{"id":7909,"date":"2021-06-04T06:50:45","date_gmt":"2021-06-04T06:50:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7909"},"modified":"2021-06-04T06:50:45","modified_gmt":"2021-06-04T06:50:45","slug":"the-rude-rags-of-nature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2021\/06\/04\/the-rude-rags-of-nature\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rude Rags of Nature"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps the following John Clare poem<\/a> (with its unusual sing-song meter) ought to be the anthem of all re-wilding projects as it valorises the wild at the expense of the cultivated. \u00a0I came across it in WG Hoskins' magisterial\u00a0The Making of the English Landscape. \u00a0<\/em>Clare, of course, was not a re-<\/em>wilder; rather, his writing chronicled the social and environmental impact of the 19th century enclosure acts and the de-<\/em>wilding that went on when heath and moor were brought into cultivation. \u00a0Hoskins says that Clare provides a unique insider's view of the profound social (and environmental) changes that enclosure<\/a> brought.<\/p>\n

Swamps of wild rush-beds, and sloughs' squashy traces,
\nGrounds of rough fallows with thistle and weed,
\nFlats and low vallies of kingcups and daisies,
\nSweetest of subjects are ye for my reed:<\/p>\n

Ye commons left free in the rude rags of nature,
\nYe brown heaths be-clothed in furze as ye be,
\nMy wild eye in nature adores every feature,
\nYe are dear as this heart in my bosom to me.<\/p>\n

O native endearments! I would not forsake ye,
\nI would not forsake ye for sweetest of scenes;
\nFor sweetest of gardens that nature could make me,
\nI would not forsake ye, dear vallies and greens:<\/p>\n

Tho' nature ne'er dropt ye a cloud-resting mountain,
\nNor waterfalls tumble their music so free;
\nHad nature deny'd ye a bush, tree, or fountain,
\nYe still had been lov'd as an Eden by me.<\/p>\n

And long, my dear vallies, long, long may ye flourish,
\nThough rush-beds and thistles make most of your pride;
\nMay showers never fail the green's daisies to nourish,
\nNor suns dry the fountain that rills by its side.<\/p>\n

Your skies may be gloomy, and misty your mornings,
\nYour flat swampy vallies unwholesome may be;
\nStill, refuse of nature, without her adornings
\nYe are dear as this heart in my bosom to me.<\/p>\n

Clare is regarded as a Romantic poet<\/a>, but there is more than a hint of realism in his descriptions of \"the rude rags of nature\", the \"flat swampy vallies\", and the \"refuse of nature\" \"without her adornings\". \u00a0His local heath might not have been as visually attractive as an unimproved wildflower meadow (or the best of cultivated gardens) but it was natural, local and, surely crucially, part of who he was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perhaps the following John Clare poem (with its unusual sing-song meter) ought to be the anthem of all re-wilding projects as it valorises the wild at the expense of the cultivated. \u00a0I came across it in WG Hoskins' magisterial\u00a0The Making...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7909\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}