Happy to recommend Death’s Jest-Book edited by that fellow of infinite jest Alan Halsey, and available for a phantom wooer’s song from West House Books. (See our distributors’ links.) This is a “…’reader’s edition’, without the distractions of a textual apparatus but including appendices of major variant passages and unplaced fragments.” Beddoes is one of the top two of our favorite suicide-poets (the other is Hart Crane), and Death’s Jest Book is in our top ten of “near-impossible to produce or even sit through” plays sharing the list with Artaud, Seneca, Grabbe and Foreman among others.

Like Hart Crane, Beddoes had a formidable ear, and this–as well as the arcane lore concerning the Luz bone written of first in the Zohar, etc.–brings us back again and again to enjoy the morbid delicacy of the songs. Here’s one of my favorite examples:

Song

I

In lover’s ear a wild voice cried:
‘Sleeper, awake and rise!’
A pale form stood by his bed-side,
With heavy tears in her sad eyes.
‘A beckoning hand, a moaning sound,
A new-dug grave in weedy ground
For her who sleeps in dreams of thee.
Awake! Let not the murder be!’
Unheard the faithful dream did pray,
And sadly sighed itself away.
‘Sleep on,’ sung Sleep, ‘to-morrow
‘’Tis time to know thy sorrow.’
‘Sleep on,’ sung Death, ‘to-morrow
From me thy sleep thou’lt borrow.’
Sleep on, lover, sleep on,
The tedious dream is gone;
The bell tolls one.

II

Another hour, another dream:
‘Awake! awake!’ it wailed,
‘Arise, ere with the moon’s last beam
Her rosey life hath paled.
A hidden light, a muffled tread,
A daggered hand beside the bed
Of her who sleeps and dreams of thee.
Thou wak’st not: let the murder be.’
In vain the faithful dream did pray,
And sadly sighed itself away.
‘Sleep on,’ sung Sleep, ‘to-morrow
‘’Tis time to know thy sorrow.’
‘Sleep on,’ sung Death, ‘to-morrow
From me thy sleep thou’lt borrow.’
Sleep on, lover, sleep on,
The tedious dream is gone;
Soon comes the sun.

III

Another hour, another dream:
A red wound on a snowy breast,
A rude hand stifling the last scream,
On rosy lips a death-kiss pressed.
Blood on the sheets, blood on the floor,
The murderer stealing through the door.
‘Now,’ said the voice, with comfort deep,
‘She sleeps indeed, and thou may’st sleep.’
The scornful dream then turned away
To the first, weeping cloud of day.
‘Sleep on,’ sung Sleep, ‘to-morrow
‘’Tis time to know thy sorrow.’
‘Sleep on,’ sung Death, ‘to-morrow
From me thy sleep thou’lt borrow.’
Sleep on, lover, sleep on,
The tedious dream is gone;
The murder’s done.

The Thomas Loveall Beddoes Society exists at 11 Laund Nook, Belper/ Derbyshire DE56 1GY/ U.K. and is always filling my mail box with great information like this: Beddoes attended Georg Buchner’s death bed, and probably knew Buchner and his works, as both the poet and the novelist moved in the same political and artistic circles. This is something I suspected, but the latest number of the society newsletter gives the proof!

Death’s Jest-book is also available from SPD.