John Clare in hiding

"John Clare frequently rationalizes his need to hide with that of the wild creatures. ‘Nightingales are very jealous of intrusions and their songs are hymns to privacy’. He often sees himself like ‘the time-killing shepherd boys whose summer homes are ever out of doors’ and he celebrates their workaday (and work a night) freedom in two splendid poems. He likes the idea that ‘The pewits are hid from all sight but the all seeing sun’ and that the martin cat ‘hides in lonely shade / Where prints of human foot is scarcely made’, that the hedgehog hides beneath the rotting hedge, and that ‘each nibbling hare / Struts quick as fear and seeks its hidden lair’. Though the robin seems to be fond of company and the haunts of men, and makes no secret of its dwelling. Yet when he writes ‘The Robin’s Nest’ he makes it a poem to solitude. Helpston, slogging away on the land, finds him time wasting and problematical. Often in village terms he is a skiver. Even when sharing its normal toil."   -   http://johnclareessays.blogspot.com/p/john-clare-in-hiding.html