Cirrus@Austlit

'John Clare was the great poet of “enclosure”. Unlike other major Romantic writers, he was of the peasantry – he lived through a period during which lands once held for the benefit of all were privatised in the name of “improving” agricultural productivity. Such commons were fenced off and patrolled against encroachment:

'There once were lanes in nature’s freedom dropt,

There once were paths that every valley wound –

Inclosure came, and every path was stopt;

Each tyrant fix’d his sign where paths were found,

To hint a trespass now who cross’d the ground…' (Introduction)