"I Am!" by 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 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.

Enjoy the poem with beautiful music.

poem video👇

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Who wrote the poem "I Am!"

John Clare (July 13, 1793 – May 20, 1864)

John Clare was an English poet. As the son of a poor farm labourer, he received little formal education, and malnutrition from childhood may have contributed to his five-foot stature and poor physical health in later life. His works often celebrate the natural world and rural life and his love for his wife Patty and his childhood lover, Mary Joyce. Although his first book, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820), published in an attempt to stop his parents’ eviction from their home, became popular to readers and critics, Clare struggled as a writer for most of his life. His works were reevaluated in the late 20^th century, and he is now considered as a major 19^th century poet.

"I Am!" explanation

In the poem, the speaker (most likely the poet himself) talks about his depression and loneliness and looks for the next life where he could find peace alongside God in Heaven. Despite early success in his writing career, Clare soon struggled professionally, which probably induced serious mental and physical illness in the late 1820s. When his health became unmanageable, plagued by delusions and depression, he was voluntarily committed to a mental asylum in 1837 and escaped in 1841. (He walked 80 miles back to his family.) He was committed again in 1842 until his death in 1864. This poem was written during his second stay in the asylum in the late 1840s.