Lyr Add: Dream-Pedlary (Thomas Lovell Beddoes)

Subject: Lyr Add: DREAM-PEDLARY (Thomas Lovell Beddoes)
From: GUEST,Jim Clark..London.England
Date: 25 Mar 03 - 04:27 AM

Thomas Lovell Beddoes 1803 - 1849 romantic poet and dramatist was born in Clifton, now part of Greater Bristol southwest England. His father, Thomas Beddoes, was a radical liberal minded physician remembered in medical history as the pioneer of nitrous oxide (laughing gas). He grew up surrounded by his father's world of anatomical studies (some say this led to his pre-occupation with death) and in the company of his father's friends amongst whom were many luminaries of science and literature. He studied medicine himself in several Germanic medical schools but his often drunken rowdy behaviour coupled with his radical political activism and outspoken liberal opinions led to his expulsion. His unpredictable behaviour led to many of his friends and family believing him to be mad. In 1848 after contracting a disease possibly from an infected body he had come into contact with in a Frankfurt hospital and a first suicide attempt leading to the partial amputation of one of his legs for gangrene. In despair he killed himself through poisoning in 1849. By his body was left a note to one of his friends in which he described himself as "food for what I am good for—worms." This delightful somewhat disjointed wayward poem surely asserts a belief in the futility of dreaming of an afterlife. Here's the link to the page with this sound poem.

Dream Pedlary by Thomas Lovell Beddoes (sound poem set to music)

Regards.
Jim Clark

PS. Don't forget you can if you prefer listen to my sound poems at my Yahoo "sound poetry" web group (look in "files") here's that link
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bloozman_uk/

All rights are reserved on this sound recording/copyright/patent Jim Clark 2003


Dream-Pedlary

If there were dreams to sell,
What would you buy?
Some cost a passing bell;
Some a light sigh,
That shakes from Life's fresh crown
Only a rose-leaf down.
If there were dreams to sell,
Merry and sad to tell,
And the crier rang the bell,
What would you buy?

A cottage lone and still,
With bowers nigh,
Shadowy, my woes to still,
Until I die.
Such pearls from Life's fresh crown
Fain would I shake me down.
Were dreams to have at will,
This would best heal my ill,
This would I buy.

But there were dreams to sell
Ill didst thou buy;
Life is a dream, they tell,
Waking, to die.
Dreaming a dream to prize,
Is wishing ghosts to rise;
And if I had the spell
To call the buried well,
Which one should I?

If there are ghosts to raise,
What shall I call,
Out of hell's murky haze,
Heaven's blue pall?
Raise my loved long-lost boy,
To lead me to his joy.--
There are no ghosts to raise;
Out of death lead no ways;
Vain is the call.

Know'st thou not ghosts to sue,
No love thou hast.
Else lie, as I will do,
And breathe thy last.
So out of Life's fresh crown
Fall like a rose-leaf down.
Thus are the ghosts to woo;
Thus are all dreams made true,
Ever to last!