John Clare's Cottage

We went to visit the 'Peasant Poet' John Clare's Cottage in Helpston, near Peterborough.

I Am - John Clare

I am - yet what I am, none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:-
I am the self-consumer of my woes;-
They rise and vanish in oblivion's host,
Like shadows in love's frenzied stifled throes;-
And yet I am, and live - like vapours tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, -
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
Even the dearest, that I love the best
Are strange - nay, rather stranger than the rest.

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 I in childhood, sweetly slept,
Untroubling, and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below - above the vaulted sky. 

Joanna and Elizabeth with their 5ft2in friend

If only John could see what has happened to his cottage!

Apparently five families lived in this building

5'2" John was rejected by the Northamptonshire militia at a time when Britain was nervous about invasion, and the militia had money.  Clare walked 80 miles home from Epping Forest Asylum, surviving on grass to fill his stomach.