I Am!By John ClareI am…

I Am!

By John Clare
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 shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled 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.

John Clare obviously felt, or saw, some kind of rejection when he wrote this poem. It is quite interesting, the way he portrays loneliness and loathing of others toward a certain individual because he is so vivid to the extent that it is quite hard to think that he didn’t go through rejection. In his second stanza third line he says, “Where there is neither sense of life or joys, but the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems…,” it seems he attained a certain goal or dream and the people around didn’t quite support his decisions. But overall excellent poem with  and very simple flow of rhythm. I also used this particular visual because the music creates an atmosphere of sadness and depression the pictures do as well, and i believe that this best portrays the cause, or meaning, of the poem.