In this installment, Michael Collier reads “Emmonsail’s Health in Winter” by John Clare. Collier is a professor of English at the University of Maryland and director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Middlebury College.

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John Clare, “Emmonsail’s Heath in Winter”

I love to see the old heath’s withered brake
Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling,
While the old heron from the lonely lake
Starts slow and flaps his melancholy wing,
And oddling crow in idle motions swing
On the half rotten ashtree’s topmost twig,
Beside whose trunk the gipsy makes his bed.
Up flies the bouncing woodcock from the brig
Where a black quagmire quakes beneath the tread,
The fieldfares chatter in the whistling thorn
And for the awe round fields and closen rove,
And coy bumbarrels twenty in a drove
Flit down the hedgerows in the frozen plain
And hang on little twigs and start again.

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In this installment, Michael Collier reads “The Mouse’s Nest” by John Clare. Collier is a professor of English at the University of Maryland and director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Middlebury College.

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John Clare, “The Mouse’s Nest”

I found a ball of grass among the hay
And proged it as I passed and went away
And when I looked I fancied something stirred
And turned again and hoped to catch the bird
When out an old mouse bolted in the wheat
With all her young ones hanging at her teats
She looked so odd and so grotesque to me
I ran and wondered what the thing could be
And pushed the knapweed bunches where I stood
When the mouse hurried from the crawling brood
The young ones squeaked and when I went away
She found her nest again among the hay.
The water o’er the pebbles scarce could run
And broad old cesspools glittered in the sun.

admin Uncategorized john clare, michael collier, the mouse's nest