Thomas Chatterton

Thomas Chatterton Poems

Ah blame me not, Catcott, if from the right way
My notions and actions run far.
How can my ideas do other but stray,
Deprived of their ruling North-Star?
...

Begin, my muse, the imitative lay,
Aonian doxies sound the thrumming string;
Attempt no number of the plaintive Gay,
Let me like midnight cats, or Collins sing.
...

Almighty Framer of the Skies!
O let our pure devotion rise,
Like Incense in thy Sight!
Wrapt in impenetrable Shade
...

In days of old, when Wesley's power
Gathered new strength by every hour;
Apostate Will, just sunk in trade,
Resolved his bargain should be made;
...

Eclogue the First.

Whanne Englonde, smeethynge from her lethal wounde,
From her galled necke dyd twytte the chayne awaie,
...

FYRSTE MYNSTRELLE...


The boddynge flourettes bloshes atte the lyghte;
...

In Virgynë the sweltrie sun gan sheene,
And hotte upon the mees did caste his raie;
The apple rodded from its palie greene,
And the mole peare did bende the leafy spraie;
...

Young Colin was as stout a boy
As ever gave a maiden joy;
But long in vain he told his tale
To black-eyed Biddy of the Dale.
...

Burgum, I thank thee, thou hast let me see
That Bristol has impress'd her stamp on thee,
Thy generous spirit emulates the Mayor's,
Thy generous spirit with thy Bristol's pairs.
...

The Sun revolving on his axis turns,
And with creative fire intensely burns;
Impell'd by forcive air, our Earth supreme,
Rolls with the planets round the solar gleam.
...

O God, whose thunder shakes the sky,
Whose eye this atom globe surveys,
To thee, my only rock, I fly,
Thy mercy in thy justice praise.
...

O CHRYSTE, it is a grief for me to tell;
HOW manie a nobil erle and valrous knyghte
In fyghtynge for Kynge Harrold noblie fell,
...

ONNE Ruddeborne bank twa pynynge Maydens sate,
Theire teares faste dryppeynge to the waterre cleere;
Echone bementynge for her absente mate.
...

Somme cherisaunei 'tys to gentle mynde,
Whan heie have chevyced theyre londe from bayne ,
Whan theie ar dedd, theie leave yer name behynde,
...

OH Truth! immortal daughter of the skies,
Too lyttle known to wryters of these daies,
Teach me, fayre Saincte! hy passynge worthe to pryze,
...

PERSONS REPRESENTED.
HAROLDE, bie T. Rowleie, the Aucthoure.
GODDWYN, bie Johan de Iscamme.
ELWARDE, bie Syrr Thybbot Gorges.
...

BOOKE st.
WHANNE Scythyannes, salvage as the wolves theie chacde,
Peyncted in horrowe formes bie nature dyghte,
...

No more I hail the morning's golden gleam,
No more the wonders of the view I sing;
Friendship requires a melancholy theme,
...

Revolving in their destin'd sphere,
The hours begin another year
As rapidly to fly;
Ah! think, Maria, (e'er in grey
...

THE featherd songster chaunticleer
Han wounde hys bugle horne,
And tolde the earlie villager
The commynge of the morne.
...

Thomas Chatterton Biography

Thomas Chatterton was born in Bristol on November 20, 1752 and is generally regarded as the first Romantic poet in English. Throughout his early childhood Chatterton showed no signs of talent. He was regarded as little better than an idiot until he was about six and a half years old, because he would learn nothing, refused to play with other children, and spent most of his time brooding in silence. He was expelled from his first school as a dullard. It appears that he underwent a considerable transformation in his seventh year. The story goes that one day he found his mother tearing up for waste paper some old music folios which had been brought home from the church some years previously by his father for use as sewing-patterns, bookbindings and the like. According to his mother, Thomas 'fell in love' with the illuminated capitals and, his interest once aroused, his mother soon taught him to read with the aid of the manuscript. If the story can be trusted, it illustrates vividly both Chatterton's instinctive delight in medieval art and the philistinism of his surroundings. His reading progressed from the old folios to a black-letter Bible and then to any books he could obtain. In August 1760 he began attending Golston's Hospital, a Bristol charity-school which formed probably the worst intellectual environment he could have had. This Dickensian personage had left behind him a school run like a prison, where the pupils were tonsured like monks and suspected leanings towards religious non-conformity were punishable by expulsion. Chatterton's behaviour there seems to have alternated between delinquency and sullenness and the school proved to be the first of a series of disastrously stultifying milieux which certainly contributed to Chatterton's tragedy. When he was ten, he began to write poetry. At first he produced religious verses, but he soon developed a satirical vein. The first glimpses of Chatterton as a literary forger began to appear soon after. In 1767, when he was nearly fifteen, Chatterton left school and was apprenticed to John Lambert, an attorney. It was his first step into the business world, an environment which he found almost as oppressive as Golston's Hospital. Bristol at this time was an overcrowded, bustling industrial city crammed into a set of streets and buildings which had changed little since the middle ages. It was, in fact, one of the places where the modern world was coming into existence. Chatterton was not proving a satisfactory apprentice. Set to the drudgery of copying legal precedents, he whiled away the time in drawing and writing poetry. He still read enormously. He was sulky and sardonic, and began to associate in his spare time with a group of young apprentices who, like him, were bored by their work and did their best to enliven the evenings with drinking and chasing girls. His literary work went ahead quickly. In 1768 a local magazine accepted from him 'medieval' documents relating to a matter of local history - these were of course forgeries. Soon he was selling a series of 'medieval' poems and documents, which he claimed to have found amongst old papers in the Church of St. Mary Redcliff. Among the poems sold was the manuscript of his masterpiece, AElla. Chatterton was not entirely content being a poet and turned to being a forger for several reasons. He felt alienated in society and held resentment towards society, and especially towards figures of authority. Naturally sensitive and suspicious, he was also extraordinarily intelligent, perhaps even a genius, and yet he was placed in a series of environments which offered little understanding or encouragement. On a few well-documented occasions Chatterton admitted that he had written the poems, however no-one would believe him. He was not regarded as sufficiently intelligent. This above all must have confirmed him in his resolution to play merely the discoverer and editor of a medieval poet, and not to claim the authorship for himself. Furthermore Chatterton believed a poem which would be accepted and sincerely acclaimed as a specimen of medieval verse would be cruely ridiculed as the work of a living poet; or so he probably assumed. And with some of the disinterest of the true artist, Chatterton sacrificed his own fame and attributed most of the poems he wrote in 1768 and 1769, many of which touch on greatness, to a fictitious Bristolian priest of the 15th century, Sir Thomas Rowley. Unfortunately Chatterton, herald of the new poetic era, clung to some of the habits of the old. He seems to have wanted a patron; and in his innocence, it occurred to him that Walpole, author of Otranto, was the very man. Walpole was sent samples of Rowley's poetry but this aroused suspicion and the documents were returned. In 1769 Chatterton decided that he must leave the attorney's office and turn professional. But he was still bound by his indentures to Lambert, and there was no easy way to obtain release. He became increasingly depressed and frequently talked of suicide. His religious beliefs had partly fallen away and after one suicide-threat he managed to coerce Lambert to cancel his indentures. Free at last, Chatterton, now seventeen, set out for London at the end of April 1770. He visited the editors of several magazines and seems to have written and published a great deal of satirical verse and prose in the first few months. But payments were small and irregular and the work exhausting. In June he moved to cheaper lodgings where he need not be seen in his exhaustion and poverty by anyone who knew him. He was entirely alone, and could not bring himself to return to Bristol a failure. He was half-starved, and there is evidence to suggest that his sufferings were aggravated by a dose of gonorrhoea. On August 24, 1770, proud to the end, he poisoned himself by drinking arsenic in water. The room was broken open the next day. Chatterton's body lay on the bed, severely convulsed. The floor was littered with fragments of manuscript. The inquest, the records of which have been lost, presumably returned the plain verdict of suicide, so that Chatterton's body was buried in an unmarked grave.)

The Best Poem Of Thomas Chatterton

A New Song

Ah blame me not, Catcott, if from the right way
My notions and actions run far.
How can my ideas do other but stray,
Deprived of their ruling North-Star?

A blame me not, Broderip, if mounted aloft,
I chatter and spoil the dull air;
How can I imagine thy foppery soft,
When discord's the voice of my fair?

If Turner remitted my bluster and rhymes,
If Hardind was girlish and cold,
If never an ogle was got from Miss Grimes,
If Flavia was blasted and old;

I chose without liking, and left without pain,
Nor welcomed the frown with a sigh;
I scorned, like a monkey, to dangle my chain,
And paint them new charms with a lie.

Once Cotton was handsome; I flam'd and I burn'd,
I died to obtain the bright queen;
But when I beheld my epistle return'd,
By Jesu it alter'd the scene.

She's damnable ugly, my Vanity cried,
You lie, says my Conscience, you lie;
Resolving to follow the dictates of Pride,
I'd view her a hag to my eye.

But should she regain her bright lustre again,
And shine in her natural charms,
'Tis but to accept of the works of my pen,
And permit me to use my own arms.

Thomas Chatterton Comments

Bygge mand Bob 04 April 2018

Jeg kan bygge ting

7 1 Reply
Lille røde traktor 24 January 2022

Respekt

0 0
Den Fede Yoghurt! 24 April 2019

spis yoghurt frantsbrød!

2 4 Reply
nig gha 25 March 2022

nigas at you at super sonic speed

0 0 Reply
heyheyehyheyeheyehyehe 24 January 2022

sut mine løg

0 0 Reply
Cassuis 24 January 2022

Cassius er til mænd

2 0 Reply
olleersort 24 January 2022

det er rigtigt nok

0 0
negerlau 24 January 2022

det er true

0 0
Kumarmani Mahakul 29 October 2020

Thomas Chatterton who is ranked #180 on top 500 poets on date 29 October 2020 is ever remembered by the readers because of his high literary perseverance and moral appearance. We love his each valuable poem.

2 0 Reply
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Thomas Chatterton Quotes

There is a time for all things—Except Marriage my dear.

Thomas Chatterton Popularity

Thomas Chatterton Popularity

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