The Shepherd's Tree
by John Clare

English poet. His first book, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, was printed by Keats' publishers Taylor and Hessey in 1820. It sold well, and Clare was presented as a 'ploughman poet' in the mould of Burns or Robert Bloomfield. His next book The Village Minstrel, appeared the following year, but The Shepherd's Calendar (1827), The Rural Muse (1835) took much longer to write and did not sell. His poetry was neglected in the nineteenth century, but he is now firmly established as one of the major poets of the Romantic school, which included Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley and Byron.

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The Shepherd's Tree
by John Clare

Huge elm, with rifted trunk all notched and scarred,
Like to a warrior's destiny! I love
To stretch me often on thy shadowed sward,
And hear the laugh of summer leaves above;
Or on thy buttressed roots to sit, and lean
In careless attitude, and there reflect
On times and deeds and darings that have been -
Old castaways, now swallowed in neglect, -
While thou art towering in thy strength of heart,
Stirring the soul to vain imaginings
In which life's sordid being hath no part.
The wind of that eternal ditty sings,
Humming of future things, that burn the mind
To leave some fragment of itself behind.

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The Shepherd's Tree by John Clare