This song started out as a poem from John Clare. He's celebrated as a 'Peoples poet' Having none of the private education that many of his contemporaries enjoyed. He suffered from mental Illness and was committed to St Andrews in Northampton. This poem was in response to someone asking him 'how are you doing'
lyrics
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,
Un-troubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below, above the vaulted sky
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.
credits
from Fortune and Folly,
released March 6, 2019
Words are open access from the Poetry of John Clare
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