“Summer” is a poem by the British Romantic poet John Clare. This lovely poem paints a beautiful picture of a summer’s day in nature where the flowers are blooming and the birds are tending their nests. Here the speaker, overwhelmed with love and desire, wants to seek comfort by being near his beloved who sits beneath a whitetorn bush.
The music is written, performed and produced by me (human made). To create a feeling of being outdoors on a summer’s day I recorded birdsong and added it to the track.
John Clare (1793 – 1864) was the son of a farm laborer and is known as the “Peasant Poet”. Clare is is one of the key figures of the British Romantic Era and is known for his poetry about the English countryside.
Summer
Poem by John Clare
Come we to the summer, to the summer we will come,
For the woods are full of bluebells and the hedges full of bloom,
And the crow is on the oak a-building of her nest,
And love is burning diamonds in my true lover's breast;
She sits beneath the whitethorn a-plaiting of her hair,
And I will to my true lover with a fond request repair;
I will look upon her face, I will in her beauty rest,
And lay my aching weariness upon her lovely breast.
The clock-a-clay is creeping on the open bloom of May,
The merry bee is trampling the pinky threads all day,
And the chaffinch it is brooding on its grey mossy nest
In the whitethorn bush where I will lean upon my lover's breast;
I'll lean upon her breast and I'll whisper in her ear
That I cannot get a wink o'sleep for thinking of my dear;
I hunger at my meat and I daily fade away
Like the hedge rose that is broken in the heat of the day.
