This poem must not be read without a continued reference to the personated character.  Delirious and fantastic, strokes of sublime imagination are mixed with familiar comic humour, and even degraded by the cant language; for the gipsy habits of life of these “Tom o’ Bedlams” had confounded them with “the progging Abram men."[181] These luckless beings are described by Decker as sometimes exceeding merry, and could do nothing but sing songs fashioned out of their own brains; now they danced, now they would do nothing but laugh and weep, or were dogged and sullen both in look and speech.  All they did, all they sung, was alike unconnected; indicative of the desultory and rambling wits of the chanter.

    A TOM-A-BEDLAM SONG.

    From the hag and hungry goblin
      That into rags would rend ye,
        All the spirits that stand
        By the naked man,
      In the book of moons defend ye! 
    That of your five sound senses
      You never be forsaken;
        Nor travel from
        Yourselves with Tom
      Abroad, to beg your bacon.

    CHORUS.

    Nor never sing any food and feeding,
      Money, drink, or clothing;
        Come dame or maid,
        Be not afraid,
    For Tom will injure nothing.

    Of thirty bare years have I
      Twice twenty been enraged;
        And of forty been
        Three times fifteen
      In durance soundly caged. 
    In the lovely lofts of Bedlam,
      In stubble soft and dainty,
        Brave bracelets strong,
        Sweet whips ding, dong,
      And a wholesome hunger plenty.

    With a thought I took for Maudlin,
      And a cruse of cockle pottage,
        And a thing thus—­tall,
        Sky bless you all,
      I fell into this dotage. 
    I slept not till the Conquest;
      Till then I never waked;
        Till the roguish boy
        Of love where I lay,
      Me found, and stript me naked.

    When short I have shorn my sow’s face,
      And swigg’d my horned barrel;
        In an oaken inn
        Do I pawn my skin,
      As a suit of gilt apparel. 
    The morn’s my constant mistress,
      And the lovely owl my morrow;
        The flaming drake,
        And the night-crow, make
      Me music, to my sorrow.

    The palsie plague these pounces,
      When I prig your pigs or pullen;
        Your culvers take
        Or mateless make
      Your chanticleer and sullen;
    When I want provant with Humphrey I sup,
      And when benighted,
        To repose in Paul’s,
        With waking souls
      I never am affrighted.

    I know more than Apollo;
      For, oft when he lies sleeping,
        I behold the stars
        At mortal wars,
      And the rounded welkin weeping.