Timeline
John Clare - I Am, published 1848 (written c.1840)
This poem records directly and intensely the feeling of alienation.
It asserts, both in its title and in the repetitions of "I am" throughout, the definite, emphatic fact of self, but at the same time constantly undermines this by drawing attention to the difference between the life merely lived as existence, - "And yet I am, and live" - and the life fulfilled in friendship and love, sense of order, place and purpose.
Thus the poem expresses not only a mental state, but the pastoral longing of the last stanza has the social and political significance of the deeply felt need for country and community, destroyed by greed and enclosure.