John Clare, part 1

The biography of John Clare makes clear the distinction the poet perceived between industry and indulgence , and Clare struggled with the great difference between what society expected of the social man and what the poet expected of himself.

Clare wrote many poems that "doffed his cap to industry, a virtue all working men were supposed to cultivate," because he was "acutely conscious that poetry was something that could only be culitivated in the opposing state of idleness."

Clare had a compulsion to write so much that it frequently made him ill, according to his biographer, Jonathan Bate.

Born in the English village of Helpston  in 1795, John Clare died in an asylum in 1864. He's considered the greatest working class poet that England has ever produced.