Home Articles Facts Games Poems & Quotes
A Tragedy


by Theophilus Marzials


 

Death!
Plop.
The barges down in the river flop.
Flop, plop.
Above, beneath.
From the slimy branches the grey drips drop,
As they scraggle black on the thin grey sky,
Where the black cloud rack-hackles drizzle and fly
To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop
On the black scrag piles, where the loose cords plop,
As the raw wind whines in the thin tree-top.
Plop, plop.
And scudding by
The boatmen call out hoy! and hey!
All is running water and sky,
And my head shrieks -- "Stop,"
And my heart shrieks -- "Die."

* * * * *

My thought is running out of my head;
My love is running out of my heart,
My soul runs after, and leaves me as dead,
For my life runs after to catch them -- and fled
They all are every one! -- and I stand, and start,
At the water that oozes up, plop and plop,
On the barges that flop
And dizzy me dead.
I might reel and drop.
Plop.
Dead.

And the shrill wind whines in the thin tree-top
Flop, plop.

* * * * *

A curse on him.
Ugh! yet I knew -- I knew --
If a woman is false can a friend be true?
It was only a lie from beginning to end --
My Devil -- My "Friend"
I had trusted the whole of my living to!
Ugh; and I knew!
Ugh!
So what do I care,
And my head is empty as air --
I can do,
I can dare,
(Plop, plop
The barges flop
Drip drop.)
I can dare! I can dare!
And let myself all run away with my head
And stop.
Drop.
Dead.
Plop, flop.

Plop.


 

Theophilus Marzials (1850-1920) was born in Belgium and educated in Switzerland. He spent most of his life working as a librarian in England, where he also composed music, translated opera librettos and wrote poetry. Christina Rossetti gave Marzials permission to set some of her poems to music. His song Twickenham Ferry was very popular in its time, in both England and America.

Marzials had long blond hair and a huge ego. He often declaimed publicly, without warning. Sometimes this was in the ultimate sanctuary of quietude, where he loudly pronounced: “Am I not the darling of the British Museum reading room?”

Found in his collection The Gallery of Pigeons and Other Poems, the above work – A Tragedy – undoubtedly reflects deep emotions within the poet. Ford Maddox Brown declaimed that Marzials’ verses were “by far the most exquisite that were produced by any of the lesser Pre-Raphaelite poets.” Yet A Tragedy has been recently been picked on in several works on poems and literature as “the worst poem in the English language”…

Want to comment on this poem? Send us an e-mail and we'll publish your most interesting views on our comments page.

For more information about Walt Whitman click here Or to learn more about this particular poem click here

Home   l  Biology   l  Physics   l  Planetary Science   l  Technology   l  Space

First Science 2014