Tom-O’-Bedlam’s Song

An Illustrated Poem from the Past

Substack isn’t friendly to poem formatting, but I’m doing what I can with it. Like the other poems I’ve done about fairyland, this one is strange and wild - and isn’t actually about the fae. Instead, Bedlam was the nickname for an insane asylum, the first in England, perhaps in the world. The connection between fantasy and reality wavers thin as a veil all through this poem.

From the hag and hungry goblin
That into rage 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 
Yourself with Tom, 
Abroad to beg your bacon. 

I know more than Apollo; 
For oft, when he lies sleeping, 
I behold the stars, 
At mortal wars, 
And the rounded welkin weeping. 

The moon’s my constant mistress, 
And the lovely owl my morrow; 
The flaming drake 
And night-crow make
Me music to my sorrow.

When I want provant, with Humphrey
I sup and when benighted
I repose in Paul’s 
With waking souls, 
Yet never am affrighted. 

With a 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.

--Anonymous
As published in the 1929 edition of World’s 1000 Best Poems, edited by Berton Braley