Welcome back to The Daily Poem here in the Close Reeds Podcast Network.

I'm David Kern, and today is Monday, March 9th, 2020.

Today's poem is by John Clare, an English poet who lived from 1793 to 1864.

The poem that I'm going to read is called First Site of Spring.

It goes like this the hazel blooms in threads of crimson hue peep through the swelling buds foretelling spring ere yet a white thorn leaf appears in view or March finds throstles pleased enough to sing.

To the old touchwood tree, woodpeckers cling a moment, and their harsh-toned note to renew.

In happier mood, the stalk-dove claps his wing. The squirrels sputters up the powdered oak.

With tail cocked or his head and ears erect, startled to hear the woodman's

understroke. And with the courage which his fears collect, he hiss his fierce half malice and

half glee, leaping from branch to branch about the tree, in winter's foliage, moss and lichens,

decked.

I've mentioned before when sharing a couple of Claire's poems

that he was the son of a farmer

and he was dedicated or committed to,

he felt his vocation was to commemorate and remember and celebrate that life.

And he was upset that the natural world in his native England was being destroyed by the

Industrial Revolution.

Jonathan Bate, who was his biographer, called him, quote, the greatest laboring class poet

that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature of a rural child. and Bate, who was his biographer, called him, quote, the greatest laboring class poet that

England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural

childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self, end quote. So in this poem, we get a list of

things. We get a list of responses. There's a hazel, the hazel blooms peeping through. There's an old, the woodpecker

...