John Clare is remembered above all as a poet of the English countryside, yet "Nature's Hymn to the Deity" is not a poem of close, patient observation. It is a chorus. Sun, moon, darkness, sea, wind, storm, thunder, earth, insect and flower are all given voices, and all say the same thing: God exists and is present. The poem's final two lines then turn on the one listener who has not joined in.
The structure makes the chorus easy to hear. There are three stanzas of eight lines, each made of rhyming couplets (accord/Lord, day/away, wear/there, sky/reply), in short, steady lines of about eight syllables. The rhythm is close to the hymn-like beat of "All NAture OWNS with ONE acCORD." The couplets snap shut like small amens, and the effect is deliberately unsubtle, because a hymn is meant to be sung by many people at once. The opening couplet returns word for word to begin the third stanza, like a refrain. Even the rhymes echo each other: "sky" and "reply" close the first stanza, then swap places to close the second. In a poem about echoes, the rhyme scheme itself replies.
The first stanza sweeps through the day. The sun "proclaims" by day, the moon takes over when "daylight drops away," and then comes the most striking image: "The very darkness smiles to wear / The stars." Darkness is not a threat here. It is a figure dressed up in jewels, glad to be the background that lets the stars show. The next line has the sea mirroring the sky, so that "soft gleams the sky" on the water, and the waves answer with the quoted words "God is with us." This is call and response, the structure of a church service moved outdoors.
The second stanza raises the volume. The winds only "breathe," but the storms "louder own God is their home," and thunder calls "yet louder" still. Clare builds the crescendo with the word "louder" and with a run of verbs of speech: proclaims, reply, own, sounds, echoes. The earth, "right loath the proof to miss" (very unwilling to miss the chance to testify), "Echoes triumphantly 'He is.'" The long adverb stretches the line, and then the two plain monosyllables land as the smallest and firmest statement possible. Notice too that the stanza has no refrain. Storm and thunder crowd out the quiet opening.
The third stanza brings the poem back down to size. After thunder come "Insect and bird and tree and flower," small things described as "witnesses of every hour." They are "pregnant with his prophesy," an image of nature swollen with a message about to be delivered. The word "all" has been working throughout ("All nature," "over all," "all reply"), building a picture of total agreement.
Then the last couplet breaks that agreement: "The first link in the mighty plan / Is still—and all upbraideth man." The wording suggests the old picture of creation as a chain of linked beings, with humankind as its first link, though the poem never says so outright. "Still" can mean silent or motionless, and the dash makes the reader pause before the verdict. Everything else in the poem speaks, and the human being alone does not, so "all" now reproaches him. The "us" in "God is with us" has been addressed to humans all along, and the poem has been quietly overheard by someone who has not yet answered. The rhyme of "plan" with "man" is plain and blunt, which suits the accusation.
What makes the poem interesting is this reversal. For twenty-eight lines it seems to be simple praise, almost an exercise in devotional verse. The last two lines turn it into a challenge: if even darkness, thunder and insects can acknowledge God, why can't we? The poem's simplicity is part of its force, since nothing in it is hard to understand and the only difficulty is whether the reader will join in.