Written in Northampton County Asylum by John Clare
b"Clare read by Classic Poetry Aloud:\\nhttp://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/\\n\\nGiving voice to classic poetry.\\n\\n---------------------------------------------------\\n\\nWritten in Northampton County Asylum\\n by John Clare\\n\\nI am! yet what I am who cares, or knows? \\nMy friends forsake me like a memory lost. \\nI am the self-consumer of my woes; \\nThey rise and vanish, an oblivious host, \\nShadows of life, whose very soul is lost. \\nAnd yet I am\\u2014I live\\u2014though I am toss'd \\n \\nInto the nothingness of scorn and noise, \\nInto the living sea of waking dream, \\nWhere there is neither sense of life, nor joys, \\nBut the huge shipwreck of my own esteem \\nAnd all that 's dear. Even those I loved the best \\nAre strange\\u2014nay, they are stranger than the rest. \\n \\nI long for scenes where man has never trod\\u2014 \\nFor scenes where woman never smiled or wept\\u2014 \\nThere to abide with my Creator, God, 15 \\nAnd sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, \\nFull of high thoughts, unborn. So let me lie,\\u2014 \\nThe grass below; above, the vaulted sky."