"I dreaded walking where there was no path"

'I wandered lonely as a cloud'. There's nuance to this famous line that we may not always discern. Wordsworth was lucky to be able to wander so freely. The opening line of a poem by John Clare offers a different perspective: 'I dreaded walking where there was no path'.

In contrast to the wilder Lake District, in Clare's Northamptonshire land that had been common was being enclosed - as we would say, privatised - and 'No Road Here' signs proliferated. Enclosure had already happened in piecemeal fashion in other parts of the country, but now for the first time it arrived, by an 1809 Act of Parliament, in Clare's own locality.

The poem is about trespass. Had he come across a host of daffodils his joy would have been qualified by the sure knowledge that they were the property of a landowner, and that he could be prosecuted simply for being there to see them.

I dreaded walking where there was no path
And pressed with cautious tread the meadow swath
And always turned to look with wary eye
And always feared the owner coming by...

And when I gained the road where all are free
I fancied every stranger frowned at me
And every kinder look appeared to say
You've been on trespass in your walk today.

My thanks to James Graham for his foreword to this highly perceptive and still relevant work by Clare.