How sweet to be thus nestling deep in boughs, Upon an ashen stoven pillowing me; Faintly are heard the ploughmen at their ploughs, But not an eye can find its way to see. The sunbeams scarce molest me with a smile, So thickly the leafy armies gather round; And where they do, the breeze blows cool the while, Their leafy shadows dancing on the ground. Full many a flower, too, wishing to be seen, Perks up its head the hiding grass between,-- In mid-wood silence, thus, how sweet to be; Where all the noises, that on peace intrude, Come from the chittering cricket, bird, and bee, Whose songs have charms to sweeten solitude.
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📖 About this poem
John Clare tucks us right into the woods with him, settled into the hollow of an old ash stump, and for fourteen lines nothing much happens — which is the whole point. This is a sonnet built for stillness rather than argument, its rhymes falling soft and unhurried, more hush than climax. Clare's gift was always looking closely at ordinary things until they glow, and here it's the "leafy armies" of the canopy, shadows dancing rather than just falling, flowers "wishing to be seen" as they peek through grass. That small personifying touch makes the whole wood feel companionable, almost shy. The ploughmen stay faint and distant, proof the world hasn't vanished, just softened. What lands now is how recognizable this feeling is — the specific relief of finding a pocket of quiet where sound turns to texture: cricket, bird, bee, nothing demanding anything of you. It's a poem about the sweetness of being briefly unreachable.
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