The Nightingale's Nest Comments
Up this green woodland-ride let’s softly rove,
And list the nightingale - she dwells just here.
Hush ! let the wood-gate softly clap, for fear
The noise might drive her from her home of love ;
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Seems to me this is about nature and the excitement of engaging with it. Keats poem is, itseems to me, about the human condition, but this has nature as the fabric of the nest, the poem and of our excitement at finding and seeing the nest.
While that's worth pointing out, I don't feel it detracts from the poem. Writers often assumed it was the female who sang & it interesting to think why (and the connotation that had etc.) . Clare certainly knew the natural world, and as Tim Dee points out in his poetry anthology, he wrote about 150 species of British birds without any technical kit
Clare keeps his poems focused on the subject matter not turning to his feelings about it. Dr. Tom Dillingham, our teacher.
A class with Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Mizzou brought me here. Very beautiful.
It's a little old-fashioned but beauty abounds in its every verse.
Old Fashioned.... I don't think so... David Attenborough whose programmes are full of such descriptions would give his right arm, I suspect, to have half the ability to use such majestic phrasing of our language.. Aside from thatClassics are classics for one of the facts that they are ageless and readable a million times!
So many words and poems out there... The nightingale's nest by John Clair, 'I was unaware... Thanks to George-George Monbiot, with out his direction Clairs poems would be to me lost not sought... Beautiful poem!
it is a great pitty if i am the only one who has visted this page
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7/19/2025 11:40:53 AM # 1.0.0
Why do I get this feeling that he focused on leaving the nest and surrounds as they are, and listening to the song from afar as it ought to be, because of his own personal experiences? I don't think he merely records nature at all, it's highly selective, he comments and instructs gracefully, makes us focus imaginatively without drifting into fanciful personifications. Could it be that this narrator has the attitude he wished his readers could have had?