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O Death Rock Me Asleep

Tudor-era poem (1536)

Summary

Tudor-era poem (1536)

Field	Value
name	O Death Rock Me Asleep
author	Anne Boleyn
original_title	"O Death! rocke me asleep"
original_title_lang	en
written	1536
country	England
language	Early Modern English
subject	death
meter	tetrameter or trimeter

"O Death Rock Me Asleep" is a Tudor-era poem, traditionally attributed to Anne Boleyn. It was written shortly before her execution in 1536.

''Anne Boleyn in the Tower of London'' ([[Édouard Cibot]], 1835)

Authorship

The poem is generally attributed to Anne Boleyn, and is assumed to have been composed whilst she was imprisoned in the Tower of London. However, the evidence for Anne's authorship is not entirely conclusive. It has been postulated that the poem was actually written by Anne's brother Lord Rochford, who was also imprisoned in the Tower at the same time as Anne, and whose execution took place two days before her own.

Analysis

The poem was written in the last days of Anne's life and is a reflection on her suffering. In it, she observes that her end cannot be avoided, and that it will at least give her peace and an escape from her present sufferings.

Structure

The poem has a fairly loose structure, with most lines either being tetrameter or trimeter. At the end of each major stanza, there is a refrain, varying slightly, about the nearing of death and how it is inevitable.

Text

Original spelling	Modernised spelling

References

Nist, Elizabeth (1984) 'Tattle's Well's Faire: English Women Authors of the Sixteenth Century' in ''College English Vol. 46, No. 7 (Nov., 1984),'' (Greensboro: NCTE) pg705
"Elfinspell: George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford, 'O Death, rock me to sleep,' modernized by Susan Rhoads, MD, from Padelford, Early Elizabethan Lyrics, tragic poetry, Renaissance, online text(Boleynstyle)".

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

1536-poems 1536-in-england 16th-century-in-london early-modern-english-poems anne-boleyn poems-about-death tower-of-london

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