5 November 2015

'I wandered...till I got out of my knowledge'

Earlier this year I posted a short passage from John Clare that has become quite well known (thanks in large part to Iain Sinclair). Here is a longer section of the text from which it is taken, in Clare's own spelling:
I loved this solitary disposition from a boy and felt a curosity to wander about spots where I had never been before I remember one incident of this feeling when I was very young it cost my parents some anxiety it was in summer and I started off in the morning to get rotten sticks from the woods but I had a feeling to wander about the fields and I indulgd it I had often seen the large heath calld Emmonsales stretching its yellow furze from my eye into unknown solitudes when I went with the mere openers and my curosity urgd me to steal an oppertunity to explore it that morning I had imagind that the worlds end was at the edge of the orison and that a days journey was able to find it so I went on with my heart full of hopes pleasures and discoverys expecting when I got to the brink of the world that I could look down like looking into a large pit and see into its secrets the same as I believd I could see heaven by looking into the water  So I eagerly wanderd on and rambled among the furze the whole day till I got out of my knowledge when the very wild flowers and birds seemd to forget me and I imagind they were the inhabitants of new countrys the very sun seemd to be a new one and shining in a different quarter of the sky still I felt no fear  my wonder seeking happiness had no room for it  I was finding new wonders every minute and was walking in a new world often wondering to my self that I had not found the end of the old one...

4 comments:

  1. Yes http://wormingford.blogspot.co.uk

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  2. Rather liked this excerpt, so I made a little song out of it - https://soundcloud.com/boris-scherbakov/end-of-knowledge

    hope you enjoy!

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    Replies
    1. Beautiful. Thank you. Chris Wood set another passage from Clare here http://www.folkradio.co.uk/2013/05/chris-wood-track-8-i-am/

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