Clare’s Lyric Impulse

Clare took the Romantic fascination with spontaneity in composition to a disarming extreme. He repeatedly described his poetry as the product of momentary ‘impulse’. Critics have largely dismissed these claims; this essay pursues the implications of taking them seriously. Clare’s efforts to keep pace with the flow of inspiration bring a unique excitement to his style. The author attends to Clare’s poems’ attempts to express unstable or inarticulable states of feeling, to mirror the creativity of the natural world and to emulate the improvisational flair of Lord Byron. The essay then turns to the apparently innocuous song ‘Peggy Was a Young Thing’ as an example of how an enduring commitment to spontaneous impulse shapes the tenor and potency of Clare’s later lyric voice