Thomas Chatterton
 
©  Copyright 2000  Richard Brodie


Thomas Chatterton was a child prodigy from Bristol who produced a very large quantity of verse before committing suicide at the tender age of 17.  Paranoid that he would suffer from the lack of appreciation for a contemporary syndrome, he couched most of his works in a kind of quasi olde-Englyshe, and attempted to palm them off as discoveries of a translation by a 15th century parish priest named Rowley, of a tenth century author, Turgot the Monk.

His two-part unfinished epoch, "Battle of Hastings", must surely be the goriest poem in the English language (one commentator wrote "some of the descriptions of wounds in the two Battles of Hastings would sicken a butcher"). I have extracted the following lines:

Battle of Hastings [N0.1]

       1  O Chryste, it is a grief for me to telle,
       2  How manie a nobil earl and valrous knyghte
       3  In fyghtynge for King Harrold noblie fell,
       4  Al sleyne in Hastynges feeld in bloudie fyghte.
      21  Soone as the erlie maten belle was tolde,
      22  And sonne was come to byd us all good daie,
      23  Bothe armies on the feeld both brave and bolde,
      24  Prepar'd for fyghte in champyon arraie
      45  Beer you in mynde, we for a kingdomm fyghte;
      46  Lordshippes and honors echone shall possesse;
      47  Be this the word to daie, God and my Ryghte;
      48  Ne doubte but God will oure true cause blesse.
      49  The clarions then sounded sharpe and shrill;
      50  Deathdoeynge blades were out intent to kille!

and anagrammed Rupert Brooke's Soldier into a modernization:
 

  The Soldier

  If I should die, think only this of me:
  That there's some corner of a foreign field
  That is for ever England. There shall be
  In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
  A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
  Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
  A body of England's, breathing English air,
  Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
  And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
  A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
  Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
  Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
  And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
  In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
 
  Battle of Hastings

  With very heavy heart I have to tell
  How here uncounted men, here valiant knights,
  Defenders of King Harold's bravely fell,
  Facing, by Hastings, death from mortal fights.
  Here as one early morning, bells were tolled,
  Here as the sun did shine and greet the day,
  Here armies twain advance in earnest, bold;
  Assessing death, they rushed into the fray.
  Ah! bear in mind, we for the kingdom fight;
  Ah! Anglo lordships each man shall possess.
  Be these our happy words here: "God and Right!"
  Here even heaven will our causes bless.
  As clarions then sounded sharp and clear,
  Deathdoing blades came out, intent on fear.