The king s daughter, however, went up to him and puled it off, and his golden hair fell down over his shoulders; his beauty was so great that everyone was astounded.
The king said "Are you the knight who appeared each day of the festival with a different horse, and each day caught the golden apple?"
"I am," he said, "and the apples are here." Taking the apples from his pocket, he handed them to the king. "If you need more evidence, you can look at the wound your men gave me when they were chasing me. What s more, I m also the knight who helped defeat the enemy."
"If you can perform feats of such magnitude you are obviously not a gardener. Who is your father, may I ask?"
"My father is a notable king and I have as much gold as I will ever need."
"It s clear," the king said that I am in debt to you. Whatever I have in my power that would please you, I will give."
"Well", the young man said, "I d suggest that you should give me your daughter as my wife."
Then the king s daughter laughed and said "I like the way he doesn t beat around the bush; I already knew he was no gardener s boy from his golden year." And so she walked over and kissed him.
The young man s father and mother were among those invited to the wedding, and they came, they were in great joy for they had given up hope that they would ever see their dear son again.
While all the guests were sitting at the table for the marriage feast, the music broke off all at once, the great doors swung open, and a baronial king entered, accompanied in procession by many attendants.
He walked up to the young groom and embraced him. The guest said: "I am Iron John who through an enchantment became turned into a Wild Man. You have freed me from the enchantment. All the treasure that I own, will from now on belong to you.
The End.
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I AM A poem by John Clare (1865)
I am: yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost
I am the self consumer of my woes-
They rise and vanish in oblivion s host,
Like shadows in love, frenzied, stifled throes:-
And yet I am, and live-like vapors tost
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
Even the dearest that I love the best
Are strange, nay stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man hath never trod,
A place where women never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator God,
And sleep as I in childhood slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below, above, the vaulted sky.
The son of a farmer, JOHN CLARE, was an authentic peasant poet. Described as remarkably free of self consciusness, a freedom that gives his best poems a superb purity and directness of address. They have an immediacy that is very rare in poetry of any period. Most of his life was spent in an asylum since he was caught up perpetually in an acute manic depressive cycle.
I am: yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost
I am the self consumer of my woes-
They rise and vanish in oblivion s host,
Like shadows in love, frenzied, stifled throes:-
And yet I am, and live-like vapors tost
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
Even the dearest that I love the best
Are strange, nay stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man hath never trod,
A place where women never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator God,
And sleep as I in childhood slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below, above, the vaulted sky.
The son of a farmer, JOHN CLARE, was an authentic peasant poet. Described as remarkably free of self consciusness, a freedom that gives his best poems a superb purity and directness of address. They have an immediacy that is very rare in poetry of any period. Most of his life was spent in an asylum since he was caught up perpetually in an acute manic depressive cycle.
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