” I long for scenes where man hath never trod,

 A place where woman never smiled or wept,

there to abide with my Creator God,

 And sleep as in childhood sweetly slept.

 Untroubled and untroubling where I lie,

The grass below, above the vaulted sky.” 

( I Am, 1844 )

As the years passed John Clare’s behaviour became increasingly erratic. He was often unwell and was a very difficult man to get on with, something he blamed on everyone else. Indeed, so prickly was his personality that it was said that a later book of poetry flopped when he decided to sell it himself. In July, 1837, he was persuaded by friends to voluntarily commit himself to an asylum in Essex. It was while he was institutionalised that he wrote some of his best and most evocative poetry. In 1841, he decided to remove himself from the asylum and walk home. It was a distance of over a 100 miles and it took him 5 days during which time he slept in the ditches and ate the grass. Upon his return he received no welcome and no one was pleased to see him. He said he was looking for Mary Joyce, his first love, whom he had courted as a young man. He was convinced that he was married to her and not Patty, and that Mary was the mother of his children. When he was told that she had died 3 years earlier in a house fire he refused to believe it, and would often be heard to be calling her name.

John Clare was to remain another 5 months in the village. He was unwashed, unkempt, unloved, and unwanted. As he said himself, “I was abroad when I was at home.” He was also becoming increasingly delusional. He began telling people that he was the reincarnation of William Shakespeare and Lord Byron, and that they had both coalesced to become John Clare. In 1842, unable to cope with him anymore, Patty Turner had him committed to a nearby lunatic asylum where he was to spend the rest of his life. In 1844, he wrote the poem, “An Invite to Eternity.”

” Wilt thou go with me, sweet maid

Say, maiden, wilt thou go with me

Through the valley depths of shade,

Of night and dark obscurity’

Where the path hath lost its way’

Where the sun forgets the day.

Where there’s nor life nor light to see,

Sweet maiden, wilt thou go with me?”

John Clare, died on 20 May, 1864. He had lived through a period of great transition. England was becoming industrialised, the countryside depopulated, and its land turned over to commercial activity. Clare, who had so lovingly elaborated the cycle of rural life, was deeply distressed. Everything he knew and loved was being  destroyed, and his increasingly metaphysical poetry reflected his despair; and a slow descent into madness ensued, but it was a madness lit up at every stage by the beauty of his words and the depth and sensitivity of his imagination.