Thomas Hood- Collected Poetical Works
Page 46
Your virtues would not rise an inch,
Although your shape was two foot taller, —
And wisely you let others pinch
Great waists and feet to make them smaller.
You never try to spare your hands
Fromgetting red by householdduty,
But, doing all that it commands,
Their coarseness is a moral beauty.
Let Susan flourish her fair arms,
And at your odd legs sneer and scoff;
But let her laugh, for you have charms
That nobody knows nothing of.
PAIN IN A PLEASURE-BOAT
A SEA ECLOGUE
‘I apprehend you!’ — School of Reform.
BOATMAN.
Shove off there! — ship the rudder, Bill — cast off! she’s under way!
MRS. F.
She’s under what? — I hope she’s not! good gracious, what a spray!
BOATMAN.
Run out the jib, and rig the boom! keep clear of those two brigs!
MRS. F.
I hope they don’t intend some joke by running of their rigs!
BOATMAN.
Bill, shift them bags of ballast aft — she’s rather out of trim!
MRS. F.
Great bags of stones! they’re pretty things to help a boat to swim I
BOATMAN.
The wind is fresh — if she don’t scud, it’s not the breeze’s fault!
MRS. F.
Wind fresh, indeed! I never felt the air so full of salt!
BOATMAN.
That Schooner, Bill, harn’t left the roads, with oranges and nuts!
MRS. F.
If seas have roads, they’re very rough — I never felt such ruts!
BOATMAN.
It’s neap, ye see, she’s heavy lade, and couldn’t pass the bar.
MRS. F.
The bar! what, roads with turnpikes too? I wonder where they are
BOATMAN.
Ho! brig ahoy! hard up! hard up! that lubber cannot steer!
MRS. F.
Yes, yes, — hard up upon a rock! I know some danger’s near!
Lord, there’s a wave! it’s coming in! and roaring like a bull!
BOATMAN.
Nothing, Ma’am, but a little slop! go large, Bill! keep her full!
MRS. F.
What, keep her full! what daring work! when full, she must go down
BOATMAN.
Why, Bill, it lulls! ease off a bit — it’s coming off the town!
Steady your helm! we’ll clear the Pint! lay right for yonder pink!
MRS. F.
Be steady — well, I hope they can! but they’ve got a pint of drink!
BOATMAN.
Bill, give that sheet another haul — she’ll fetch it up this reach.
MRS. F.
I’m getting rather pale, I know, and they see it by that speech!
I wonder what it is, now, but —— I never felt so queer!
BOATMAN.
Bill, mind your luff — why Bill, I say, she’s yawing — keep her near!
MRS. F.
Keep near! we’re going further off; the land’s behind our backs.
BOATMAN.
Be easy, Ma’am, it’s all correct, that’s only ‘cause we tacks:
We shall have to beat about a bit, — Bill, keep her out to sea.
MRS. F.
Beat who about? keep who at sea? — how black they look at me!
BOATMAN.
It’s veering round — I knew it would! off with her head! stand by!
MRS. F.
Off with her head! whose? where? what with? — an axe I seem to spy!
BOATMAN.
She can’t not keep her own, you see; we shall have to pull her in!
MRS. F.
They’ll drown me, and take all I have! my life’s not worth a pin!
BOATMAN.
Look out you know, be ready, Bill — just when she takes the sand!
MRS. F.
The sand — O Lord! to stop my mouth! how every thing is plann’d!
BOATMAN.
The handspike, Bill — quick, bear a hand! now Ma’am, just step ashore!
MRS. F.
What! ain’t I going to be kill’d — and welter’d in my gore?
Well, Heaven be praised! but I’ll not go a sailing any more!
LITERARY AND LITERAL
The March of Mind upon its mighty stilts,
(A spirit by no means to fasten mocks on,)
In travelling through Berks, Beds, Notts, and Wilts,
Hants — Bucks, Herts, Oxon,
Got up a thing our ancestors ne’er thought on,
A thing that, only in our proper youth,
We should have chuckled at — in sober truth,
A Conversazione at Hog’s Norton!
A place whose native dialect, somehow,
Has always by an adage been affronted,
And that it is all gutturals, is now
Taken for grunted.
Conceive the snoring of a greedy swine,
The slobbering of a hungry Ursine Sloth —
If you have ever heard such creature dine —
And — for Hog’s Norton, make a mix of both! —
O shades of Shakspeare! Chaucer! Spenser!
Milton! Pope! Gray! Warton!
O Colman! Kenny! Planche’! Poole! Peake!
Pocock! Reynolds! Morton!
O Grey! Peel! Sadler! Wilberforce! Burdett!
Hume! Wilmot Horton!
Think of your prose and verse, and worse — delivered in
Hog’s Norton! —
The founder of Hog’s Norton Athenæum
Framed her society
With some variety
From Mr. Roscoe’s Liverpool museum;
Not a mere pic-nic, for the mind’s repast,
But tempting to the solid knife-and-forker,
It held its sessions in the house that last
Had killed a porker.
It chanced one Friday,
One Farmer Grayley stuck a very big hog,
A perfect Gog or Magog of a pig-hog,
Which made of course a literary high day,
Not that our Farmer was a man to go
With literary tastes — so far from suiting ‘em,
When he heard mention of Professor Crowe,
Or Lalla-Rookh, he always was for shooting ‘em!
In fact in letters he was quite a log,
With him great Bacon
Was literally taken,
And Hogg — the Poet — nothing but a Hog!
As to all others on the list of Fame,
Although they were discuss’d and mention’d daily,
He only recognised one classic name,
And thought that she had hung herself — Miss Baillie!
To balance this, our Farmer’s only daughter
Had a great taste for the Castalian water —
A Wordsworth worshipper — a Southey wooer —
(Though men that deal in water-colour cakes
May disbelieve the fact — yet nothing’s truer)
She got the bluer
The more she dipped and dabbled in the Lakes.
The secret truth is, Hope, the old deceiver,
At future Authorship was apt to hint,
Producing what some call the Type-us Fever,
Which means a burning to be seen in print.
Of learning’s laurels — Miss Joanna Baillie —
Of Mrs. Hemans — Mrs. Wilson — daily
Dreamt Anne Priscilla Isabella Grayley;
And Fancy hinting that she had the better
Of L. E. L. by one initial letter,
She thought the world would quite enraptur’d see
LOVE LAYS AND LYRICS
By A. P. I. G.
Accordingly, with very great propriety,
She joined the H. N. B. and double S.,
That is, — Hog’s Norton Bl
ue Stocking Society;
And saving when her Pa his pigs prohibited, Contributed
Her pork and poetry towards the mess.
This feast, we said, one Friday was the case,
When farmer Grayley — from Macbeth to quote —
Screwing his courage to the ‘sticking place,’
Stuck a large knife into a grunter’s throat: —
A kind of murder that the law’s rebuke
Seldom condemns by shake of its peruke,
Showing the little sympathy of big-wigs
With pig-wigs!
The swine — poor wretch! — with nobody to speak for it,
And beg its life, resolved to have a squeak for it;
So — like the fabled swan — died singing out,
And, thus, there issued from the farmer’s yard
A note that notified without a card,
An invitation to the evening rout.
And when the time came duly, ‘At the close of
The day,’ as Beattie has it, ‘when the ham—’
Bacon, and pork were ready to dispose of,
And pettitoes and chit’lings too, to cram, —
Walked in the H. N. B. and double S.’s
All in appropriate and swinish dresses,
For lo! it is a fact, and not a joke,
Although the Muse might fairly jest upon it,
They came — each ‘Pig-faced Lady,’ in that bonnet
We call a poke.
The Members all assembled thus, a rare woman
At pork and poetry was chosen chairwoman; —
In fact, the bluest of the Blues, Miss Ikey,
Whose whole pronunciation was so piggy,
She always named the authoress of ‘Psyche’ —
As Mrs. Tiggey!
And now arose a question of some moment, —
What author for a lecture was the richer,
Bacon or Hogg? there were no votes for Beaumont,
But some for FlitcherWhile others, with a more sagacious reasoning,
Proposed another work,
And thought their pork
Would prove more relishing from Thomson’s Season-ing
But, practised in Shakspearian readings daily, —
O! Miss Macaulay! Shakspeare at Hog’s Norton! —
Miss Anne Priscilla Isabella Grayley
Selected him that evening to snort on.
In short, to make our story not a big tale,
Just fancy her exerting
Her talents, and converting
The Winter’s Tale to something like a pig-tale!
Her sister auditory,
All sitting round, with grave and learned faces,
Were very plauditory,
Of course, and clapped her at the proper places;
Till fanned at once by fortune and the Muse,
She thought herself the blessedest of Blues.
But Happiness, alas! has blights of ill,
And Pleasure’s bubbles in the air explode; —
There is no travelling through life but still
The heart will meet with breakers on the road!
With that peculiar voice
Heard only from Hog’s Norton throats and noses,
Miss G., with Perdita, was making choice
Of buds and blossoms for her summer posies,
When coming to that line, where Proserpine
Lets fall her flowers from the wain of Dis;
Imagine this —
Uprose on his hind legs old Farmer Grayley,
Grunting this question for the club’s digestion,
‘Do Dis’s Waggon go from the Ould Bàaley?’
SONNET TO LORD WHARNCLIFFE, ON HIS GAME BILL
I’m fond of partridges, I’m fond of snipes,
I’m fond of black cocks, for they’re very good cocks —
I’m fond of wild ducks, and I’m fond of woodcocks,
And grouse that set up such strange moorish pipes.
I’m fond of pheasants with their splendid stripes —
I’m fond of hares, whether from Whig or Tory —
I’m fond of capercailzies in their glory, —
Teal, widgeons, plovers, birds in all their types:
All these are in your care, Law-giving Peer,
And when you next address your Lordly Babel, —
Some clause put in your Bill, precise and clear,
With due and fit provision to enable
A man that holds all kinds of game so dear
To keep, like Crockford, a good Gaming Table;
LITERARY REMINISCENCES
‘Domton & Co, may challenge the world, the house of Hope perhaps excepted.’ — Road to Ruin.
Time was, I sat upon a lofty stool,
At lofty desk, and with a clerkly pen
Began each morning, at the stroke of ten,
To write in Bell & Co.’s commercial school;
In Waruford Court, a shady nook and cool,
The favourite retreat of merchant men;
Yet would my quill turn vagrant even then,
And take stray dips in the Castalian pool.
Now double entry — now a flowery trope —
Mingling poetic honey with trade wax
Blogg, Brothers — Milton — Grote and Prescott — Pope —
Bristles — and Hogg — Glyn Mills and Halifax —
Rogers — and Towgood — Hemp — the Bard of Hope —
Barilla — Byron — Tallow — Burns — and Flax!
ODE TO PERRY, THE INVENTOR OF THE PATENT PERRYAN PEN
‘In this good work, Penn appears the greatest, usefullest of God’s instruments. Firm and unbending when the exigency requires it — soft and yielding when rigid inflexibility is not a desideratum, — fluent and flowing at need, for eloquent rapidity — slow and retentive in cases of deliberation — never spluttering or by amplification going wide of the mark — never splitting, if it can be helped, with any one, but ready to wear itself out rather in their service — all things as it were with all men. — ready to embrace the hand of Jew, Christian, or Mahometan, — heavy with the German, light with the Italian, oblique with the English, upright with the Roman, backward in coming forward with the Hebrew, — in short, for flexibility, amiability, constitutional durability, general ability, and universal utility, it would be hard to find a parallel to the great Penn.’
PERRY’S CHARACTERISTICS OF A SETTLER.
I
O! Patent, Pen-inventing Perrian Perry!
Friend of the Goose and Gander,
That now unplucked of their quillfeathers wander,
Cackling, and gabbling dabbling, making merry,
About the happy Fen,
Untroubled for one penny-worth of pen,
For which they chant thy praise all
Britain through,
From Goose-Green unto GanderCleugh! —
II
Friend to all Author-kind —
Whether of Poet or of Proser,
Thou art composer unto the composer
Of pens, — yea patent vehicles for Mind
To carry it on jaunts, or more extensive
Perrygrinations through the realms of Thought;
Each plying from the Comic to the Pensive,
An Omnibus of intellectual sort!
III
Modern Improvements in their course we feel;
And while to iron-railroads heavy wares,
Dry goods, and human bodies, pay their fares,
Mind flies on steel, —
To Penrith, Penrhyn, even to Penzance.
Nay, penetrates, perchance,
To Pennsylvania, or, without rash vaunts,
To where the Penguin haunts!
IV
In times bygone, when each man cut his quill,
With little Perryan skill,
What horrid, awkward, bungling tools of trade
Appear’d the writing implements home-made!
What
Pens were sliced, hew’d, hack’d, and haggled out,
Slit or unslit, with many a various snout,
Aquiline, Roman, crooked, square, and snubby,
Stumpy and stubby;
Some capable of ladye-billets neat,
Some only fit for Ledger-keeping Clerk,
And some to grub down Peter Stubbs his mark,
Or smudge through some illegible receipt;
Others in florid caligraphic plans,
Equal to Ships, and wiggy Heads, and Swans!
V
To try in any common inkstands, then, —
With all their miscellaneous stocks,
To find a decent pen,
Was like a dip into a lucky box:
You drew, — and got one very curly,
And split like endive in some hurlyburly;
The next, unslit, and square at end, a spade;
The third, incipient pop-gun, not yet made;
The fourth a broom; the fifth of no avail,
Turn’d upwards, like a rabbit’s tail;
And last, not least, by way of a relief,
A stump that Master Richard, James, or John, —
Had tried his candle-cookery upon,
Making ‘roast-beef!’
VI
Not so thy Perryan Pens!
True to their M’s and N’s,
They do not with a wizzing zig-zag split,
Straddle, turn up their noses, sulk, and spit,
Or drop large dots,
Huge fullstop blots,
Where even semicolons were unfit.
They will not frizzle up, or, broomlike, drudge
In sable sludge —