Yearning

I long for scenes where man has 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, Untroubling and untroubled where I lie, The grass below--above the vaulted sky. -John Clare (1793-1864), I am, written while he was confined in the General Lunatic Asylum in Northampton, where he spent about the last third of his life.