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Rhyme of the Dead Self

a loss. While the speaker sneers at the poetic “pale youth” he
SUMMARY once was, rejoicing that “he shall not trouble me again,” he also
seems to have lost a broader capacity for hope and humanity.
Just this evening, the poem's speaker says, he grabbed his past
He comically describes his own throttling hands as “these
self and choked the life out of the pale, frail little guy. He
claws”—but this melodramatic image also sincerely suggests
strangled him with his very own claw-like hands; he caught him
that his desperation to do away with his younger self makes him
while he was asleep and dreaming.
into something more like an animal than a person. And when he
Then, laughing, he scooped out his brains, which were full of declares that his dead younger self “shall not rise,” not “on the
love songs (songs the speaker dismisses by quoting a line from third day or any other day” (alluding to the Christian story of
a cynical song against love in As You Like It: "heigh-ho, the Jesus’s death and resurrection), it seems that his rejection of
holly!"). He flung the whole mess down the drain, crying: oh, this idea of rebirth also means giving up on the hope that life
those youthful ideals about love, what destructive nonsense. might change, get better, or be redeemed more generally.
The speaker rejoices over his younger self's murdered body, Murdering his younger self seems to be the only protection the
declaring: he's dead, the bloodless twerp, and he's not getting speaker can find from the pain of disappointed love—but that
up again—not on the third day after his death (like Christ) or protection comes at a cost. There’s no way around it, this darkly
any day after, either. I've shed him like a snake sheds its skin: funny poem concludes: embracing a cynical adult
there he lies dead, and he'll never bother me ever again. disillusionment might protect one from certain kinds of
unhappiness, but it cuts off a lot of beauty, hope, and possibility,
too.
THEMES
Where this theme appears in the poem:
YOUTHFUL IDEALISM VS. CYNICAL
• Lines 1-12
DISILLUSIONMENT
“Rhyme of the Dead Self” depicts the pain of
disillusionment with dark humor. The poem’s speaker, fed up
with his own youthful idealism about love and life, decides he’s
LINE-BY
LINE-BY-LINE
-LINE ANAL
ANALYSIS
YSIS
going to murder his younger self. He triumphs over his former LINES 1-4
body, describing it as a cast-off “snakeskin” that was only ever
good for dreaming silly “dreams of love.” However, the poem Tonight I have ...
hints that there’s something terribly sad about the speaker’s ... in his bed.
rejection of this side of himself. Youthful innocence and hope As "Rhyme of the Dead Self" begins, the speaker is rejoicing
might be naïve, the poem suggests, but killing them off over the murder he just committed. This isn't a literal killing,
altogether means resigning oneself to bleak cynicism. though: rather, he's symbolically slaughtered a former version
As the speaker crows that he’s killed his innocent younger self of himself, "all that [he] was" and no longer is. This will be a
off at last, it seems he’s hoping to leave all sorts of errors and poem about doing away with all the ideals of one's youth.
pains behind with that self’s body. This “pale lily-white lad,” The speaker depicts his self-murder with dark humor. Listen to
believed in “dreams of love” that the speaker can only see as the metaphor in line 3, for instance:
“ruinous folly” now—words that imply the speaker’s idealism
about love was crushed by painful experience. He gestures at I have choked him with these m
myy hands these cla
claws
ws
that pain, not only when he rejects “pretty love-tales,” but when
he sings “heighho the holly” in the second stanza. This is a Both the image of the speaker's hands as dreadful "claws" and
quotation from a cynical song in Shakespeare’s As Y You
ou Lik
Likee It
It, the melodramatic anaphor
anaphoraa of "these
these my hands these claws"
which declares that “most friendship is feigning, most loving feel way over the top: the speaker is behaving as if he's a bad
mere folly.” Life’s disappointments, it seems, have made this actor performing Macbeth
Macbeth, holding those dreadful bloodstained
speaker feel that he’s better off without his youthful hopes and "claws" up for the audience to gasp at.
dreams. His picture of his younger self is similarly comic. The poor sap
In spite of the speaker’s murderous glee, the poem also was a "pale lily-white lad," a boy too frail, too poetic for this
suggests his complete rejection of his idealism is a tragedy and world; he "lay a-dreaming in his bed" with, readers might

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imagine, visions of sugarplums dancing in his innocent head. "heighho the holly"—a quotation from the chorus of a cynical
The speaker has clearly had enough of such delicacy. His anti-love song in Shakespeare's As Y
You
ou Lik
Likee It
It:
frantic, unpunctuated free vverse
erse, combined with the taunting,
singsong ABAB rhrhyme
yme scheme
scheme, makes it sound as if he's finally Heigh-ho, sing heigh-ho, unto the green holly.
snapped: he hasn't just murdered his former self, he's mocking Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.
the dead body. Then heigh-ho, the holly.
This life is most jolly.
All around, then, there's a sense of hyperbole here: this
dreadful tale of murder most foul is also just the story of
something everyone goes through, the story of outgrowing a While the speaker's allusions might seem like a wholesale
former self and its beliefs. But the violence, rage, and scorn the rejection of his younger self, there's also something a little sad
speaker depicts here might suggest genuine tragedy as well as about the way he uses them. After all, there's nothing a "pale
comical overstatement. The rest of this poem will explore both lily-white lad" loves more than Keats and Shakespeare. Poetic
why the speaker might be so eager to get rid of that "lily-white sensitivity here becomes a stick for the speaker to beat his own
lad" and what he might lose by doing so. former self with.
Perhaps these allusions even hint that the speaker can't kill his
LINES 5-8 younger self off so completely as he might wish to. Romantic
Then chuckling I ... disillusionment might mean that one leaves a lot of one's
... what ruinous folly. former beliefs and ideals behind—but the speaker can't help
The second stanza unveils the speaker's motives for self- but still reach for his young self's favorite poets.
murder. The "pale lily-white lad" he once was, he says, was full LINES 9-12
of "pretty love-tales"—idealistic dreams of love that the speaker
can now only see as "ruinous folly." He is dead ...
... again for aye.
In other words, this is a revenge killing, not pure spite! The
speaker's younger self believed in love, and that belief proved The speaker wraps up his murderous tale with a little comical
"ruinous" (that is, both destructive and costly); the reader can irreverence:
guess that this speaker has gotten his heart broken. It's only in
the speaker's best interests to kill his younger self before his He is dead pale youth and he shall not rise
"dreams of love" can get him into another painful mess. on the third da
dayy or any other day

The speaker seems to take sadistic pleasure in murdering his This allusion to the death and resurrection of no lesser figure
former self: he's "chuckling" as he relieves the poor young than Jesus Christ (said to have risen from the dead after his
fellow of his "foolish brains." The allusions he makes in the third day in the tomb) makes it clear just how done the speaker
course of the murder similarly suggest just how completely is. The death of his young, idealistic self is also the death of his
done he is with naive dreams of love: belief in anything that resembles hope, joy, or redemption, let
alone reverence. The speaker, in other words, is now a hard-
[...] I dragged out his foolish brains bitten cynic.
that were full of pretty love-tales heighho the holly
and emptied them holus bolus to the dr drains
ains While the speaker's attitude toward the death of the "pale
youth" seems to be an uncomplicated "good riddance," the
When the speaker "emptie[s]" those brains "to the drains," he's reader might feel that this murder is tragic. Clearly, the speaker
paraphrasing a line from John Keats's "OdeOde to a Nightingale
Nightingale," in can't bear the pain of the heartbreak he hinted at in the second
which a melancholy speaker feels as numb as if he'd "emptied stanza. In pushing that pain away, he's also pushing away a lot of
some dull opiate to the drains" (that is, drunk a sedative) as he sweetness, gentleness, and hope.
listens to the song of the titular night bird. But then, perhaps that "pale youth" that represents all these
That reference both mocks the dreams of gentle qualities isn't so thoroughly dead as the speaker wants him to
poets—people, that is, like both Keats and the speaker's former be. Listen to the simile here:
self—and suggests that the younger self's "brains" were
themselves opiated, lost in druggy visions of love. The comical sloughed lik
likee a snak
snakeskin
eskin there he lies
addition of "holus bolus," which means "all at once" and sounds
like great lumps of brain tumbling into the gutter, makes the To shed a former self like a snakeskin is a very different thing
scornful picture complete. than to kill it: when a snakeskin is shed, there's still a snake! This
speaker, who still turns to poetry in his time of trial, may still
There's even more cheery derision in the speaker's cry of
carry a lot of that disavowed, brainless youth inside him,

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whether he knows it or not. By appropriating Keats's melancholy words for a tale of grisly
The last line of this stanza echoes its first. In line 9, the speaker murder, the speaker suggests two things:
declared "he
he shall not rise"; in line 12, he reiterates that "he
he
shall not trouble me again for aye." Maybe this insistent • His "brains," "full of pretty love-tales," were
anaphor
anaphoraa actually reveals the speaker's uncertainty that he themselves "opiates," numbing him to the hard truth.
really has done the deed for good. Even his very last words on • He's well and truly done with his days of sighing
over love and birdsong.
the matter—"for aye," a poetically old-fashioned way of saying
"ever" or "forever"—suggest that the romantic, literary "pale
youth" is still there, even as the speaker chants about his He makes his position even clearer with an allusion to
demise. Throttle though he might, the speaker has only Shakespeare. When he sings "heighho the holly," he's quoting an
rejected a part of himself, not fully destroyed it. anti-love song from As Y
You
ou Lik
Likee It
It. Its chorus runs like this:

Heigh-ho, sing heigh-ho, unto the green holly.

SYMBOLS Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.
Then heigh-ho, the holly.
This life is most jolly.
MURDERING THE PALE YOUTH
The speaker's self-murder symbolizes rejecting This cheery cynicism perfectly matches the speaker's own
youthful illusion. attitude toward love. All this poetry-quoting, though, also
When the poem's speaker decides he's had it with the "lily- suggests what the speaker might be losing in murdering his
white lad" who is his younger self, he murders him without a own "pale youth." In both "Ode to a Nightingale" and As You Like
second thought. In doing so, he also murders this sweet young It, some redemptive beauty survives all the world's sadnesses
fellow's "dreams of love"—dreams the speaker has decided are and disappointments; the speaker in "Nightingale" is
too useless, silly, and painful to hang on to. transported far from the cruel world by the sound of birdsong,
the lovers in As You Like It marry.
This murder thus represents the end of innocence and
idealism: the speaker is giving up on the hopes of his youth. For this speaker, though, the hope of such consolation is only
more "ruinous folly." He makes that clear with a final allusion in
Where this symbol appears in the poem: lines 9-10:

• Lines 1-8 He is dead pale youth and he shall not rise

on the third da
dayy or any other day

POETIC DEVICES Here, the speaker invokes the Christian story of Jesus's
resurrection: Jesus is said to have risen from the dead after
ALLUSION three days in the tomb. By categorically rejecting the idea that
This poem's allusions to everything from folk songs to poetry to his younger self might "rise" again, the speaker makes it clear
Christianity set the stage for the speaker's thorough rejection that he is altogether done with the hopes, dreams, and ideals of
of his youthful hopes and dreams. his past; his disillusionment is complete.
When the speaker sneers at the "lily-white lad" he once was,
he's quoting an old folk song, "Green
Green Grow the Rushes, O O." But Where Allusion appears in the poem:
he's also alluding to a more general stereotype of the "pale • Line 2: “that pale lily-white lad”
youth"—a dreamy, poetic fellow who believes wholeheartedly in • Line 6: “heighho the holly”
"pretty love-tales." Such pale youths, the speaker feels, are • Line 7: “emptied them holus bolus to the drains”
uniformly deluded. • Lines 9-10: “he shall not rise / on the third day or any
He underscores that point in line 7, where he describes other day”
"empt[ying]" his former self's brains "holus bolus to the drains."
Here, he's paraphrasing a line from the poet John Keats's "Ode Ode EXTENDED METAPHOR
to a Nightingale
Nightingale": in the first lines of that poem, the speaker, The poem's sole metaphor suggests that the speaker's
listening to the song of a nightingale, feels so numb it's as if he'd rejection of his youthful idealism has consequences.
"emptied some dull opiate to the drains" (in other words,
In line 3, the speaker describes his murder of his own younger
gulped down a sedative). Keats and his poetry are often
self like this:
associated with a kind of romantic, dreamy, pale-youth attitude.

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I have choked him with these my hands these cla
claws
ws REPETITION
The poem's repetitions help to make the speaker sound
This melodramatic image is meant to be a little funny: it's as if comically crazed and emphasize his complete rejection of his
the speaker is holding his cursed "claws" up like the villain in a own youthful dreams.
pantomime, crying, Behold my evil! But these words also get at
something sadder and more serious. In murdering his younger Take a look at his par
parallelism
allelism in these lines from the first stanza,
self, the speaker is murdering part of his humanity. Those for instance:
beastly "claws" suggest that the speaker can't leave his
idealistic self behind without becoming something a little lower, and str
strangled
angled him that pale lily-white lad
a little worse, than he was before. I have chok
choked
ed him with these m myy hands these cla
claws
ws

This metaphor thus grows right out of the heart of this poem's The speaker can't stop at saying he "strangled" his former self:
complicated emotions. On the one hand, this is a comic poem he has to reiterate that he "choked him," too, like Macbeth
about doing away with a goofy, dreamy, rather silly innocence: obsessing over King Duncan's murder. His repetition in "these
these
facing facts, growing up, and rejecting a false idealism. On the my hands these claws" similarly makes him sound like a villain in
other hand, it's a tragedy about the loss of a sweet, beautiful, a play. The high drama of these repetitions helps to give the
hopeful perspective. Growing up, this metaphor suggests, poem some dark humor, hyperbolically presenting the ordinary
doesn't necessarily mean becoming better or wiser; perhaps it (if depressing) process of disillusionment as murder most foul
foul.
might even mean becoming a grim and beastly cynic.
Other forms of repetition suggest the speaker's disgust with
his former self. He twice describes him as "pale," once at the
Where Extended Metaphor appears in the poem:
beginning of the poem and once at the end, stressing the poor
• Line 3: “these my hands these claws” silly kid's delicacy. And his polyptoton in the second stanza, in
which he first refers to his younger self's "foolish
foolish brains" and
SIMILE then decries his "ruinous folly
folly," makes his disdain no mystery.
He also rejects love itself more than once: "dreams of lo lovve" and
A lone simile hints that the speaker's victory over his innocence
"pretty lolovve-tales" are both flung aside.
and naivety might not be as complete as he hopes. After
crowing in triumph over the corpse of the "lily-white lad" that is In the final stanza, emphatic anaphor
anaphoraa suggests just how done
his former self, the speaker declares: with this whole mess the speaker feels. Speaking of his dead
self, he declares, "he
he shall not rise"; a few lines later, he insists
sloughed lik
likee a snak
snakeskin
eskin there he lies "he
he shall not trouble me again." Perhaps, however, this
repetition hints that the speaker isn't quite so sure he really is
If the speaker's former self is like a snakeskin, it's just a dried- free of his past illusions: maybe he protests just a little too
out husk, without life or motion; he's done with it and it can't much
much.
hurt him. However, there's a difference between a shed skin
and a dead snake! Where Repetition appears in the poem:
All along, the speaker has been delighted by the idea that he's • Line 2: “strangled him,” “pale lily-white lad”
strangled his former self, getting rid of him for good. Here in • Line 3: “choked him,” “these my hands these claws”
the last lines, though, it seems as if something else has • Line 4: “dreaming”
happened. Rather than killing his past self completely, the • Line 5: “foolish”
speaker has only shed that self: he might have gotten rid of an • Line 6: “pretty love-tales”
old skin, but he's still the snake who grew it. • Line 8: “dreams of love,” “folly”
This final simile thus suggests that the speaker's declaration of • Line 9: “pale youth,” “and he shall not rise”
victory might be premature. Much as he might wish to be • Line 10: “day,” “day”
completely rid of his own "folly," cynically hardened against the • Line 12: “and he shall not trouble me”
world and untouchable, it seems fairly likely he'll have to shed
another "dead self" somewhere down the line. Perhaps it's just ALLITERATION
another kind of naivety to believe that one can be totally free of Punchy alliter
alliteration
ation supports the poem's cutting, comical tone
tone.
one's illusions.
For instance, listen to the repeated sounds in the poem's first
two lines:
Where Simile appears in the poem:
• Line 11: “sloughed like a snakeskin there he lies” Tonight I have taken all that I was

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and strangled him that pale lily-white lad mixture of crisp stanzas, steady rhyme, and herky-jerky,
unpunctuated rhythms suggests that the speaker is just about
The sharp /t/ sounds of "ttonight I have taken" evoke the sane enough to organize his thoughts in a traditional form—but
speaker's own sharpness: he's completely done with that poor maddened enough to rant and ramble.
"llily-white lad," whose gentle, lilting /l/ sounds suggest his frail The poem thus reflects the speaker's predicament. Through its
sweetness. mixture of order and disorder, the poem suggests that it's
Later on, a rough /dr/ sound scrapes all the way through the perfectly sensible to reject an innocent younger self whose
second stanza: first, the speaker "drdrag[s] out" his younger self's idealism has gotten one in trouble—but that such rejection
"foolish brains," then he washes them down the "dr drains," then might also be a crime against oneself.
he decries the pathetic "dr dreams" that made those brains so
foolish in the first place. That grating sound fits right in with the METER
speaker's merciless, murderous cynicism. Written in free vverse
erse, "Rhyme of the Dead Self" doesn't use any
Down in the third stanza, the speaker uses the alliterative regular meter
meter. That said, it does roughly stick to a loose
sibilance of "ssloughed like a snakeskin" to evoke that discarded accentual tetrameter (that is, there are generally four strong
skin's whispery crackle. Perhaps that hissing sound also stresses per line but no predictable number of syllables). Here's
reminds readers that a shed snakeskin implies a living snake: how that sounds in the first two lines:
the speaker seems to have emerged from his self-murder as
something beastly and treacherous. He seems content with his Tonight
night I have ta
taken all that I was
position, though. The thudding /d/ sounds he uses when he and str
stran
angled him that pale lilily-white lad
declares that his "ddead" self will not rise, Christlike, "on the
third day" feel like the last nails being driven into his younger Those stresses don't land in any predictable place, but they do
self's coffin. give the poem a kind of rambling rhythm. Such irregular,
unpunctuated lines make the speaker sound
maddened—perhaps with murderous glee, perhaps with
Where Alliter
Alliteration
ation appears in the poem:
sorrow, perhaps with a mixture of both!
• Line 1: “Tonight,” “taken”
• Line 2: “lily,” “lad” RHYME SCHEME
• Line 3: “claws” The poem's orderly rh rhyme
yme scheme follows this alternating
• Line 4: “catching” pattern, familiar as a nursery rhyme:
• Line 5: “dragged” ABAB
• Line 6: “heighho,” “holly”
• Line 7: “holus,” “drains” This neat pattern pushes back against the poem's free meter
meter,
• Line 8: “dreams” giving the poem a feeling of crazed logic. However, a lot of
• Line 9: “dead” these rhymes are slant
slant—lad and bed, was and claws, day and aye.
• Line 10: “day” The combination of an orderly rhyme scheme and imperfect
• Line 11: “sloughed,” “like,” “snakeskin,” “lies” rhymes reflects the speaker's hard-earned sense that reality is
always disappointing: just as there's no perfection in the world,
there's no perfection in this poem's sounds.
VOCABULARY Something particularly tricky happens in the poem's final lines,
in which the final B rhyme, aye, also forms a slant rhyme with
Holus bolus (Line 7) - All at once, all together. the A rhyme just before it, lies. This makes the poem's last lines
Ruinous folly (Line 8) - Destructive, costly foolishness. feel especially final, forming a slanted one-two couplet that
makes it sound as if the speaker is slamming the book closed on
Sloughed (Line 11) - Shed, cast off.
his past life.
For aye (Line 12) - Ever, forever.

SPEAKER
FORM, METER, & RHYME
The poem's speaker is an embittered man. Scarred by
FORM disappointment in love, he's prepared to throttle the younger
Written in free vverse
erse (with hints of a rough, irregular four-beat self who got him into this predicament—a sweet "lily-white lad"
rhythm), "Rhyme of the Dead Self" is neatly organized into who believed in the "pretty-love tales" the speaker now feels
three four-line stanzas (or quatr
quatrains
ains) rhymed ABAB. The were only ever illusions.

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The speaker's brisk, maniacally cheerful tale of coldblooded Fairburn himself struggled to find work in the '30s, and had to
self-murder suggests that there's something at once comical take a job in a "relief gang"—a government scheme in which
and sad about leaving youthful dreams behind. Perhaps that unemployed men were given jobs improving the country's
poor "pale youth" was a little silly, but his idealism also had its infrastructure (for instance, by building roads and rewiring
beauty. Alas, the speaker suggests, such idealism only gets you streetlights). He described his not-altogether-pleasant
into trouble. experiences with this backbreaking work in a book-length
poem, Dominion, which details both his disillusionment with his
country's government and his hopes that New Zealand might
SETTING one day live up to its promises of fairness and goodness.
There's no clear setting in this poem. While the speaker While "Rhyme of the Dead Self" shows familiarity with total,
imagines throttling his younger self while he lies "a-dreaming in bleak disillusionment, Fairburn never quite gave up on his own
his bed," that bed could be anywhere. This nonspecific setting ideals; his later poetry always clung to the hope that beauty can
might help readers to imagine themselves in the speaker's endure even dark times.
place: the experience of cursing one's own youthful naivety, the
poem suggests, isn't limited to this speaker!
MORE RESOUR
RESOURCES
CES
CONTEXT EXTERNAL RESOURCES
• An Interview with Fairburn
Fairburn's
's Daughters — Listen to an
LITERARY CONTEXT interview in which Fairburn's daughters discuss his legacy.
A. R. D. Fairburn (1904-1957) was one of New Zealand's most (https:/
(https:///cultur
culturalicons.co.nz/05-daughters-of-ard-
alicons.co.nz/05-daughters-of-ard-
fairburn/)
prominent poets. Not only a writer, but a designer, a critic, a
teacher, and a general man about town, Fairburn is • Fairburn
Fairburn's
's P
Poetic
oetic Career — Read about Fairburn's
remembered as much for his role as a noted New Zealand development as an artist. (https:/
(https://www
/www.read-nz.org/
.read-nz.org/
personality as for his poetry. writer/fairburn-ard)
Besides taking inspiration from the English Modernists • More Fairburn Resources — Read more of Fairburn's
(especially T.S. Eliot and D.H. La
Lawrence
wrence), Fairburn found an poetry and learn about his other artistic pursuits via the
influence closer to home in his good friend R. A. K. Mason, a New Zealand Electronic Poetry Center.
fellow poet whom he met when they were both students at (https:/
(https://www
/www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/authors/fairburn/
.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/authors/fairburn/
Auckland Grammar School. The precocious pair spurred each inde
index.asp#online
x.asp#online))
other on to publish poetry that reflected their native landscape.
Much of Fairburn's most famous work set classic poetic • A Brief Biogr
Biograph
aphyy — Learn more about Fairburn's life and
work. (https:/
(https:///tear
teara.go
a.govt.nz/en/biogr
vt.nz/en/biographies/4f2/fairburn-
aphies/4f2/fairburn-
themes—love, loss, and death—against a New Zealand
arthur-re
arthur-rex-dugard)
x-dugard)
backdrop.
"Rhyme of the Dead Self," on the other hand, could be set
anywhere in the world: its tale of a man rejecting the illusions of HOW T
TO
O CITE
his youth in favor of hardbitten, self-protective cynicism is a
universal one. The poem's final stanza lent a title to Fairburn's
MLA
first collection of poetry, He Shall Not Rise (1930).
Nelson, Kristin. "Rhyme of the Dead Self." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC,
HISTORICAL CONTEXT 29 Mar 2022. Web. 31 Mar 2022.
In 1930, when this poem was published, New Zealand—and the
CHICAGO MANUAL
rest of the world—was in the grips of the Great Depression,
which began when the New York Stock Exchange dramatically Nelson, Kristin. "Rhyme of the Dead Self." LitCharts LLC, March 29,
crashed in 1929. The knock-on effects of the crash created 2022. Retrieved March 31, 2022. https://www.litcharts.com/
poetry/a-r-d-fairburn-f5bcfe30-5f81-43a0-84ed-da416b3ac3e2/
worldwide poverty, unemployment, and desperation. By 1932,
rhyme-of-the-dead-self.
unemployment in New Zealand had gotten so bad that violent
riots broke out in many of the country's major cities.

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