pretty verses, Mary Joyce was always Clare's ideal of love and
beauty, and when thirty years afterwards, he lost his reason, among
the first indications of the approaching calamity was his declaration
that Mary, who had then long been in her grave, had passed his
window. While under the influence of this delusion he wrote the poem
entitled "First Love's Recollections," of which the following are the
first two stanzas:--

First love will with the heart remain
When all its hopes are bye,
As frail rose-blossoms still retain
Their fragrance when they die;
And joy's first dreams will haunt the mind
With shades from whence they sprung,
As summer leaves the stems behind
On which spring's blossoms hung.

Mary! I dare not call thee dear,
I've lost that right so long;
Yet once again I vex thine ear
With memory's idle song.
Had time and change not blotted out
The love of former days,
Thou wert the last that I should doubt
Of pleasing with my praise.

Clare's engagement at the Blue Bell having terminated, a stone mason
of Market Deeping offered to teach him his craft on payment of a
premium which, though a very moderate sum, was far beyond the means
of Parker Clare. A shoemaker in the village next offered to take him