| Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900. |
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| John Clare. 1793–1864 |
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| 621. Written in Northampton County Asylum |
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| I AM! yet what I am who cares, or knows? | |
| My friends forsake me like a memory lost. | |
| I am the self-consumer of my woes; | |
| They rise and vanish, an oblivious host, | |
| Shadows of life, whose very soul is lost. | 5 |
| And yet I am—I live—though I am toss'd | |
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| Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, | |
| Into the living sea of waking dream, | |
| Where there is neither sense of life, nor joys, | |
| But the huge shipwreck of my own esteem | 10 |
| And all that 's dear. Even those I loved the best | |
| Are strange—nay, they are stranger than the rest. | |
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| I long for scenes where man has never trod— | |
| For scenes where woman never smiled or wept— | |
| There to abide with my Creator, God, | 15 |
| And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, | |
| Full of high thoughts, unborn. So let me lie,— | |
| The grass below; above, the vaulted sky. | |
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