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
Clare drops you straight into a hiding place and never lets you leave it. The poem is a single unhurried breath of description, a sonnet's worth of lines that loosen the usual tightness of the form into something closer to drifting attention. He's tucked into a hollowed ash stump, listening to the world go on without him — ploughmen heard but not seen, sunlight too shy to do more than "molest" him with a smile. That word choice is the quiet thrill of the poem: nature as gentle intruder, barely touching him through the "leafy armies" overhead. The flowers "wishing to be seen" peeking through grass feels almost shy, companionable, alive with small want. What lands now is the sheer permission in it — to disappear into stillness, letting cricket, bird, and bee do all the talking. It's a small, exact map of how solitude can feel sweetened rather than lonely, something anyone overstimulated today can still recognize and crave.
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