John Clare Critical Essay | Critical Essay by John Wareham

Critical Essay by John Wareham

SOURCE: "Clare's 'The Awthorn,'" in The Explicator, Vol. 53, No. 1, Fall, 1994, pp. 197-200.

In the following excerpt, Wareham asserts that with "The Awthorn," Clare strives to unite the "transience" and "perpetuity" of nature within a single poem, thereby presenting his own vision of transcendence.

I love the awthorn well
The first green thing
In woods and hedges—black thorn dell
Dashed with its green first spring
When sallows shine in golden shene
These white thorn places in the black how green

How beautifully green
Though March has but begun
To tend primroses planted in the sun
The roots that[s] further in
Are not begun to bud or may be just begun

I love the white thorn bough
Hung over the mole hill
Where the spring feeding cow
Rubs off the dew drop chill
When on the cowslip pips and glossy thorn
The dews hang shining pearls at early morn

The early leafing-out of hawthorn (whitethorn) as harbinger of spring held a special fascination...
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