The Lost World

I completely misread the opening of August from John Clare's The Shepherd's Calendar just now, thinking it was describing some kind of early nineteenth century lockdown: Doors are shut up as on a winters day / And not a child about then lies at play / The dust that winnows neath the breezes feet / Is all that stirs about the silent street / Fancy might think that desert spreading fear / Has whisperd terrors into quiets ear /  Or plundering armys past the place had come / And drove the lost inhabitants from home.

Not to worry. The lost inhabitants are not lodged indoors, indeed they're not lost at all, but it turns out they're all in the fields. And, boy, are they busy. The rural idyll turns out to be anything but idyllic, in terms of the hard graft undergone. Even by the nippers: The ruddy child nursed in the lap of care / In toils rude ways to do its little share / Beside its mother poddles oer the land / Sun burnt and stooping with a weary hand / Picking its tiney glean of corn or wheat / While crackling stubbles wound its legs and feet.

The precision of those last two lines serve as a reminder that Clare knew exactly what those fields were about.

I'm always conflicted reading him. Part of me imagining myself in his England; the other part fervently happy not to have ever been there - except in imagination.