On May 27th, 1992, my wife Jean and I
were touring England with two friends, Tom and Mary Loe [who was photographing
our trip with a camcorder]. Jean was keeping a journal, and she wrote, “Very
close to Bath is Bristol, so we drove there after dinner at a small place in
Bath with some strange 1950s [American] motifs for decoration. Lew wanted to see the church St. Mary
Redcliffe at which the father of the poet Thomas Chatterton had been
sexton. The church was easy to
find, and as big as a cathedral.
We weren't able to see the inside [because there was choir practice
going on, and when we opened the door the director turned toward us and told us
loudly to get out], but the outside was beautiful.” [And I shed a tear or two for young Thomas who wrote this]:
SONG FROM AELLA
O sing unto my roundelay,
O drop the briny tear with me;
Dance no more at holyday,
Like a running river be:
My
love is dead,
Gone
to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.
Black his crown as the winter night,
White his brow as the summer snow,
Red his lips as the morning light,
Cold he lies in the grave below:
My
love is dead,
Gone
to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.
Sweet his tongue as the throstle’s note,
Quick in dance as thought can be,
Deft his tabor, cudgel stout;
O he lies by the willow-tree!
My
love is dead,
Gone
to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.
Hark! The raven flaps his wing
In the briery dell below;
Hark! The death-owl loud doth sing
To the nightmares, as they go:
My
love is dead,
Gone
to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.
See! The white moon shines on high;
Whiter is my true-love’s shroud;
Whiter than the morning sky,
Whiter than the evening cloud:
My
love is dead,
Gone
to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.
Here upon my true-love’s grave
Shall the barren flowers be laid;
Not one holy saint to save
All the coldness of a maid:
My
love is dead,
Gone
to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.
With my hands I’ll dent the briers
Round his holy corpse to grieve:
Ouph and fairy, light your fires,
Here my body I shall leave:
My
love is dead,
Gone
to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.
Come, with acorn-cup and thorn,
Drain my red heart’s blood away;
Life and all its good I scorn,
Dance by night, or feast by day:
My
love is dead,
Gone
to his death-bed
All under the willow tree.
Thomas Chatterton
[And
I wrote this ballade]:
Listen to Lewis Turco read Late Elegy for an Old Suicide
In memory of Thomas Chatterton 1752-1770
"There's nothing that agrees worse
Than a proud mind and a beggar's purse."
Descendant of Redcliffe's deacons, a Bristol boy,
St.
Mary's ghosts were native to his blood.
He haunted Canyng's tomb. His only joy
Was
in his own invention: "Rowley" stood
More
clearly in his sight than real life could,
Of
greater substance than apprentice wages.
He
made the priest his mask, put on his hood....
Tom's
suicide aches still across the ages.
He built a myth, turned Bristol into Troy
And
Camelot combined. The Sacred Wood
Grew at the gate, and time became his toy.
He
brought the rill of local lore to flood
And
made St. Mary's cross the Holy Rood —
All
for Rowley's sake. Upon those
pages
He
worked till Rowley's lyrics stood enthewed.
Tom's
suicide aches still across the ages.
At last he went to London to employ
Himself
and Rowley in the common good;
He managed but to starve himself, annoy
Great
Walpole, tender Johnson. When his
food
And
pence ran out at seventeen, he rued
The
day that he'd been born. London's
sages
Looked
the other way, cried "Hoax!" and "Fraud!"
Tom's
suicide aches still across the ages.
Envoy:
Yet
what he wrote was true, the lines imbued
With
haunting skill. Death was his
early wages.
God
rest his bones, however misconstrued.
Tom's
suicide aches still across the ages.
Originally
published in The Sewanee Review,
xcviii:4, Fall 1990, and gathered in The Collected
Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court, 1953-2004, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004. ISBN 1932842004, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 1932842012,
quality paperback, $26.95, 460 pages, © 2004, all rights reserved. ORDER
FROM AMAZON.COM.
