When summer-time came he would seek the woodlands, and penetrating into the leafy recesses "where sweet hermit Nature hides," he would track out some runlet—
On its journey wild,
Where dripping blue-bells on the bank did weep.
O what a lovely scene to Nature's child,
Through roots and o'er dead leaves to see it creep,
Watching on some moss'd stump in contemplation deep.
No insect 'scap'd him, from the gaudy plume
Of dazzling butterflies, so fine to view,
To the small midges that at evening come
Like dust-spots, dancing o'er the waters blue."
For hours he would lie—
"Stretched o'er an oaken plank,
To see the dancing beetles play."
Thus, as each season returned, he with unwearied eye was ever watching Nature at work. And she in return unfolded to him her secrets, as she does only to the humble, the innocent, and the loving. Intelligent men who in after days visited the scenes he has described, marvelled, when they found the reality so commonplace, at the genius which enabled this peasant boy to see beauties which to ordinary eyes were unperceivable. But John Clare possessed the Argus-eyes of love, and still more a rustic faith which enabled him to people the woods and meadows around him with a wondrous kingdom of fays, and ghosts, and giants, idealising for him these homely scenes with a sense of the invisible.
Sometimes indeed his imagination became almost a terror to him. There was a lonely road along which he had to take his cattle once a week, and it led through a part of the fen where it was reported a murder had once been committed. It was a fearful place for a country lad to pass, since here, as soon as it was dark, the wicked sprites held high carnival, and were accustomed to treat most unmercifully the belated traveller.
One autumn afternoon the gloom came on unusually early, and when poor John reached the haunted spot down came the ghosts upon him, and so pinched, and pulled, and buffeted him that when he entered the Blue Bell his livid face and chattering lips made his mistress think he was about to have the ague.
