Thomas Chatterton

Song from Aella

O SING unto my roundelay,
O drop the briny tear with me;
Dance no more at holyday,
Like a running river be:
:My love is dead,
:Gone to his death-bed

Refrain as anchor

The repeated refrain locks the poem into a ritualistic lament. Each stanza builds new imagery but returns to the same three lines, creating obsessive repetition rather than narrative progression.

All under the willow-tree.
Black his cryne as the winter night,

Archaic language setup

Chatterton uses deliberately old English words (cryne=hair, rode=complexion, cole=cold, throstle=thrush) to create a medieval ballad effect. This isn't accidental—he's imitating 15th-century poetry styles.

White his rode as the summer snow,
Red his face as the morning light,
Cole he lies in the grave below:
:My love is dead,
:Gone to his death-bed

Refrain as anchor

The repeated refrain locks the poem into a ritualistic lament. Each stanza builds new imagery but returns to the same three lines, creating obsessive repetition rather than narrative progression.

All under the willow-tree.
Sweet his tongue as the throstle's note,
Quick in dance as thought can be,
Deft his tabor, cudgel stout;
O he lies by the willow-tree!
:My love is dead,
:Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.

Refrain as anchor

The repeated refrain locks the poem into a ritualistic lament. Each stanza builds new imagery but returns to the same three lines, creating obsessive repetition rather than narrative progression.

Death imagery cluster

Stanza 4 shifts from describing the lover to describing the landscape of death itself—ravens, death-owls, nightmares. The speaker is now seeing the world through a filter of mourning.

Hark! the raven flaps his wing
In the brier'd dell below;
Hark! the death-owl loud doth sing
To the nightmares, as they go:
:My love is dead,
:Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.

Refrain as anchor

The repeated refrain locks the poem into a ritualistic lament. Each stanza builds new imagery but returns to the same three lines, creating obsessive repetition rather than narrative progression.

See! the white moon shines on high;

Whiteness progression

The moon, shroud, morning sky, evening cloud—all white. This isn't poetic variation; it's obsessive circling around the image of death/purity, building intensity through repetition of a single color.

Whiter is my true-love's shroud:
Whiter than the morning sky,
Whiter than the evening cloud:
:My love is dead,
:Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.

Refrain as anchor

The repeated refrain locks the poem into a ritualistic lament. Each stanza builds new imagery but returns to the same three lines, creating obsessive repetition rather than narrative progression.

Here upon my true-love's grave
Shall the barren flowers be laid;
Not one holy saint to save
All the coldness of a maid:
:My love is dead,
:Gone to his death-bed

Refrain as anchor

The repeated refrain locks the poem into a ritualistic lament. Each stanza builds new imagery but returns to the same three lines, creating obsessive repetition rather than narrative progression.

All under the willow-tree.
With my hands I'll dent the briers

Invented verb

'Dent' (meaning to make dents or press down) appears nowhere else in Chatterton's work. He coins it for this specific action of laying flowers, reinforcing his medieval pastiche style.

Grammatical break

'Gre' is either a Chatterton invention or a corrupted Middle English word—the line is deliberately obscure. This breaks readability on purpose, forcing the reader to slow down at a moment of ritual action.

Round his holy corse to gre:
Ouph and fairy, light your fires,

Supernatural turn

Stanza 7 introduces 'Ouph and fairy'—spirits summoned to mark the grave. The speaker moves from mourning into a folk-magic register, blurring the boundary between grief and supernatural ritual.

Here my body still shall be:
:My love is dead,
:Gone to his death-bed

Refrain as anchor

The repeated refrain locks the poem into a ritualistic lament. Each stanza builds new imagery but returns to the same three lines, creating obsessive repetition rather than narrative progression.

All under the willow-tree.
Come, with acorn-cup and thorn,
Drain my heartès blood away;
Life and all its good I scorn,

Rejection of life

The final stanza escalates from grief to active nihilism: 'Life and all its good I scorn.' The speaker isn't just mourning—she's rejecting existence itself, inviting consumption by supernatural forces.

Dance by night, or feast by day:
:My love is dead,
:Gone to his death-bed

Refrain as anchor

The repeated refrain locks the poem into a ritualistic lament. Each stanza builds new imagery but returns to the same three lines, creating obsessive repetition rather than narrative progression.

All under the willow-tree.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Chatterton's Fake Medieval Ballad

CONTEXT Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) became famous for fabricating medieval poetry and claiming it was written by a fictional 15th-century monk named Thomas Rowley. He died at 17, likely by suicide, and became a Romantic icon of the doomed artist. "Song from Aella" is presented as part of his Rowley cycle—ostensibly a translation or discovery of ancient work.

"Song from Aella" reads like a genuine medieval lament, but Chatterton constructed it entirely. The archaic vocabulary (cryne, rode, cole, throstle, corse, ouph) creates authenticity through linguistic density. Notice that the poem doesn't explain these words—a reader in the 18th century encountering this would either accept it as genuinely old or struggle to decode it, both reactions serving Chatterton's purpose. The refrain structure mimics real medieval ballads, which repeated lines for oral transmission and mnemonic effect.

What makes this work technically is the constraint: Chatterton locks himself into a three-line refrain that never changes. This forces all his innovation into the stanzas themselves. The poem becomes a study in variation-within-repetition—how much emotional intensity can he build when the ending is always the same? By stanza 8, the repeated refrain has shifted from expressing grief to expressing a kind of supernatural commitment. The form itself becomes the content.

Escalation from Mourning to Ritual to Nihilism

The poem moves through three distinct emotional registers. Stanzas 1-3 are lament: the speaker describes the dead lover through contrasts (black/white, quick/cold) and traditional elegiac imagery. This is grief expressing itself through beauty.

Stanzas 4-6 shift into supernatural ritual: the landscape becomes populated with omens (ravens, death-owls, nightmares), and the speaker begins performing actions at the grave (laying flowers, summoning spirits). Grief becomes ceremony. Notice the escalation: she doesn't just visit the grave, she lays her body there permanently ('Here my body still shall be').

The final stanza reaches active rejection of life itself. 'I scorn' / 'Dance by night, or feast by day'—she inverts normal values. Death becomes preferable to living. The invitation to supernatural forces to 'Drain my heartès blood away' isn't metaphorical; she's asking to die. This isn't a traditional elegy that moves toward acceptance or consolation. It ends in a commitment to death as the only logical response to loss. The refrain, by this point, has become almost incantatory—a spell the speaker casts on herself.