found its expression in "I Am" was another matter: it was the sense of
futility, of not having fulfilled his mission, of total eclipse
that spoke there. N. P. Willis, perhaps the Howitts, and a few more
worthies came for brief hours to see Clare, rather as a phenomenon
than as a poet; but Clare, who had sat with Elia and his assembled
host, who had held his own with the finest brains of his time and had
written such a cornucopia of genuine poetry now lying useless in his
cottage at Northborough, cannot but have regarded the Northampton
Asylum as "the shipwreck of his own esteems."

Clare was buried on May 25th, 1864, where he had wished to be, in the
churchyard at Helpston. The letter informing Mrs. Clare of his death
was delivered at the wrong address, and did not eventually reach her
at Northborough before Clare's coffin arrived at Helpston; scarcely
giving her time to attend the funeral the next day. Indeed, had the
sexton at Helpston been at home, the bearers would have urged him to
arrange for the funeral at once; in his absence, they left the coffin
in an inn parlour for the night, and a scandal was barely prevented.
A curious superstition grew up locally that it was not Clare's body
which was buried in that coffin: and among those who attended the last
rite, not one but found it almost impossible to connect this episode
with those days forty years before, when so many a notable man
was seen making through Helpston village for the cottage of the
eager-eyed, brilliant, unwearying young poet who was the talk of
London. After such a long silence and oblivion, even the mention
of John Clare's name in his native village awoke odd feelings of
unreality.

The poetry of John Clare, originally simple description of the country
and countrymen, or ungainly imitation of the poetic tradition as he