Ernest Dowson

To One in Bedlam

With delicate, mad hands, behind his sordid bars,

posies

Small bouquets or flowers. The patient makes imaginary bouquets from straw—his delusion transforms asylum poverty into beauty.

Surely he hath his posies, which they tear and twine;
Those scentless wisps of straw that, miserable, line
His strait, caged universe, whereat the dull world stares.
Pedant and pitiful. O, how his rapt gaze wars

Pedant and pitiful

Describes the onlookers, not the patient. They're both condescending (pedant) and pathetic in their inability to understand.

With their stupidity! Know they what dreams divine
Lift his long, laughing reveries like enchanted wine,

germane to the stars

His sadness is related to cosmic truths, not mere illness. Dowson elevates madness to philosophical insight.

And make his melancholy germane to the stars'?
O lamentable brother! if those pity thee,
Am I not fain of all thy lone eyes promise me;
Half a fool's kingdom, far from men who sow and reap,

men who sow and reap

Biblical echo (Galatians 6:7). The sane world's productive labor is dismissed as 'vanity'—Ecclesiastes language.

All their days, vanity? Better then mortal flowers,

moon-kissed roses

Imaginary flowers touched by moonlight. The madman's hallucinations surpass real flowers because they're uncorrupted by reality.

Thy moon-kissed roses seem: better than love or sleep,
The star-crowned solitude of thine oblivious hours!

oblivious hours

He's unaware—but Dowson makes forgetting sound like grace. Madness as escape from consciousness.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Bedlam and the 1890s Madness Vogue

CONTEXT Bedlam is Bethlem Royal Hospital, London's notorious asylum since 1247. By Dowson's era (1890s), the name meant any madhouse. This poem participates in the Decadent movement's romanticization of madness as superior consciousness—think Rimbaud's "derangement of the senses" or Baudelaire's artificial paradises.

Dowson inverts the asylum visit genre. Where Victorians wrote moral tales about pitying the insane, he envies the patient. The speaker wants "half a fool's kingdom"—madness offers escape from the "vanity" of normal life. This is classic Decadent logic: reject bourgeois productivity ("men who sow and reap") for beautiful uselessness.

The poem's form reinforces its argument. It's a Petrarchan sonnet (repeated twice)—a love poem structure. Dowson is literally wooing madness, making the formal case that insanity deserves the same elevated treatment as romantic love.

What Dowson Actually Wants

The key move happens in the sestet: "Better than mortal flowers... better than love or sleep." Dowson isn't just praising madness—he's ranking it above everything the sane world values. The patient's hallucinated "moon-kissed roses" beat real flowers. His "oblivious hours" beat both love and sleep (the two great escapes).

Notice the Biblical language throughout: "vanity" (Ecclesiastes), "sow and reap" (Galatians), "lamentable brother" (religious fraternity). Dowson is making a spiritual claim—the madman achieves what religion promises: transcendence of earthly suffering. His "dreams divine" and "star-crowned solitude" suggest he's reached a higher plane.

The repetition of the entire sonnet matters. It's not just formal showing-off. The second iteration forces you to re-read with the sestet's argument in mind. What looked like pity in stanza one becomes envy by the repeat. The "sordid bars" that seemed like tragedy now frame a kind of salvation.