Poems
Poem 1: 'Elegy for Himself' - Written in the Tower before his execution, 1586 (Pre-1900)
My prime of youth is but a frost of cares;
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain
My crop of corn is but a field of tares;
And all my good is but vain hope of gain:
The day is past, and yet I saw no sun;
And now I live, and now my life is done.
My tale was heard, and yet it was not told;
My fruit is fall’n, and yet my leaves are green;
My youth is spent, and yet I am not old;
I saw the world, and yet it is not spun;
And now I live, and now my life is done.
I sought my death, and found it in my womb;
I looked for life, and saw it was a shade;
I trod the earth, and knew it was my tomb;
And now I die, and now I was but made;
My glass is full, and now my glass is run;
And now I live, and now my life is done.
The Poet: Chidiock Tichbourne (1558-1586)
Chidiock Tichbourne, born in Southampton in 1558, was a Catholic of noble birth who took part in the Babington conspiracy to murder Queen Elizabeth I and place Mary Queen of Scots on the throne of England. For his part in that conspiracy he was imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he is said to have written the poem 'Elegy for Himself' in the days before he was hung, drawn and quartered at Lincoln's Inn Fields on 20 September 1586 at the age of 27.
The Poem
The fact that it was written by a man who knew he was going to be executed adds a poignant magic to this elegant and well-crafted poem. While enjoying the central enigma of the poem, puzzling out the riddle repeated in every line, in which a young man's common expectations of life are reversed and turn into their opposites, the reader pictures the scene where the poem is being written, perhaps imagining being in that dark cell in the Tower of London. 'How would I shape up in that situation?'
The poem has a formal structure with three six-line stanzas and a simple ABABCC rhyme system. The first two stanzas express in every line the baffling paradox of this young man's situation - how can I be young and healthy and yet about to die? Each line presents us with a picture, an image, that then turns into its opposite - 'My feast of joy is but a dish of pain; / My crop of corn is but a field of tares'. In the second stanza the sense of confusion is even stronger, with impossible conjunctions - 'My fruit is fall'n, and yet my leaves are green' - 'My thread is cut, and yet it is not spun'.
In the final stanza the bewildered tone of the first two stanzas turns into bitter certainty - 'I trod the earth, and knew it was my tomb'. A final image of a glass (and hourglass) seems to sum up his plight - 'My glass is full, and now my glass is run'. When we finally read the line - 'And now I live, and now my life is done' - we are with him on his final walk to the executioner's block.
As Armitage acknowledges, there is some doubt as to the authenticity of the poem's circumstances; but the poem is so well written that we can almost supend our disbelief.
What the Beefeater Said
‘How can you really visualise the state of mind that a young man like this would be in knowing that he was going to die tomorrow? He's probably seen these executions before, certainly heard of them, and there's nothing he can do about it, to stop the inevitability of tomorrow morning...'
Dave Bryant - Passwords 1998
What Simon Armitage Said
‘It is a strange circumstance to know the date of your own death in advance. Hardly any of us know that.
‘It's a very formal poem. It's very neat. It's very tidy. It's very well crafted... It begs the question, if you're going to die in the morning how can you sit down and be so calm and collected and make a poem that takes up so much craft and thought? Because I'm sure most of us would be gibbering wrecks, we'd hardly be able to hold the pen!'
Simon Armitage - Passwords 1998
