Individual Entry Archive: Consider This

The Sweetest Woman There

From bank to bank the water roars Like thunder in a storm
A Sea in sight of both the shores Creating no alarm
The water-birds above the flood Fly o'er the foam and
spray And nature wears a gloomy hood On this October day

And there I saw a bonny maid That proved my heart's delight
All day she was a Goddess made An angel fair at night
We loved and in each other's power Felt nothing to
condemn
I was the leaf and she the flower And both grew on one stem

I loved her lip her cheek her eye She cheered my midnight gloom
A bonny rose 'neath God's own sky In one perrenial bloom
She lives 'mid pastures evergreen And meadows ever fair
Each winter spring and summer scene The sweetest woman there

She lives among the meadow floods That foams and roars away
While fading hedgerows distant woods Fade off to naked spray
She lives to cherish and delight All nature with her face
She brought me joy morn noon and night In that low lonely place
—John Clare in his poem The Sweetest Woman There

Source: Garrison Keilor's The Writer's Almanac for Monday, Feb. 9, 2009
See also:
> A list of poems by John Clare on the Writer's Almanac.
> Wikipedia's page about John Clare (13 July 1793 to 20 May 1864).