In his section of bird poems, Clare takes a short moment of 14 lines to write about the sand martin. I found the duality used in this poem quite interesting—for starters, the poem seems to almost glorify a very lonely life led by the sand martin. The bird has a “hermit joy” and Clare spends much of this poem leading up to this one very positive aspect of the lonely life led by the bird. Furthermore, the poem appears to be in sonnet form—one often used to write about love or relationship between two people, yet the main character of this poem is very much alone and the only inclinations of romance come from how the bird is “flirting about the unfrequented sky”.
There are also the contrasting aspects of distance in the poem—though the reader seems to get a very detailed view of the life of the sand martin, the bird is described as living “far away from men” and at one point being “far away from all thy tribe”. Finally, I looked up a picture of the sand martin to find that it is made up of contrasting colors itself—the bird is black and white, with the colors meeting at very distinct lines. I think this makes Clare’s sonnet even more fitting as a descriptor for the bird, as it mirrors the very appearance of the bird itself.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI find that the description of the Sand Martin strongly relates to the comparisons between Clare and the Wordsworths described in Laura's post. Clare explains how he "felt a feeling that I can't describe / Of lone seclusion and a hermit joy". This description, I think, reflects on the melancholy undertone of Dorothy's writings as well as the pensive passiveness one finds in seclusion, something idealized by Wordsworth.
ReplyDelete