Bird Poems

This selection gathers John Clare's poems about the birds of his Northamptonshire fields, woods, and fens. The poems name particular species - their nests, songs, flight, and the ways they hide from plough and collector - in the voice of a labourer who watched them through the seasons. They are descriptive lyrics and short narrative pieces rather than a single story: the nightingale, the skylark, the pewit, and many less celebrated birds appear as neighbours in a working landscape already being enclosed and drained. The book is a naturalist's verse catalogue from the early nineteenth century, not a treatise on ornithology.

Quarter-bound in blue artificial leather with grey patterned cloth boards. Brown endpapers. Pale yellow patterned slipcase.