'Is there another world for this frail dust'

Is there another world for this frail dust
To warm with life and be itself again?
Something about me daily speaks there must,
And why should instinct nourish hopes in vain?
'Tis nature's prophesy that such will be,
And everything seems struggling to explain
The close sealed volume of its mystery.
Time wandering onward keeps its usual pace
As seeming anxious of eternity,
To meet that calm and find a resting place.
E'en the small violet feels a future power
And waits each year renewing blooms to bring,
And surely man is no inferior flower
To die unworthy of a second spring?


John Clare
Poems selected from Poems by John Clare, ed. Arthur Symons (London: Henry Frowe, 1908) and from The Rural Muse; Poems by John Clare, (London: Whittaker & co., 1835).