Life and Remains of John Clare ("The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet")

peating all day long the songs he had heard, and even in his dreams kept humming:--

There sat two ravens upon a tree,
Heigh down, derry O!
There sat two ravens upon a tree,
As deep in love as he and she.

It was thus that the admiration of poetry first awoke in Parker Clare's son, roused by the songs of Granny Bains, the cowherd of Helpstone."

SUMMER LABOURS, WINTER STUDY

From watching cows and geese, the boy was in due course promoted to the rank of team-leader, and was also set to assist his father in the threshing barn. "John," his father used to say, "was weak but willing," and the good man made his son a flail proportioned to his strength. Exposure in the ill-drained fields round Helpstone brought on an attack of tertiary ague, from which the boy had scarcely rallied when he was again sent into the fields. Favourable weather having set in, he recovered his health, and was able that summer to make occasionally a few pence by working overtime. Thes