Lyric Poem · Life
I Am!
by John Clare · 1848
I AM: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am, and live with shadows tost
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And een the dearest — that I loved the best —
Are strange — nay, rather stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smiled or wept;
There to abide with my Creator, GOD,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below — above the vaulted sky.
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“I Am!” by John Clare — quilloak.com/poems/i-am-john-clare
Quick facts
- Poem
- I Am!
- Poet
- John Clare
- Published
- 1848
- Length
- 18 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- Life, Sad, Strength
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 18 lines · 3 sestets
- Line length
- Mostly 10-syllable lines (pentameter length).
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Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- John Clare1793–1864
- Source record
- PoetryDBI Am! by john-clare, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- 1848
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 5ea9c9273be6309e…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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