In sympathy my heart goes out as always to that labourer's son who died in an asylum, who so nearly knew but did not know -- he only hoped with longing, in what must have been an unfortunate unrevealing world to him, when he wrote.
I am!
Yet, what I am, who cares, or knows.
My friends forsake me like a memory lost,
And yet, I am. I live,
though I am tossed into the nothingness of scorn and noise;
Into the living Sea of waking dream
where there is neither sense of life nor joys
but the huge shipwreck of my own esteem,
and all that's dear.
Even those I love the best are strange.
Nay, stranger, than the rest.
I long for scenes where man has never trod,
Where woman never smiled or wept.
There to chide with my Creator,
God.
And deep as I in childhood slept
full of high thoughts, unborn.
So let me lie
The grass below,
above,
The vaulted sky.
John Clare.
Aldwinckle, Eric, Letter, [7 December 1944]
Case Study:
Creative Dialogue Across the Ocean: Eric Aldwinckle’s Letters to Harry Somers
Creator:
Aldwinckle, Eric
Source:
letter
Date:
[7 December 1944]
Collection/Fonds:
Contributer:
McMaster University Libraries
Rights:
Copyright, public domain: McMaster University owns the rights to the archival copy of the digital image in TIFF format. Reproduced with the kind permission of Margaret Bridgman.
Identifier:
00001608-6
Language:
eng
Type:
image
Format:
jpg
Transcript: