"I am" by John Clare

This is probably one of my favourite poems of all time written by John Clare when he was in a lunatic asylum. And you can really feel the rawness and agony in these words.

I am! yet what I am who cares, or knows?
     My friends forsake me like a memory lost. 
I am the self-consumer of my woes, 
     They rise and vanish, an oblivious host, 
Shadows of life, whose very soul is lost.
And yet I am—I live—though I am toss'd 

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 loved the best 
Are strange—nay, they are stranger than the rest. 

I long for scenes where man has never trod, 
     For scenes where woman never smiled or wept; 
There to abide with my Creator, God, 
     And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept 
Full of high thoughts, unborn. So let me lie,  
The grass below; above the vaulted sky.

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