John Clare and the Triumph of Little Things

Abstract

John Clare is a great poet of little things. He was drawn to the minor — the tiny, the seemingly insignificant. His poetry celebrates small spaces and littlest creatures — the grasshopper, the bee, the mouse, the drop of dew, nitches, hollows, nests:

The oddling bush close sheltered hedge new plashed

Of which springs early liking makes a guest

First with a shade of green though winter dashed

There full as soon bumbarrels make a nest

Of mosses grey with cobwebs closely tied

& warm & rich as feather bed within

With little hole on its contrary side

That pathway peepers may no knowledge win

Of what her little oval nest contains

Ten eggs & often twelve with dusts of red

Soft frittered & full soon the little lanes

Screen the young crowd & hear the twittring song

Of the old birds who call them to be fed

While down the hedge they hang & hide along

(John Clare, ‘Bumbarrel’s Nest’ (1832–7), 2003, p. 219)