Tom o' Bedlam
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Tom o' Bedlam is the name of a poem written c. 1600 about a Bedlamite.
At least 25 stanzas of 4 lines each comprise the complete poem. The existence of a chorus suggests that it was originally sung as a ballad.
The most commonly quoted lines are as thus:
"The spirits white as lightning
Would on my travels guide me
The stars would shake and the moon would quake
Whenever they espied me.
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."
In modern fiction
Robert Silverberg has written a book by the same name, "Tom O'Bedlam" (1985).
Mercedes Lackey has co-authored a series of books whose titles are taken from verses of the poem.
The Jolie Holland album "Escondida" features a song titled "Mad Tom of Bedlam," based on the lyrics of Tom o'Bedlam.
Tom O'Bedlam is an important mentor/mystic/revolutionary in Grant Morrison's graphic novel hypersigil, The Invisibles. He appears as a mad old homeless man, whose madness is really an act, both aiding and masking his transcendent knowledge.
External links
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