Where She Told Her Love

<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN> <p id="id00767" style="margin-top: 2em"><i>Where She Told Her Love</i></p> <p id="id00017" style="margin-top: 3em">by JOHN CLARE</p> <p id="id00768">         I saw her crop a rose<br/> Right early in the day,<br/> And I went to kiss the place<br/> Where she broke the rose away<br/> And I saw the patten rings<br/> Where she oer the stile had gone,<br/> And I love all other things<br/> Her bright eyes look upon.<br/> If she looks upon the hedge or up the leafing tree,<br/> The whitethorn or the brown oak are made dearer things to me.<br/></p> <p id="id00769">         I have a pleasant hill<br/> Which I sit upon for hours,<br/> Where she cropt some sprigs of thyme<br/> And other little flowers;<br/> And she muttered as she did it<br/> As does beauty in a dream,<br/> And I loved her when she hid it<br/> On her breast, so like to cream,<br/> Near the brown mole on her neck that to me a diamond shone<br/> Then my eye was like to fire, and my heart was like to stone.<br/></p> <p id="id00770">         There is a small green place<br/> Where cowslips early curled,<br/> Which on Sabbath day I trace,<br/> The dearest in the world.<br/> A little oak spreads oer it,<br/> And throws a shadow round,<br/> A green sward close before it,<br/> The greenest ever found:<br/> There is not a woodland nigh nor is there a green grove,<br/> Yet stood the fair maid nigh me and told me all her love.<br/></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />