John Clare: I Am

You may have noticed I've been a bit down lately. Thanks for you lovin! A friend gave me a big fat book of poems today, fantastic!

I'll start with a depressed one from John Clare. He captures the tired emptiness of introverted depression


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 oblivious host,
Like shadows in love's frenzied, stifled throes-
And yet I am, and live- like vapors tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
Even the dearest, that I love 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.