'John Clare' by Douglas Pringle-Watson


JOHN CLARE

John Clare, your friends to keep your memory green,
Owning a debt we never can repay,
Have placed a tablet in a sacred shrine;
Now to that tribute I would add a line.

Countryside, and country scenes revive again.
Linnet and thrush: the waving fields of grain.
And those who lived and worked in sun and rain
Revived by you still go their rural way
Enriching us who read your poems today.


Douglas Pringle-Wilson
JCS Newsletter No. 25 (September 1989)


Read at the unveiling of the Clare plaque in Poet's Corner, Westminister Abbey.

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