Tom O’ Bedlam

Tom o’ Bedlam

From the hag and hungry goblin

That into rags would rend ye,

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,

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

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 Maudlin

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,

Till then I never wakèd,

Till the roguish boy of love where I lay

Me found and stript 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,

In an oaken inn I pound my skin

As a suit of gilt apparel;

The moon’s my constant mistress,

And the lowly owl my marrow;

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,

Your culvers take, or matchless make

Your Chanticleer or Sullen.

When I want provant with Humphrey

I sup, and when benighted,

I repose in Paul’s 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;

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 gypsies, Snap and Pedro,

Are none of Tom’s comradoes,

The punk I scorn and the cutpurse sworn,

And the roaring boy’s bravadoes.

The meek, the white, the gentle

Me handle, touch, and spare not;

But those that cross Tom Rynosseros

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 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.

Yet will I sing, Any food, any feeding,

Feeding, drink, or clothing;

Come dame or maid, be not afraid,

Poor Tom will injure nothing.