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Tom o' Bedlam's Song

"Tom o' Bedlam's Song" is sometimes called simply ""Tom o' Bedlam." Anyone who hasn't read "Tom o 'Bedlam's Song" hasn't fully lived. Reading the final stanza is like getting the gist of Don Quixote in quick burst of magnificently evocative language. Tilting at windmills has never seemed so exotic, or so terribly frightening. Harold Bloom has called this mad song "the most magnificent Anonymous poem in the language." The speaker professes to be a Bedlamite, a madman. It's not a poem to be explained, but a poem to be experienced, felt, relished ... and perhaps feared, since any of us can become mentally ill ...

Tom o' Bedlam's Song
Anonymous ballad, circa 1620

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, [a book of astrology]
That of your five sound senses
You never be forsaken,
Nor wander from
Your selves with Tom
Abroad to beg your bacon.

    While I do sing,
    Any food, any feeding,
    Feeding, drink or clothing?
    Come, dame or maid,
    Be not afraid,
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.

Of thirty bare years have I
Twice twenty been enragèd,
And of forty been
Three times fifteen
In durance soundly cagèd [durance = confinement]
On the lordly lofts of Bedlam
With stubble soft and dainty,
Brave bracelets strong, [bracelets = handcuffs]
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 Maudlin, [Maudlin = Mary Magdalene]
And 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, [England's defeat in 1066]
Ere then I never wakèd,
Till the roguish boy [Cupid]
Of love where I lay
Me found and stripped me nakèd,

    And now I sing,
    Any food, any feeding,
    Feeding, drink or clothing?
    Come, dame or maid,
    Be not afraid,
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.

When I short have shorn my sow's face
And swigged my horny barrel,
At an oaken inn
I impound my skin
In a suit of gilt apparel; ["gilt" may be a pun on "guilt"]
The moon's my constant mistress,
And the lowly owl my marrow; ["marrow" suggests "mate" and "semen"]
The flaming drake
And the night-crow make
Me music to my sorrow.

    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 palsy plagues my pulses
When I prig your pigs or pullen, [prig = steal, pullen = chicken]
Your culvers take [culvers = pigeons]
Or matchless make
Your Chanticleer or Sullen. [i.e., leave your rooster without a mate]
When I want provant, with Humphry [provant = food]
I sup, and when benighted,
I repose in Paul's [St. Paul's Cathedral in London]
With waking souls,
Yet never am affrighted.

    But  I do sing,
    Any food, any feeding,
    Feeding, drink or clothing?
    Come, dame or maid,
    Be not afraid,
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.

I know more than Apollo,
For oft when he lies sleeping
I see the stars
At bloody wars
In the wounded welkin weeping. [welkin = sky]
The moon embrace her shepherd, [the Moon loved Endymion]
And the Queen of Love her warrior, [Venus loved Mars]
While the first doth horn
The star of morn,
And the next, the heavenly Farrier. [Venus cuckolded Hephaestus, the smith god]

    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 Gypsies, Snap and Pedro,
Are none of Tom's comradoes,
The punk I scorn, [punk = prostitute]
And the cutpurse sworn, [cutpurse=pickpocket]
And the roaring boy's bravadoes.
The meek, the white, the gentle,
Me handle, touch and spare not;
But those that cross
Tom Rynosseross
Do what the Panther dare not.

    Although I sing,
    Any food, any feeding,
    Feeding, drink or clothing?
    Come, dame or maid,
    Be not afraid,
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.

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:
Methinks it is no journey.

    Yet will I sing,
    Any food, any feeding,
    Feeding, drink or clothing?
    Come, dame or maid,
    Be not afraid,
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.

Around 30 years ago, when I realized there was not a single correct version of "Tom O'Bedlam's Song" to be found on the Internet, I hand-typed the version above from one of Harold Bloom's books. So I have done my part to make this masterpiece accessible to readers around the globe. — Michael R. Burch, editor, The HyperTexts

Since I posted the original version of the poem, I have made a few edits based on the version in the latest edition of the Norton Anthology of Poetry. I have explained the reason for my edits below. I believe this is the best version of "Tom O'Bedlam's Song" on the Internet, or anywhere else, unless someone can point out a better one, which I will be happy to consult.

Bedlam was a nickname for the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem, a London insane asylum also know simply as Bethlehem Hospital.

The character of Tom o' Bedlam was known to Shakespeare, since Edgar in King Lear disguises himself as "poor Tom," one of the "Bedlam beggars," in order to speak, perhaps on equal terms, to the mad king.

"Tom O'Bedlam's Song" is a poem in the "mad song" genre, written in the voice of a Bedlamite who has become a homeless beggar, singing for his supper and depending on the kindness of strangers.

The chorus is characteristic of a medieval ballad.

EDITS BASED ON DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN THE BEST TEXTS
by Michael R. Burch

The best texts of which I am aware are the ones published by Harold Bloom and the one in the Norton Anthology of Poetry. These are the edits I made where I encountered significant discrepancies, along with my reasoning...

I have gone with the editors of Norton in using line breaks to emphasize the rhymes in lines three/four and seven/eight of each stanza. I have gone with a six-line chorus for the same reason.

I have gone with Bloom by repeating the word "feeding" for meter. I think that was a crucial omission on the part of Norton's editors.

I went with Bloom's "sow's face" rather than "sour face" because it seems to fit the poem better, with its references to pigs and bacon. The original poem's "sowre" face may have been a pun on "sow" and "sour" but it doesn't come through in modern English with "sour."

I went with Bloom's "At an oaken inn / I impound my skin." I take the "horny barrel" and "gilt" (pun on "guilt") to be references to masturbation. Thus "impound" could be a pun on ("pound") and confinement, with which a Bedlamite would be well acquainted. Also, "impound" suits the meter better.

I went with Norton's "lowly owl" over "lovely owl" because "marrow" may be a reference to semen, which seems more lowly (considering its source) than lovely.

I went with Bloom's "I repose in Paul's" (St. Paul's), which goes better with "souls" for modern readers than the archaic "Powles."

I will not belabor articles and such. I went with the ones that seemed best to me.

This is a poem of mine that was inspired and influenced by "Tom O'Bedlam's Song" ...
Finally to Burn
(the Fall and Resurrection of Icarus with the assistance of Tom o’ Bedlam)
by Michael R. Burch

Athena takes me
sometimes by the hand

and we go levitating
through strange Dreamlands

where Apollo sleeps
in his dark forgetting

and Passion seems
like a wise bloodletting

and all I remember
,upon awaking,

is: to Love sometimes
is like forsaking

one’s Being—to glide
heroically beyond thought,

forsaking the here
for the There and the Not.

*

O, finally to Burn,
gravity beyond escaping!

To plummet is Bliss
when the blisters breaking

rain down red scabs
on the earth’s mudpuddle ...

Feathers and wax
and the watchers huddle ...

Flocculent sheep,
O, and innocent lambs!,

I will rock me to sleep
on the waves’ iambs.

*

To sleep's sweet relief
from Love’s exhausting Dream,

for the Night has Wings
pallid as Moonbeams—

they will flit me to Life
like a huge-eyed Phoenix

fluttering off
to quarry the Sphinx.

*

Riddlemethis,
riddlemethat,

Rynosseross,
throw out the Welcome Mat.

Quixotic, I seek Love
amid the tarnished

rusted-out steel
when to live is varnish.

To Dream—that’s the thing!
Aye, that Genie I’ll rub,

soak by the candle,
aflame in the tub.

*

Riddlemethis,
riddlemethat,

Rynosseross,
throw out the Welcome Mat.

Somewhither, somewhither
aglitter and strange,

we must moult off all knowledge
or perish caged.

*

I am reconciled to Life
in crypts beyond thought—

where I’ll Live the Elsewhere
and Dream of the Naught.

Methinks it no journey;
to tarry’s a waste,

so fatten the oxen;
make a nice baste.

I am coming, Fool Tom,
we have Somewhere to Go,

though we injure noone,
ourselves wildaglow.
This odd poem invokes and merges with the anonymous medieval poem “Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song” and W. H. Auden’s modernist poem “Musee des Beaux Arts,” which in turn refers to Pieter Breughel’s painting “The Fall of Icarus.” In the first stanza Icarus levitates with the help of Athena, the goddess or wisdom, through “strange dreamlands” while Apollo, the sun god, lies sleeping. In the second stanza, Apollo predictably wakes up and Icarus plummets to earth, or back to mundane reality, as in Breughel’s painting and Auden’s poem. In the third stanza the grounded Icarus can still fly, but only in flights of imagination through dreams of love. In the fourth and fifth stanzas Icarus joins Tom Rynosseross of the Bedlam poem in embracing madness by deserting “knowledge” and its cages (ivory towers, etc.). In the final stanza Icarus agrees with Tom that it is “no journey” to wherever they’re going together and also agrees with Tom that they will injure no one along the way, no matter how intensely they glow and radiate. The poem can be taken as a metaphor for the death and rebirth of Poetry, and perhaps also as a prophecy that Poetry will rise, radiate and reattain its former glory ...

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