First Love is a poem by the English poet John Clare. Like several of Clare’s other short lyrics, it was not published during his lifetime. It was printed in 1920, 100 years after the publication of Clare’s successful first collection, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820).
John Clare was a modest country laborer who wrote direct, simply expressed poems about the English countryside. His work was celebrated in the 1820’s, when “peasant” or “ploughman” poets were celebrated. But Clare’s other collections did not sell as well as his first, and his later life was a time of disappointment and decline. “First Love” is one of several later lyrics that reflect on lost love and innocence. Clare himself had been forced to give up his “first love,” the daughter of a wealthy farmer. This poem was written in later life, when the poet remembered the intense experience of first falling in love.
I ne’er was struck before that hour With love so sudden and so sweet. Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower And stole my heart away complete. My face turned pale as deadly pale, My legs refused to walk away, And when she looked, what could I ail? My life and all seemed turned to clay. And then my blood rushed to my face And took my sight away. The trees and bushes round the place Seemed midnight at noonday. I could not see a single thing, Words from my eyes did start; They spoke as chords do from the string, And blood burnt round my heart. Are flowers the winter’s choice? Is love’s bed always snow? She seemed to hear my silent voice And love’s appeal to know, I never saw so sweet a face As that I stood before: My heart has left its dwelling place And can return no more.
Like all of Clare’s work, this poem uses plain, direct language and simple rhythms. It shows the influence of traditional ballads, which Clare’s parents recited regularly to him. A ballad tells a story in verse, usually in short stanzas of iambic meter (alternating unstressed and stressed syllables). Here, Clare tells a highly personal tale of unhappy love. “First Love” concisely portrays the agonizing, all-consuming pain of young love.
John Clare’s unhappy life ended in mental illness. After years of increasing poverty and lack of writing success, Clare was admitted to an insane asylum in 1837. He escaped in 1841 and walked more than 80 miles (130 kilometers) to his home in Northamptonshire, believing that he would be reunited with Mary Joyce, his first love. He was returned to a local asylum, where he continued to write poetry until he died in 1864.
