Why I read John Clare, Part 2

I also read John Clare for the empathy and compassion. I love in this poem -- I've seen it titled both "Gipsies" and "The Gypsy Camp" -- the perspective dipping inside and out of minds and bodies, how the boy "thinks upon the fire" and the gypsy "tucks his hands up." How the dog "feels the heat too strong" and how his pathetic condition (and the early image of the forest that "lies alone") adds so much impact to the poem's conclusion about the people it describes. Clare wrote this while a resident of the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, where he died in 1864, in May.

Engraving, Northampton General Lunatic Asylum; thanks, Wik

The Gypsy Camp

The snow falls deep; the forest lies alone;

The boy goes hasty for his load of brakes,

Then thinks upon the fire and hurries back;

The gypsy knocks his hands and tucks them up.

And seeks his squalid camp, half hidden in snow,

Beneath the oak which breaks away the wind,

And bushes close in snow-like hovel warm;

There tainted mutton wastes upon the coals,

And the half-wasted dog squats close and rubs,

Then feels the heat too strong, and goes aloof;

He watches well, but none a bit can spare,

And vainly waits the morsel thrown away.

Tis thus they live -- a picture to the place,

A quiet, pilfering, unprotected race