I am (Clare, set by T. Hold, T. Mirante, K. Roger, D. Thomas, I. Venables) (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)


I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am, and live with shadows tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest - that I loved the best -
Are strange - nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod,
A place where woman never smiled or wept;
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie, -
The grass below - above the vaulted sky.

Authorship

John Clare (1793-1864)

The Life of John Clare

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive)

Trevor Hold (1939-)

For John Clare

Thomas Mirante (1931-)

Kurt George Roger (1895-1966)

Three English Poems

David Evan Thomas (1958-)

Heard in a Violent Ward

Ian Venables (1955-)

Invite to Eternity

Date added to the website: 2005-12-19.

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