Continuing John Clare’s delightful description of autumn, and we are with t’he poet as he walks the fields’; he sees the old ladies with their wicker baskets out and about gathering fruit from the hedgerows, elderberries, and blackberries hanging in ‘swathy bunches‘ and there are the little sparrows, their beaks black from the juice, and the ‘tutling‘ robin… I can’t discover what Clare meant by this but I can guess it might be his chattering song!
In such lone spots these wild wood roamers dwell
On commons where no farmers claims appear
Nor tyrant justice rides to interfere
Such the abodes neath hedge or spreading oak
And but discovered by its curling smoak
Puffing and peeping up as wills the breeze
Between the branches of the colord trees
Such are the pictures that october yields
To please the poet as he walks the fields
Oft dames in faded cloak of red or grey
Loiters along the mornings dripping way
Wi wicker basket on their witherd arms
Searching the hedges of home close or farms
Where brashy elder trees to autum fade
Each cotters mossy hut and garden shade
Whose glossy berrys picturesquly weaves
Their swathy bunches mid the yellow leaves
Where the pert sparrow stains his little bill
And tutling robin picks his meals at will.
Lois Elsden 