Sweet are the blossoms...

Sweet are the blossoms the summer adorning

Shed in profusion oer meadow & lea
Deckt wi the charms of the dew bedded morning
Ere the suns spangles dry blossom & tree

While as I wander by wood bank & fountain
Hushing my sorrows wi moments decline
Many selections of blossoms I’m counting
To trace in their beauty some likeness of thine

The vally’s wild lily where wood channels wimple
Neath the rude hazels low blooming unseen
They are thy beauty so artless so simple
Their hue thy two white breasts love bedded between

The warm streaked woodbine that decks the lanes bushes
The soft smelling rose the heaths brambles adorn
These are the paint of thy cheeks maiden blushes
& modesty’s guardians expressed in the thorn

Alas my sweet Mary but mem'ry alarming
Soon starts at lost moments when once we did meet
When I prest that soft bosom so white & so warming
& kissd thy cheeks freshness so lushious & sweet

Soon then from flowers is thy image extinguishd
Still pleasures past sting my soul as before
As I turn to that hour when our bliss was relinquishd
That hour when I left thee to meet thee no more

The Early Poems of John Clare 1804-1822,

ed. Eric Robinson, David Powell and Margaret Grainger

(Oxford, 2 volumes, I-II, 1989)