Allegedly scrawled on the wall of a cell in the London madhouse Bedlam, these lines were thought to have been sung at interval in King Lear by the actor playing Edgar, who has disguised himself as Mad Tom, a legendary figure by then in Elizabethan folklore.
There is no better poem before Yeats, in my view, in the language. I invite discussion of this heretical opinion.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
From the hag and hungry goblin
That into rags would rend ye,
And the spirit that stands by the naked man
In the Book of Moons defend ye,
That of your five sound senses
You never be forsaken,
Nor wander from your selves with Tom
Abroad to beg your bacon.
Of thirty bare years have I
Twice twenty been enraged,
And of forty been three times fifteen
In durance soundly caged.
On the lordly lofts of Bedlam,
With stubble soft and dainty,
Brave bracelets strong, sweet whips ding-dong,
With wholesome hunger plenty.
And now I sing ‘any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink or clothing.’
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
With a thought I took for Maudline
And with a cruse of cockle pottage,
With a thing thus tall, sky bless you all,
I befell into this dotage.
I slept not since the Conquest,
Till then I never waked,
Till the roguish boy of love where I lay
Me found and stripped me naked.
I know more than Apollo,
For oft, when he lies sleeping,
I see the stars at bloody wars
In the wounded welkin weeping:
The moon embrace her shepherd,
And the queen of Love her warrior,
While the first doth horn the star of morn,
And the next the heavenly Farrier.
While I do sing ‘any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink or clothing.’
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
The Gipsies Snap and Pedro
Are none of Tom’s comradoes,
The punk I scorn and the cut-purse sworn
And the roaring boys’ bravadoes;
The meek, the white, the gentle,
Me handle touch and spare not,
But those that cross Tom Rhinoceros
Do what the panther dare not.
With an host of furious fancies,
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear, and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.
By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end,
Me thinks it is no journey.
Yet I will sing ‘any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink or clothing.’
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
Name:
The punk I scorn and the cut-purse sworn
“Punk” eh, 1522 eh?
“Of thirty bare years have I
Twice twenty been enraged”
This is good and I will have a T-shirt made.
I wish I had time to keep up with all your posts Bob but I do realise it is a good way of filing your prolific talent.
Cheers mate.
“There is no better poem before Yeats”
To each his or her own I suppose. Does nothing much for me, whereas Autumn by Hopkins (close to Yeats in time, I admit) Gray’s Elegy and Sporus from An Epistle to Arbuthnot by Pope leave an instant and everlasting impression. Of course the last verses of Mask of Anarchy have a great ring to them. Pity the husk which is the ALP has forgotten – hate, in fact – the “many”. Multiple others, but personal choice. And no correspondence shall be entered into. Read and see, people.
(Bob, wouldn’t you love to have an enemy like ‘Sporus’ to use for your work?)
Just gave myself a kicking Bob. “Spring” by Hopkins.
Gray’s Elegy is pretty good. Paradise Lost …
I think what I meant was a poem of one mood, like a sonnet or Do Not Go Gentle. The long verse works seem to me to be in a different category.
But .. you’ve got me thinking.
I am a prisoner of young adulthood (and FR Leavis) I am afraid.
“I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, 5
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion 10
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.”
No I’m afraid “stirred for a bird” still does me in. Hopkins upset my otherwise pleasant school days . . .
Cattlelicks love him, of course, but they are a rather strange cult.
Given the weather we’ve had over the past 24 hours, what about Yeats’ “Prayer for my Daughter?”
….Haystack levelling wind.
Oh, and better than Shakespeare? Very funny.
What single poem of Shakespeare is better?
Sonnet 129
Nowhere near. One verse of Mad Tom is as good as the whole fourteen lines.
There be only one verse in Tom’s Song that can match the sonnet and that verse be the second from last.
Nothing else.
If you want to wager something with me then let’s see your hand at this from Milton,
“Into this wild Abyss
The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mixed Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds,
Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while, Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith
He had to cross.”
Or better yet, and from which there is no turning, I give you this exchange;
Lear: The fitchew, nor the soiled horse, goes to ‘t
With a more riotous appetite.
Down from the waist they are Centaurs,
Though women all above:
But to the girdle do the gods inherit,
Beneath is all the fiends’;
There’s hell, there’s darkness, there’s the sulphurous pit,
Burning, scalding, stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie! pah, pah! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination: there’s money for thee.
Gloucester: O, let me kiss that hand!
Lear: Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.
Gloucester: O ruin’d piece of nature! This great world
Shall so wear out to nought.”
Well, there it is. Let’s see what you got.
It is wonderful; it was obviously famous enough for De Vere to have known of it, and for him to use some of it in King Lear.
There are enough madmen/madwomen trying to frequent this blog; perhaps one of them may produce its equal.
Let Sporus tremble — “What? that thing of silk,
Sporus, that mere white curd of ass’s milk?
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a Butterfly upon a Wheel?”
Yet let me flap this Bug with gilded wings,
This painted Child of Dirt that stinks and stings;
Whose Buzz the Witty and the Fair annoys,
Yet Wit ne’er tastes, and Beauty ne’er enjoys,
So well-bred Spaniels civilly delight
In mumbling of the Game they dare not bite.
Eternal Smiles his Emptiness betray,
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
Whether in florid Impotence he speaks,
And, as the Prompter breathes, the Puppet squeaks;
Or at the Ear of Eve, familiar Toad,
Half Froth, half Venom, spits himself abroad,
In Puns, or Politicks, or Tales, or Lyes,
Or Spite, or Smut, or Rymes, or Blasphemies.
His Wit all see-saw between that and this,
Now high, now low, now Master up, now Miss,
And he himself one vile Antithesis.
Amphibious Thing! that acting either Part,
The trifling Head, or the corrupted Heart!
Fop at the Toilet, Flatt’rer at the Board,
Now trips a Lady, and now struts a Lord.
Eve’s Tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest,
A Cherub’s face, a Reptile all the rest;
Beauty that shocks you, Parts that none will trust,
Wit that can creep, and Pride that licks the dust.
The little Love-god lying once asleep,
Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,
Whilst many nymphs that vowed chaste life to keep,
Came tripping by, but in her maiden hand,
The fairest votary took up that fire,
Which many legions of true hearts had warmed,
And so the general of hot desire,
Was sleeping by a virgin hand disarmed.
This brand she quenched in a cool well by,
Which from Love’s fire took heat perpetual,
Growing a bath and healthful remedy,
For men discased, but I my mistress’ thrall,
Came there for cure and this by that I prove,
Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.
Sonnet 154, the last and perhaps the best.
I think what we’re showing here is many, many poems that are better than Shakespeare’s best.
Which means … well, he is not our greatest poet. Is he.
And … greatest playwright? Shakespeare In Italy, by me and Denny Lawrence, is reputedly better than twenty-seven of his plays ….
And you wonder.
He has been dead for over 400 years; any sensible scientist will admit that he stands on the shoulders of giants, and I think so should poets, and playwrights.
Are the greatest works of literature, art and music possible without what went before?
Was the Bard possible without Ovid, without Plutarch, without Homer, without Boccaccio and their fellows?
And Ellis without Shakespeare, yes, I see.
But the words ‘better’ and ‘worse’ do come into play, don’t they. The Crucible IS better than Measure For Measure, isn’t it. A Man For All Seasons better than Henry VIII. Run For Your Wife better than A Comedy Of Errors.
Or do you think these comparisons should not be made?
I am indifferent to these sorts of comparisons. I think Vivaldi wrote some of the greatest music ever written, but I am sure any number of modern critics/composers can and will say that he has been surpassed by XXX and YYY and give fifty excellent reasons why.
But I still prefer Vivaldi.
I, for one, cannot understand why someone should say (even think?) that Shakespeare is our greatest poet. There is no ‘greatest’ although the poetry in his plays stays forever in our world but never separate from the drama, (impossible to separate from the drama).
I appreciate a change of pace (after too long thinking about union corruption and the Thomson mess – soon to go a little quiet from various blog pages now that certain developments have occurred, not least of which is one “Lawler’ getting himself a top lawyer).
How better it is to look at really beautiful things, be challenged perhaps (I wonder if Milton knew about De Vere when he wrote “On Shakespear” in 1630) but be commanded to re-read Sea Fever, reach for The Common Pursuit or Revaluation after far too long, search frantically for Waugh’s The Hospitality of Campion Hall, feel again the spirit of Gough Square or a meal and ale in Ye Old Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street…….
No, far better this way.
You seem to be a good man.
How curious you’re a Liberal voter.
I wont ruin such a post with political dross and will answer elsewhere.
I have a book somewhere, “Shakespeare, poetry selected by Ted Hughes”, and in this book, he presents sonnets, poetry and speeches from the plays as Poems.
Now I am unschooled in this, but seeing Richard 3′s “winter of discontent” speech presented as lines from a poem, changes the way you, meaning I, read it, and it becomes something almost completely different, taken out of the context of a speech in a drama.
Try it Bob, and tell me that Tom O’Looney Bin stands up to the test in comparison.
The real poetry of Shakespeare is in the plays, no that is not right, the poetry of Shakespeare I prefer is in the plays.
‘Tis grand, allthumbs.
I’ve always thought it a Poetic Drama.
There’s no divorcing the Spirit and the Scaffold; one is not the cuckold of the other.
So allthumbs, to follow your lead – the best poetry of Shakespeare is to be found in the drama.
Point of information here, interesting enough to suspend the banning of Ellis for a moment. The poet Robert Graves was of the opinion that “Tom O’Bedlam” was most probably written by Shakespeare; being worked up from an older song actually used by beggars.
So far as I know the suggestion that it was used in Lear during the scene change was first made by Graves, if not he agreed. He discusses the poem and its more or less corrupt extant versions at length in an essay published in “The Crowning Privilege” collection; and attempts a reconstruction both of the uncorrupt ‘Shakespeare’ song and also of the original beggars song.
Graves was always reconstructing things, notorious for it, but didn’t usually give as much detailed supporting argument as he did in this essay…..it is worth reading. As an example of his argument, Graves thought that the euphemism “sky” for God shows us that the song was used in a theatre where the word ‘God’
was banned for a while
“Punk” in the context of the poem means prostitute by the way. (From a base meaning of “tinder”, hence prostitute by the connection of sexuality and fire; and hence, later, in a prison context a young man habitually raped, hence young men low on the pecking order generally, hence the music genre)
Thanks JD for the elucidation on “punk”. I knew of the tinder connotation but did not make the further leap to the sexual, and with that I set fire to my essays of Freud, to complete the circle.
Quite possibly, Jeremy we have here a version set down after the 1606 Act which put curbs on what could be said on stage. ‘Bowdlerisation’ was alive and well long before Bowdler, it seems.
I’d bet any money that “With a cod thus tall, God bless you all” was the original line; cod/God you see, an obscene pun very characteristic of although to be sure hardly unique to Shakrepeare.
For any who missed it, Tom is insane with unsatisfied desire for his Maudline and has a permanent erection (thus also “Tom Rhinoceros”).
Somewhere at home I have Graves’ reconstruction.
Anyway, while I am spookily here-but-not-here let me remark that Mallory did what he did do well but that was one thing, and to compare him to the versatile Shakepeare is absurd. Which you would rather do without is of course a matter of taste.