless love,
he had encouraged a life of imagination and ideals. Imagination
overpowered him, until his perception of realities failed him.
He could see Mary Joyce or talk with her, he had a family of
dream-children by her: but if this was madness, there was method in
it. But now the blow fell, imprisonment for life: down went John Clare
into idiocy, "the ludicrous with the terrible." And even from this
desperate abyss he rose.

Earl Fitzwilliam paid for Clare's maintenance in the Northampton
Asylum, but at the ordinary rate for poor people. The asylum
authorities at least seemed to have recognized Clare as a man out
of the common, treating him as a "gentleman patient," and allowing
him--for the first twelve years--to go when he wished into
Northampton, where he would sit under the portico of All Saints'
Church in meditation. What dreams were these! "sometimes his face
would brighten up as if illuminated by an inward sun, overwhelming
in its glory and beauty." Sane intervals came, in which he wrote his
poems; and these poems were of a serenity and richness not surpassed
in his earlier work, including for instance "Graves of Infants" (May,
1844), "The Sleep of Spring" (1844), "Invitation to Eternity" (1848)
and "Clock-a-Clay" (before 1854). But little news of him went farther
afield than the town of Northampton, and the poems remained in