Ye injur'd fields, ye once were gay, When Nature's hand displayed Long waving rows of willows grey And clumps of hawthorn shade; But now, alas! your hawthorn bowers All desolate we see! The spoiler's axe their shade devours, And cuts down every tree. Not trees alone have owned their force, Whole woods beneath them bowed, They turned the winding rivulet's course, And all thy pastures plough'd. Clare also wrote in the "Village Minstrel" in the following candid and artless strain, "a sort of defiant parody on the Highland poets", of the natural features of his native place:-- Swamps of wild rush-beds and sloughs' squashy traces, Grounds of rough fallows with thistle and weed. Flats and low valleys of kingcups and daisies, Sweetest of subjects are ye for my reed: Ye commons left free in the rude rags of nature, Ye brown heaths beclothed in furze as ye be, My wild eye in rapture adores every feature, Ye are dear as this heart in my bosom to me. O native endearments! I would not forsake ye, I would not forsake ye for sweetest of scenes: For sweetest of gardens that Nature could make me I would not forsake ye, dear valleys and greens: Though Nature ne'er dropped ye a cloud-resting mountain, Nor waterfalls tumble their music so free, Had Nature denied ye a bush, tree, or fountain, Ye still had been loved as an Eden by me. And long, my dear valleys, long, long may ye flourish, Though rush-beds and thistles make most of your pride! May showers never fail the green's daisies to nourish, Nor suns dry the fountain that rills by its side! Your skies may be gloomy, and misty your mornings, Your flat swampy valleys unwholesome may be, Still, refuse of Nature, without her adornings Ye are dear as this heart in my bosom to me. That the poet's attachment to his native place was deeprooted and unaffected was proved by the difficulty which he found in tearing himself from it in after years, and it is more than probable that the violence which, for the sake of others, he then did to his sensitive nature aggravated his constitutional melancholy and contributed to the ultimate overthrow of his reason. GRANNY BAINS Clare's opportunities for learning the elements of knowledge were in keeping with his humble station. Parker Clare, out of his miserable and fluctuating earnings as a day labourer, paid for his child's schooling until he was seven years of age, when he was set to watch sheep and geese on the village heath. Here he made the acquaintance of "Granny Bains," of whom Mr. Martin, quoting, doubtless, from Clare's manuscript autobiography, says:--