John Clare

John Clare: Poems chiefly from manuscript

I ne'er was struck before that hour
With love so sudden and so sweet,
Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower
And stole my heart away complete.
My face turned pale as deadly pale.

Physical collapse

Clare tracks the literal shutdown of his body—pale face, legs won't work. This isn't metaphor; he's documenting actual symptoms of what we'd call a panic attack.

My legs refused to walk away,
And when she looked, what could I ail?
My life and all seemed turned to clay.
And then my blood rushed to my face
And took my eyesight quite away,
The trees and bushes round the place
Seemed midnight at noonday.
I could not see a single thing,
Words from my eyes did start --

Synesthesia breakdown

His senses scramble—he's seeing words, not speaking them. The string/chord image suggests his eyes are vibrating like instruments.

They spoke as chords do from the string,
And blood burnt round my heart.

Temporal impossibility

Flowers don't bloom in winter. He's asking if this love is fundamentally against nature—doomed from the start.

Are flowers the winter's choice?
Is love's bed always snow?
She seemed to hear my silent voice,

Unrequited silence

She 'seemed' to hear but doesn't know love's appeals. He never spoke. The whole encounter happened in his head.

Not love's appeals to know.
I never saw so sweet a face
As that I stood before.
My heart has left its dwelling-place

Permanent displacement

Not 'won't' return—'can' not. He's describing permanent psychological damage, not temporary infatuation.

And can return no more
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Clare's Mental Breakdown in Real Time

CONTEXT John Clare wrote this around 1841-1864 while confined in Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, where he spent the last 23 years of his life. He had delusions of being Lord Byron, of having multiple wives, and experienced severe dissociative episodes.

This poem reads like clinical documentation. Stanza one tracks physical symptoms: facial pallor (vasoconstriction), leg paralysis, the sense of turning to clay (depersonalization). Stanza two escalates: blood rushing to face (vasodilation—the opposite of stanza one), vision going dark at noon (scotoma or dissociative blindness), and that bizarre image of "Words from my eyes did start." He's not crying—words are coming *from* his eyes, like his senses have rewired.

The "midnight at noonday" detail is specific enough to be real. This isn't poetic exaggeration—it's the visual distortion that accompanies severe anxiety or dissociative episodes. Clare is recording what a nervous system does when it catastrophically misfires.

Stanza three shifts to rhetorical questions that reveal the encounter's impossibility. "Are flowers the winter's choice?" Winter doesn't choose flowers—they don't exist then. "Is love's bed always snow?" Snow is sterile, frozen, where nothing grows. He's realized this love is structurally impossible, but his heart has already "left its dwelling-place" and "can return no more." That's not romance—that's permanent dissociation, the kind Clare actually experienced.

The Silent Encounter

Notice what doesn't happen: he never speaks to her. She never speaks to him. The whole poem is "silent voice" and "seemed to hear." This is crucial—the entire relationship exists in his head.

"She seemed to hear my silent voice, / Not love's appeals to know." Parse that carefully. She *seemed* to hear (but didn't), and she didn't know love's appeals (wasn't interested, or he never made them). The syntax is ambiguous on purpose—it captures the gap between what he experienced internally and what actually happened.

The poem's power comes from Clare documenting both the overwhelming intensity of his internal experience AND its complete disconnection from external reality. He's not lying about what he felt. His blood really did burn, his vision really did go dark. But none of it reached her. The encounter was real and entirely imaginary at the same time—which is exactly the kind of split consciousness Clare lived with in the asylum.