John Clare's 'The Mouse's Nest' by David Morley

I found a ball of grass among the hay

And proged it as I passed and went away

And when I looked I fancied something stirred

And turned again and hoped to catch the bird

When out an old mouse bolted in the wheat

With all her young ones hanging at her teats

She looked so odd and so grotesque to me

I ran and wondered what the thing could be

And pushed the knapweed bunches where I stood

When the mouse hurried from the crawling brood

The young ones squeaked and when I went away

She found her nest again among the hay.

The water o’er the pebbles scarce could run

And broad old cesspools glittered in the sun.

Seamus Heaney describes this poem as 'seven couplets wound up like clockwork and then set free to spin merrily through their foreclosed motions'.

John Clare