To One In Bedlam....

To One in Bedlam

Ernest Dowson

1867-1900

WITH delicate, mad hands, behind his sordid bars,
Surely he hath his posies, which they tear and twine;
Those scentless wisps of straw that, miserable, line
His strait, caged universe, whereat the dull world stares.
Pedant and pitiful. O, how his rapt gaze wars	5
With their stupidity! Know they what dreams divine
Lift his long, laughing reveries like enchanted wine,
And make his melancholy germane to the stars'?
O lamentable brother! if those pity thee,
Am I not fain of all thy lone eyes promise me;	10
Half a fool's kingdom, far from men who sow and reap,
All their days, vanity? Better then mortal flowers,
Thy moon-kissed roses seem: better than love or sleep,
The star-crowned solitude of thine oblivious hours. ******** Last Look collage poetry by Fomorton dirty tom lives a story of the doomed haunted escape drums throbbed mourned his increasing madness night I found him on the precipice I sat facing this extraordinary man, creator of such an endless stream of magical images endowed with dignity "I fell." he says "It was a big fall and I couldn't have gotten back up without your help. It was like going in a cave where you can't see the sun." I ran along side until I felt he didn't need me, then....I let go. immediately, I wanted to grab hold again but he was gone run like pheidipides He got away only I believe in happy endings we still live in its shadow How do you define eternity? Can you wait? ~c. MF 2007

Tom Tell-truth.....

 (The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, 1951; pp. 312-3) quote a single verse from James Orchard Halliwell's The Nursery Rhymes of England (1842):

As I was walking o'er little Moorfields,
I saw St. Paul's a-running on wheels,
With a fee, fo, fum.
Then for further frolics I'll go to France,
Where Jack shall sing and his wife shall dance,
With a fee, fo fum.

This seems to come from the ballad of Tom Tell-Truth [c. 1676]

I see St. Paul's steeple run upon wheels, fal la la
I see St. Paul's steeple run upon wheels and in the middle of all Moor-fields,
With a fa la, fa la la la, fa la la la la la la.


The precise locality of these strange happenings is here lost, but it is probable that it was Moorfields as in the broadside edition and the nursery rhyme. This would be an appropriate setting for a nonsense song, for in 1675 the old Bethlem Hospital was moved to Moorfields from Bishops Gate Without.