"First love will with the heart remain
When all its hopes are by,
As frail rose-blossoms still retain
Their fragrance when they die.
And joy's first dreams will haunt the wind
With shades from whence they sprung,
As summer leaves the stems behind,
On which spring blossoms hung."
And now though that sweet form lay silent in the grave, and Clare himself was sinking into a darkness more terrible—a real imprisonment of mind and soul—it was his unhappy fate to believe that the joy which, in his youth, had appeared at so hopeless a distance, was now about to be realized, and that Mary was his wife, only waiting for him to come home again.
How truly do the lines just quoted describe his woeful experience! As the real world passed away from his vision, the hallucination took more and more hold of him. In a volume recently published, "Life and Remains of John Clare," by Mr J. L. Cherry, a number of poems are given which were written during the long period of mental illusion into which Clare now fell. Out of seventy-three pieces, forty-nine are love poems. One is "To my Wife,—a Valentine," but the greater part of the remainder are evidently inspired by the memory of the lost one. Sometimes she is addressed by name, sometimes she is disguised under other names, sometimes she has other surnames, Mary Batiman, Mary Littlechild, Mary Appleby, Mary Dove. Even Nature must talk to him of his beloved.
"The cowslips blooming everywhere
My heart's own thought would steal:
I nip't them that they should not hear:
They smiled, and would reveal;
And o'er each meadow, right or wrong,
They sing the name I've worshipped long.
The brook that mirrored clear the sky—
Full well I know the spot;
The mouse-ear looked with bright blue eye,
And said "Forget-me-not."
And from the brook I turned away,
But heard it many an after day.
