Today, I present another beautiful little piece from the collection Asylum Poems that John Clare wrote while he was interned in a lunatic asylum. It is a message of hope, he tells us that love is everlasting, it “lives beyond the tomb, the earth, the flowers, and dew,” and it can be found with “the fond, the faithful, young and true.” The genuine heart-love of a young maiden brings the poet eternal happiness. The secret of a fruitful life is a young heart full of love.

Love Lives Beyond the Tomb

Love lives beyond
The tomb, the earth, which fades like dew!
I love the fond,
The faithful, and the true.

Love lives in sleep,
The happiness of healthy dreams:
Eve’s dews may weep,
But love delightful seems.

Tis seen in flowers,
And in the morning’s pearly dew;
In earth’s green hours,
And in the heaven’s eternal blue.

Tis heard in Spring
When light and sunbeams, warm and kind,
On angel’s wing
Bring love and music to the mind.

And where is voice,
So young, so beautiful, and sweet
As Nature’s choice,
Where Spring and lovers meet?

Love lives beyond
The tomb, the earth, the flowers, and dew.
I love the fond,
The faithful, young and true.

Source: John Clare, Poems chiefly from manuscript, London: Richard Cobden-Sanderson (1920), digitised on Internet Archive. The poem is page 239. See also the hypertext transcription (without indentation of the verses) in Poems Chiefly from Manuscript by John Clare, Project Gutenberg ebook.

Previously published on Agapeta, 2016/05/25.