It is not now as it has been of yore;

Turn where so’er I may.

By night or day.

The things which I have seen, I now

Can see no more.

William Wordsworth

We  look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that

Tell of saddest thought.

P. B .Shelley

I hear it now, nor dream of woes,

The storm is settled to repose.

Those fears are dead – Wat will not die

In fading Life’s mortality?

Those truths have fled, and left behind

A real world and doubting mind.

John Clare (1827)

There was a time my bit of ground

Made freemen of the slave;

The ass no pindar’d dare to pound

When I his supper gave;

The gypsies’ camp was not afraid,

I made his dwelling free,

Till vile enclosure came and made

A parish slave of me.

I am the last

Of all the (common) field that fell;

My name is nearly all that’s left

Of what was ‘Swordy Well’.

John Clare (extracted)