[bfisher]

Besides the pastoral poems, and there are many lovely ones, there is quite a lot in Clare's poetry about the current changes affecting the rural poor:

The disparity between wealth and labour:

ADDRESS TO PLENTY IN WINTER.

O THOU Bliss! to riches known,
Stranger to the poor alone;
Giving most where none’s requir’d,
Leaving none where most’s desir’d;
...
Now the cutting winter’s come,
‘Tis but just to find a home,
In some shelter, dry and warm,
That will shield me from the storm.
Toiling in the naked fields,
Where no bush a shelter yields,
Needy Labour dithering stands,
Beats and blows his numbing hands;
And upon the crumping snows
Stamps, in vain, to warm his toes.


The disruption to an older and kindlier way of life and a loss of community:

ELEGY ON THE RUINS OF PICKWORTH, RUTLANDSHIRE.

THESE buried ruins, now in dust forgot,
These heaps of stone the only remnants seen, —
“The Old Foundations” still they call the spot,
Which plainly tells inquiry what has been —

A time was once, though now the nettle grows
In triumph o’er each heap that swells the ground,
When they, in buildings pil’d, a village rose,
With here a cot, and there a garden crown’d.
...
Mysterious cause! still more mysterious plann’d,
(Although undoubtedly the will of Heaven)
To think what careless and unequal hand
Metes out each portion that to man is given.


The changes to the Poor Law:

THE VILLAGE FUNERAL
...
Yon workhouse stands as their asylum now,
The place where poverty demands to live;
Where parish bounty scowls his scornful brow,
And grudges the scant fare he’s forc’d to give.

Beyond the pastorals and the poetry of protest, there are glimpses of greater truths and the shared fate of all humanity; we are all fellow travelers to the grave

also from ELEGY ON THE RUINS OF PICKWORTH

There’s not a rood of land demands our toil,
There’s not a foot of ground we daily tread,
But gains increase from time’s devouring spoil,
But holds some fragment of the human dead.

The very food, which for support we have,
Claims for its share an equal portion too;
The dust of many a long-forgotten grave
Serves to manure the soil from whence it grew.
...
Like yours, awaits for me that common lot;
‘Tis mine to be of every hope bereft:
A few more years and I shall be forgot,
And not a vestige of my memory left.