John Clare's language

Because the words demanded his dark dreams They partnered love in paragraphs of tears, And in their circling seasons spared no sound To modulate the wind, the days and years When summers opened consonants and vowels. For every blade of grass a snowflake danced And autumn leaves could counterpoint the air In twos and threes, like lost lamenting hands. And not one deep emotion stayed unnamed In his wide alphabet of need and grief, Not even hunger had escaped the same Translation as the flux of thought. Belief Was poetry as sure as his huge sky Singing through grass a nd torment, birds and joy.