First Love (John Clare poem) Summary

“First Love” describes the feeling of suddenly falling in love. The speaker sees the face of his beloved and immediately realizes that he has fallen for her. Yet his response isn’t the sweet, conventional love we expect—it seems more like a religious experience, a complete loss of self. He feels himself go pale, and becomes powerless to move. The world begins to appear strange and dark, although it is the middle of the day. The speaker feels like his body is silently calling out to her, and he imagines that she hears him. Yet the poem ends where it began, with the speaker professing that she now has his heart.