Tichborne's Elegy

written with his own hand in

the Tower before his execution

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,

My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain.
The day is past, and yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

 My tale was heard and yet it was not told,

My fruit is fallen and yet my leaves are
green;
My youth is spent and yet I am not old,
I saw the world and yet I was not seen.
My thread is cut and yet it is not spun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

 I sought my death and found it in my

womb,
I looked for life and saw it was a shade;
I trod the earth and knew it was my tomb,
And now I die, and now I was but made.
My glass is full, and now my glass is run,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

 This poem was apparently written in the

Tower of London by the imprisoned Chidiock
Tichborne, a young Catholic conspirator
against Queen Elizabeth, the night before he
was executed. Whether this account is true or
not, whoever wrote the poem achieved an
amazing force of plainness. The poem shows
how powerful unadorned language can be
and what genius it takes to give such
language emotional bite.

 Tremendous feeling is generated by the

directness, the straightforward hammering of
repeated formula and refrain, above all the
plainness of language: Except for the
contestable exception "fall'n," the poem is
written entirely in words of one syllable! It
feels as if the poet has no time for anything
but stark truthand that feeling is attained by
writing so artful that it seems nearly artless.

 In 1583, Tichborne and his father were

arrested and questioned concerning the
use of "popish relics." Though they
were released without charge, records
suggest that this was not the last time
they were to be questioned by the
authorities over their religion.

 In June 1586, Tichborne agreed to take part

in the Babington Plot to murder Queen
Elizabeth and replace her with the Catholic
Mary Queen of Scots who was next in line to
the throne. The plot was foiled by Sir
Francis Walsingham using a double agent
and though most of the conspirators fled,
Tichborne had an injured leg and was forced
to remain in London. On August 14, he was
arrested and sentenced to death.

 While in custody in the Tower of London

on September 19 (the eve of his
execution), Tichborne wrote to his wife
Agnes. The letter contained three
stanzas of poetry that are his only
known piece of work, Tichborne's Elegy,
also known by its first line My Prime of
Youth is but a Frost of Cares. The poem
is a dark look at a life tragically cut short
and is a favourite of many scholars to
this day.

 On September 20, 1586, Tichborne was

executed with Anthony Babington,
John Ballard, and four other
conspirators. They were disembowelled
while still alive on the gallows at Tower
Hill as a warning to other would-be
conspirators; however, when the Queen
heard reports of these particularly
gruesome executions, she gave orders
that the remaining seven conspirators
were to be allowed to hang until dead
before being disembowelled.

 With Tichborne's, "Elegy," lies a

poem encasing several metaphors that
enable the reader to imagine with
compassion the disturbance of peace
within the thoughts of the poet. This
writer recognized what was happening
in his life before his execution, and
proclaims "My feast of joy is but a dish
of pain"

 Within this powerful statement, the poet

realized that his last meals were not
that of nourishment, but was that of
pain of great emotional suffering. What
we take for granted (life, the comforts of
home, food, etc.), Tichborne suffers to
keep within him as a yearning for
comfort. As we ponder upon our
thoughts after reading these elegies, we
enable ourselves to experience the
discomforts or joys within them, found
within the metaphors of each verse.

 Tichborne's Elegy reveals to the reader

the poet's reckoning with his own death.
It is rare that poets write of their own
demises with the foreknowledge of its
untimeliness, as in this case, and the
difficulty of the situation pervades
throughout the verse. Tichborne clearly
feels that his life is being severed from
its rightful course ), yet we are not
directly informed of this notion until the
central stanza.

 We are first thrust into a dismal mood

by the first stanza, which reduces all the
meaningful aspects of the poet to
insignificance...in fact, if not for the note
preceding the poem ("Written.../...before
his execution") and the name in the title,
we would wonder if the lines weren't
penned by some bitter old man waiting
for his days to run out.

 Perhaps this was the intention of

Tichborne - to make himself feel old and
feeble, so that the realization of his own
impending expiration could be more
easily accepted. The repetition of the
last line of each stanza emphasizes the
poet's inability to escape his execution,
and its simple, matter-of-fact manner
manages to bring a tired surrender with
it ("And now...and now").

 The very fact that Tichborne is writing

poetry in the last moments of his life
gives him an element of grace and
dignity - he clearly isn't losing his wits
over his unhappy situation. His poem is
perfectly iambic pentameter with true a
b a b c c rhyme, completely masculine
in endings, and a few interesting
parallels pull its framework together
strongly. Each end rhyme pair is
significantly appropriate, each being an
opposite of the other and yet equated.

 For example, lines 1 and 3, "cares" and

"tares," or lines 2 and 4, "pain" and "gain."
With these words placed carefully in these
positions, the poet's youth is degraded further
through the association, becoming first a
"frost of cares," then equated to "tares," or
weeds. This paradox/equation follows through
most of the poem, especially well in lines 13
and 15 ("death" = "womb" = "tomb"). Even the
fifth and sixth lines of the second and third
stanza end in equative diction.

 As is customary in elegiac poems beyond the

seventeenth century, Tichborne finds some
amount of consolation by the end of his
verse, realizing that every man will die
regardless of the time. Tichborne's elegy to
himself is completed in a self-specific
resolution, yet it can be generally applicable
as well; death begins at birth, and the earth is
man's eventual tomb. The poet substitutes a
metaphorical hourglass for his life, and he
seems to find some amount of acceptance
through this as the sands run out with the end
of the poem.