Just by the wooden brig a bird flew up,
Frit by the cowboy as he scrambled down
To reach the misty dewberry—let us stoop
And seek its nest—the brook we need not dread,
'Tis scarcely deep enough a bee to drown,
So it sings harmless o'er its pebbly bed
At the beginning of the poem, Clare situates his reader in a specific moment. A cowboy has gone down to harvest berries, and his loud scramble scares off the yellowhammer, who flies up past an anchored ship. These first lines are in the past tense, but in the third, Clare shifts to the present tense, writing “let us stoop/And seek its nest.” The present tense encourages us to join the speaker; rather than an audience hearing a story of what happened, we are a companion joining the speaker in the moment.
The opening also foreshadows the ending of the poem, which emphasizes the universal presence of suffering. The bird’s flight suggests that she is familiar with fear, and knows that there are enemies so dangerous that she must leave her nest behind. When Clare stresses that he and his companion need not fear the brook, he writes that it is “scarcely deep enough a bee to drown,” and thus harmless. Yet, ironically, his statement stresses that for the bee, even the shallow brook would be dangerous. In a poem so attentive to the yellowhammer’s little world, that danger matters.
—Ay here it is, stuck close beside the bank
Beneath the bunch of grass that spindles rank
Its husk seeds tall and high—'tis rudely planned
The speaker’s exclamation at finding the nest—“Ay here it is”—pulls the reader into the poem, and invites us to join in his moment of discovery. The speaker goes on to describe the nest in intimate detail, furthering our feeling of finding something specific, interesting, and precious. These lines are some of the most abstract in the poem. Clare often used words in unusual ways. Here, he writes, “beneath the bunch of grass that spindles rank.” He means that the spindly grass stems look like a rank, or a line of soldiers. However, his syntax obscures the metaphor, encouraging us to focus first on the sounds of the words. The soft sounds at the beginning and end of “spindles” contrast with the hard consonants of “rank.” The same combination of “s” and “k” sounds characterizes the next line, “husk seeds tall and high.” The contrasting sounds create interest, encouraging us to pay attention to the humble grass.
A happy home of sunshine, flowers and streams.
Yet in the sweetest places cometh ill,
A noisome weed that burthens every soil;
For snakes are known with chill and deadly coil
To watch such nests and seize the helpless young,
And like as though the plague became a guest,
Leaving a houseless home, a ruined nest
The first line of this quotation sums up the cheerful mood of the majority of “The Yellowhammer’s Nest.” Most of the poem had been extremely specific, which prevents it from feeling cliché, but the line, “a happy home of sunshine, flowers and streams” is far more general, and feels a little saccharine. The sense of hollowness prepares us for the next line, where Clare announces that the “happy home” is not the whole story. He introduces the snake, and writes that his arrival in the nest is “like as though the plague became a guest.” The simile equates the yellowhammer’s family with a human family afflicted by plague, in line with the poem’s insistence on the bird’s personhood. He then portrays the impact of the snake’s arrival, “leaving a houseless home, a ruined nest.” The alliterative phrase “houseless home” parallels “happy home,” emphasizing the contrast between the two possible states of being for the bird’s nest. We are encouraged to see the two as coexisting, picturing both the idyllic paradise the speaker found when he went out walking, and the possibility of its utter destruction.
