John Clare, I Am

John Clare, I Am

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,

My friends forsake me like a memory lost;

I am the self-consumer of my woes,

They rise and vanish in oblivious host,

Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;

And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,

Into the living sea of waking dreams,

Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,

But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;

And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--

Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;

A place where woman never smil'd or wept;

There to abide with my creator, God,

And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:

Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;

The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

Glossary

forsake: to give up, to leave altogether; abandon

woe: distress or misery (βάσανο, συμφορά)

vanish: disappear

host: οικοδεσπότης, ξενιστής

oblivious, oblivion: forgetful, total forgetfulness (λήθη)

tost: (literary form of tossed) thrown lightly, carelessly or playfully

scorn: contempt or disdain felt toward a person or object considered despicable or unworthy (καταφρόνια, περιφρόνηση, χλεύη)

e'en: even

nay: no

trod: (tread, trod, trodden) walk on, over, or along; trample; crush (βαδίζω, ποδοπατώ)

smil'd: smiled

wept: (weep, wept, wept) cry a lot and loudly

abide with sb: stay with (old usage)

vault: θόλος, τάφος, θησαυροφυλάκιο