by Thomas Hood
And those two greedy Blakes,
That took our money to the fair
To buy the corps a trumpet there,
And laid it out in cakes.
Where are they now? — an open war
With open mouth declaring for? —
Or fall’n in bloody fray?
Compell’d to tell the truth I am,
Their fights all ended with the sham,
Their soldiership in play.
Brave Soame sends cheeses out in trucks,
And Martin-sells the cock he plucks,
And Jepp now deals in wine;
Harrington bears a lawyer’s bag,
And warlike Lamb retains his flag,
But on a tavern sign.
They tell me Cocky Hawes’s sword
Is seen upon a broker’s board:
And as for ‘Fighting Jim,’
In Bishopsgate, last Whitsuntide,
His unresisting cheek I spied
Beneath a. Quaker brim! —
Quarrelsome Scott is in the church,
For Ryder now your eye must search
The marts of silk and lace —
Bird’s drums are fill’d with figs and mute,
And I — I’ve got a substitute
To soldier in my place!
THE SWEETS OF YOUTH
‘Sweets to the sweet — farewell.’ — Hamlet
Time was I liked a cheesecake well enough;
All human children have a sweetish taste —
I used to revel in a pie, or puff,
Or tart — we all were tartars in our youth;
To meet with jam or jelly was good luck,
All candies most complacently I crumped,
A stick of liquorice was good to suck,
And sugar was as often liked as lumped;
On treacle’s ‘linked sweetness long drawn out,’
Or honey, I could feast like any fly,
I thrilled when lollipops were hawk’d about,
How pleased to compass hard bake or bull’s eye,
How charmed if fortune in my power cast
Elecampane — but that campaign is past!
ODE TO N. A. VIGORS, ESQ.
ON THE PUBLICATION OF ‘THE GARDENS AND MENAGERIE OF THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY’
‘Give you good den.’ — Shakespeare.
So Mr. V., no Vigors — I beg pardon —
You’ve published your Zoological Garden!
A book of which I’ve heard a deal of talk,
And your Menagerie — indeed, ’tis too bad o’ me,
But I have never seen your Beast Academy!
Or set my feet
In Brute-on Street,
Or ever wandered in your ‘Bird-cage Walk.’
Yet, I believe that you were truly born
To be a kind of brutal overseer,
And, like the royal quarterings, appear
Between a lion and a unicorn:
There is a sort of reason about rhyme
That I have pondered many, many a time;
Where words, like birds of feather,
Likely to come together,
Are quite prophetically made to chime:
So your own office is forestalled, O Vigors!
Your proper Surname having but one single
Appropriate jingle,
—— — Tigers!
Where is your gardening volume? like old Mawe’s!
Containing rules for cultivating brutes,
Like fruits
Through April, May or June,
As thus — now rake your Lions’ manes, and prune
Your Tigers’ claws;
About the middle of the month, if fair,
Give your Chameleons air;
Choose shady walls for Owls,
Water your Fowls,
And plant your Leopards in the sunniest spots;
Earth up your Beavers; train your Bears to climb;
Thin out your Elephants about this time;
And set some early Kangaroos in pots.
In some warm sheltered place,
Prepare a hot-bed for the Boa race,
Leaving them room to swell;
Prick out your Porcupines; and blanch your Ermine;
Stick up Opossums; trim your Monkeys well; —
And ‘destroy all vermin.’
Oh, tell me, Mr. Vigors! for the fleas
Of curiosity begin to tease —
If they bite rudely I must crave your pardon,
But if a man may ask,
What is the task
You have to do in this exotic garden?
It from your title one may guess your ends,
You are a sort of Secretary Bird
To write home word
From ignorant brute beasts to absent friends.
Does ever the poor little Coati Mundi
Beg you to write to ma’
To ask papa
To send him a new suit to wear on Sunday?
Does Mrs. L. request you’ll be so good
— Acting a sort of Urban to Sylvanus —
As write to her ‘two children in the wood,’
Addressed — post paid — to Leo Africanus?
Does ever the great Sea-Bear Londinensis
Make you amanuensis
To send out news to some old Arctic stager —
‘Pray write that Brother Bruin, on the whole,
Has got a head on this day’s pole,
And say my Ursa has been made a Major’?
Do you not write dejected letters — very —
Describing England for poor ‘Happy Jerry,’
Unlike those emigrants who take in flats,
Throwing out New South Wales for catching sprats?
Of course your penmanship you ne’er refuse
For ‘begging letters’ from poor Kangaroos;
Of course you manage bills and their acquittance,
And sometimes pen for Pelican a double
Letter to Mrs. P., and brood in trouble,
Enclosing a small dab, as a remittance;
Or send from Mrs. B. to her old cadger,
Her full-length, done by Hervey, that rare draughtsman
And skilful craftsman,
A game one too, for he can draw a Badger.
Does Dr. Bennett never come and trouble you
To break the death of Wolf to Mrs. W.?
To say poor Buffalo his last has puffed,
And died quite suddenly, without a will,
Soothing the widow with a tender quill,
And gently hinting— ‘would she like him stuffed?’
Does no old sentimental Monkey weary
Your hand at times to vent his scribbling itch?
And there your pen must answer to the query
Of Dame Giraffe, who has been told her deary
Died on the spot — and wishes to know which?
New candidates meanwhile your help are waiting
To fill up cards of thanks, with due refinement,
For Missis’Possum, after her confinement;
To pen a note of pretty Poll’s dictating —
Or write how Charles the Tenth’s departed reign
Disquiets the crowned Crane,
And all the royal Tigers;
To send a bulletin to brother Asses
Of Zebra’s health, what sort of night he passes; —
Is this your duty, Secretary Vigors? —
Or are your brutes but Garden-brutes indeed,
Of the old shrubby breed,
Dragons of holly — Peacocks cut in yew?
But no — I’ve seen your book,
And all the creatures look
Like real creatures, natural and true!
Ready to prowl, to growl, to prey, to fight,
Thanks be to Harvey who their portraits drew,
And to the cutters praise is justly due,
To Branston always, and to always Wright.
Go on then, publis
hing your monthly parts,
And let the wealthy crowd,
The noble and the proud,
Learn of brute beasts to patronise the Arts.
So may your Household flourish in the Park,
And no long Boa go to his long home,
No Antelope give up the vital spark,
But all with this your scientific tome,
Go on as swimmingly as old Noah’s Ark!
THE PAINTER PUZZLED
‘Draw, Sir!’ — Old Play.
Well, something must be done for May,
The time is drawing nigh,
To figure in the Catalogue
And woo the public eye.
Something I must invent and paint;
But, oh! my wit is not
Like one of those kind substantives
That answer Who and What?
Oh, for some happy hit! to throw
The gazer in a trance: —
But posé là — there I am posed
As people say in France.
In vain I sit and strive to think,
I find my head, alack!
Painfully empty, still, just like
A bottle — on the rack.
In vain I task my barren brain
Some new idea to catch,
And tease my hair — ideas are shy
Of ‘coming to the scratch.’
In vain I stare upon the air,
No mental visions dawn;
A blank my canvas still remains,
And worse — a blank undrawn;
An ‘aching void’ that mars my rest
With one eternal hint,
For, like the little goblin page,
It still keeps crying ‘Tint!’
But what to tint? ay, there’s the rub,
That plagues me all the while,
As, Selkirk-like, I sit without
A subject for my i’le.
‘Invention’s seventh heaven’ the bard
Has written — but my case
Persuades me that the creature dwells
In quite another place.
Sniffing the lamp, the ancients thought
Demosthenes must toil;
But works of art are works indeed,
And always ‘smell of oil.’ —
Yet painting pictures some folks think,
Is merely play and fun;
That what is on an easel set
Must easily be done.
But, zounds! if they could sit in this
Uneasy easy-chair,
They’d very soon be glad enough
To cut the camel’s hair!
Oh! who can tell the pang it is
To sit as I this day —
With all my canvas spread, and yet
Without an inch of way.
Till, mad at last to find I am
Amongst such empty skullers,
I feel that I could strike myself
But no — I’ll ‘strike my colours.’
THE DEATH-BED
We watch’d her breathing thro’ the night,
Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro!
So silently we seemed to speak —
So slowly moved about!
As we had lent her half our powers
To eke her living out!
Our very hopes belied our fears
Our fears our hopes belied —
We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died!
For when the morn came dim and sad —
And chill with early showers,
Her quiet eyelids closed — she had
Another morn than ours!
ANTICIPATION
‘Coming events cast their shadow before.’
I had a vision in the summer light —
Sorrow was in it and my inward sight
Ached with sad images. The touch of tears
Gush’d down my cheeks: — the figur’d woes of years
Casting their shadows across sunny hours.
Oh there was nothing sorrowful in flow’rs
Wooing the glances of an April sun,
Or apple blossoms opening one by one
Their crimson bosoms — or the twitter’d words
And warbled sentences of merry birds; —
Or the small glitter and the humming wings
Of golden flies and many colour’d things —
Oh these were nothing sad — nor to see Her,
Sitting beneath the comfortable stir
Of early leaves — casting the playful grace
Of moving shadows on so fair a face —
Nor in her brow serene — nor in the love
Of her mild eyes drinking the light above
With a long thirst — nor in her gentle smile —
Nor in her hand that shone blood-red the while
She rais’d it in the sun. All these were dear
To heart and eye — but an invisible fear
Shook in the trees and chill’d upon the air,
And if one spot was laughing brightest — there
My soul most sank and darken’d in despair! —
As if the shadows of a curtain’d room
Haunted me in the sun — as if the bloom
Of early flow’rets had no sweets for me
Nor apple blossoms any blush to see —
As if the noon had brought too bright a day —
And little birds were all too gay! — too gay!
As if the beauty of that Lovely One
Were all a fable. — Full before the sun
Stood Death and cast a shadow long before,
Like a dark pall enshrouding her all o’er,
Till eyes, and lips, and smiles, were all no more!
THE STAGE-STRUCK HERO
‘It must be. So Plato? — Thou reasonest? — Well.’ — School Cato.
It’s very hard! oh, Dick, my boy,
It’s very hard one can’t enjoy
A little private spouting;
But, sure as Lear or Hamlet lives,
Up comes our master, bounce! and gives
The tragic Muse a routing!
Ay, there he comes again! be quick!
And hide the book — a playbook, Dick,
He must not set his eyes on!
It’s very hard, the churlish elf
Will never let one stab one’s self
Or take a bowl of pison!
It’s very hard, but when I want
To die — as Cato did — I can’t,
Or go non compos mentis —
But up he comes, all fire and flame —
No doubt he’d do the very same
With Kemble for a ‘prentice!
Oh, Dick! Oh, Dick! it was not so
Some half a dozen years ago! —
Melpomene was no sneaker,
When, under Reverend Mister Poole,
Each little boy at Enfield School
Became an Enfield’s Speaker!
No cruel master-tailor’s cane
Then thwarted the theatric vein;
The tragic soil had tillage.
O dear dramatic days gone by!
You, Dick, were Richard then — and I
Play’d Hamlet to the village,
Or, as Macbeth, the dagger clutch’d,
Till all the servant-maids were touch’d —
Macbeth, I think, my pet is;
Lord, how we spouted Shakespeare’s works —
Dick, we had twenty little Burkes,
And fifty Master Betties!
Why, there was Julius Caesar Dunn,
And Norval, Sandy Philips — one
Of Elocution’s champions —
Genteelly taught by his mamma
To say, not father, but papa,
Kept sheep upon the Grampians!
Coriolanus Crumpe — and Fig
In Brutus, with brown-paper wig,
And Huggins great in Cato;
Only he broke so often off,
To have a fit of whooping-cough,
While reasoning with Plato.
And Zanga too, but I shall weep,
If longer on this theme I keep,
And let remembrance loose, Dick —
Now, forced to act — it’s very hard —
Measure for Measure with a yard —
You, Richard, with a goose, Dick!
Zounds! Dick, it’s very odd our dads
Should send us there when we were lads
To learn to talk like Tullies;
And now, if one should just break out,
Perchance, into a little spout,
A stick about the skull is. —
Why should stage-learning form a part
Of schooling for the tailor’s art?
Alas! dramatic notes, Dick,
So well record the sad mistake
Of him, who tried at once to make
Both Romeo and Coates, Dick!
ODE TO JOSEPH HUME, ESQ., M.P.
‘I lisp’d in numbers, for the numbers came.’
Oh, Mr. Hume, thy name
Is travelling post upon the road to fame,
With four fast horses and two sharp postillions;
Thy reputation
Has friends by numeration,
Units, Tens, Hundreds, Thousands, Millions.
Whenever public men together dine,
They drink to thee
With three times three —
That’s nine.
And oft a votary proposes then
To add unto the cheering one cheer more —
Nine and One are Ten;
Or somebody for thy honour still more keen,
Insists on four times four —
Sixteen!
In Parliament no star shines more or bigger,
And yet thou dost not care to cut a figure;
Equally art thou eloquent and able,
Whether in showing how to save the nation,
Or laying its petitions on the Table
Of Multiplication.