The London Mad (Bedlam)

The lost,driven out of their wits by demons,
Flounder,shrieking,by the muddy Thames,
Drinking the potions of bark and berries
From their desperate families’ hands,
The Romans bring cold baths and purges,
Electric eels to shock them sane,
Trepan their skulls to let the evil out.
The Saxons thrash them with whips
Of porpoise hide;call them “moon-sick”,
And hang clovewort round their necks.

The manacled lunatics,pelted
With mud, and jeered at by the crowds,
Shuffle in line through Bethlem’s gates,
To their strawbedded manger.Golgotha.

The dancing bears of Bedlam lumber
And bellow,sport for the groundlings,
Inspiration for the playwrights,
Who tour the dungeons,fascinated
By the madness of Hamlet and Lear.

Starved and robbed,
The menagerie,chained to the walls,
Breathing the stench of sewers,
Laugh,sob,wail,sing for a gin,
While the drunken keeper –quick to thrash
And curse-turns a handsome profit;
Taking from gentlemen and their ladies
A few shillings for the tour.
Thieves and cutpurses dip
Into the pockets of the gawpers,
While queans pick up some business
And hawkers flog nuts to the crowd.

A French scholar,visiting London,
Devotes a whole chapter of his latest treatise
To the English Disease,
“The propensity to melancholy and suicide,
Brought on by fogs,beef and beer,
Nonconformist religion
And the tedium of Sundays.”