“First Love” was written by John Clare, 1793-1864, about his true first love, Mary Joyce, whom he met when she was only 10 years old. She was the daughter of a wealthy farmer who forbade his daughter to meet Clare, a simple poor worker, and his separation from her created an overwhelming sense of loss that set the tone for much of Clare’s love poems.
The poet
Clara was mired in poverty all her life. He was malnourished during his youth, which contributed to his poor health later in life. Sometimes he made his own paper by scraping birch bark and made his own ink with some dyes and rainwater. The charity of his church kept him going until he published his first book of poetry.
John Clare married Martha Turner in 1820, the same year he published his first book of poems. Her “country poetry” was relatively popular in the early 1820s, and Clare enjoyed some success throughout London. By the 1830s the popularity of his poetry had waned. Clare published 5 books of poetry during this period, each one better than the last, but each one sold fewer copies than the last.
Although Clare lived during the Industrial Revolution, her early poems show her great knowledge of the yearly cycles of the rural countryside. Clare earned a reputation for being able to write delightful descriptions of the natural beauties of the world and the details of animal husbandry and harvesting.
Friends and supporters helped Clare and her family move to a larger cottage, but with a wife and seven children, Clare was unable to provide for her family adequately. He felt alienated in the new location and became more depressed. Stress and depression overtook Clare and he was admitted to an insane asylum in 1837. He had become delusional, imagining himself as Lord Byron at times, Shakespeare at others, and sometimes a professional boxer or son of George III. .
He walked home from the workhouse in 1841, some 100 miles, hoping to be reunited with his first love, Mary Joyce. He had convinced himself that he was married to his wife and Mary Joyce at the same time. He imagined that he also had children with Mary Joyce. Disappointed and depressed at not finding her, Clare checked herself into another nursing home where she remained for the rest of her life.
He continued to write poetry as long as his health permitted while confined to the insane asylum. In fact, some of his best love poems were written during the first years of this confinement. In all, Clare wrote more than 3,500 poems, of which some 400 were published during her lifetime. He composed his first poem, “The Morning Walk,” at age 13 after being inspired by reading a copy of James Thomson’s “The Seasons.”
The poem
“First Love” is a memorable romantic poem, written by a notable romantic poet. The poem has inspired many readers who often strongly remember and easily quote the final stanza of the poem.
The poem is well constructed with a typical romantic rhythm and rhyme scheme. The rhyme is a consistent abab when the poem is read as six quatrains. The rhythm is generally composed of lines of iambic tetrameter, octosyllables with even stressed syllables. However, the rhythm is not consistent, especially as seen in the final two stanzas of the poem. To end her poem, Clare uses a typical ballad meter with a tetrameter line followed by a trimeter line. This choice gives the end of the poem a musical quality.
Various similes and metaphors are evident in the poem. The metaphor in the last two lines has given rise to several different interpretations. Some feel that the lines mean that the poet has realized that his love is lost and will never be reciprocated; the lines express rejection and loneliness. Others feel that the lines show that the poet is mentally unstable. Still others feel that the lines represent the romantic notion that one can lose oneself in love and be “crazy about heels” or “lost” in love.
First love
This is how the poem begins:
I never got hit before that time
With love so sudden and so sweet.
Her face blossomed like a sweet flower
And he stole my whole heart.
