Nor never sing any food and feeding,
Money, drink, or clothing;
Come dame or maid,
Be not afraid,
For Tom will injure nothing.
Of thirty bare years have I
Twice twenty been enraged;
And of forty been
Three times fifteen
In durance soundly caged.
In the lovely lofts of Bedlam,
In stubble soft and dainty,
Brave bracelets strong,
Sweet whips ding, dong,
And a wholesome hunger plenty.
With a thought I took for Maudlin,
And a cruse of cockle pottage,
And a thing thus--tall,
Sky bless you all,
I fell into this dotage.
I slept not till the Conquest;
Till then I never waked;
Till the roguish boy
Of love where I lay,
Me found, and stript me naked.
When short I have shorn my sow's face,
And swigg'd my horned barrel;
In an oaken inn
Do I pawn my skin,
As a suit of gilt apparel.
The morn's my constant mistress,
And the lovely owl my morrow;
The flaming drake,
And the night-crow, make
Me music, to my sorrow.
The palsie plague these pounces,
When I prig your pigs or pullen;
Your culvers take
Or mateless make
Your chanticleer and sullen;
When I want provant with _Humphrey_ I sup,
And when benighted,
To repose in Paul's,
With waking souls
I never am affrighted.
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 embraces her shepherd,
And the Queen of Love her warrior;
While the first does horn
The stars of the morn,
And the next the heavenly farrier.
With a heart of furious fancies,
Whereof I am commander:
With a burning spear,
And a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander;
With a knight of ghosts and shadows,
I summoned am to Tourney:
Ten leagues beyond
The wide world's end;
Methinks it is no journey!
The last stanza of this Bedlam song contains the seeds of exquisite
romance; a stanza worth many an admired poem.