Thomas Hood- Collected Poetical Works
Page 47
Nay, bought at proper ‘Patent Perryan’ shops,
They write good grammar, sense, and mind their stops;
Compose both prose and verse, the sad or merry —
For when the Editor, whose painscompile
The grown-up Annual, or the Juvenile,
Vaunteth his articles, not women’s, men’s,
But lays ‘by the most celebrated Pens,’
What means he but thy Patent
Pens, my Perry?
VII
Pleasant they are to feel! —
So firm! so flexible! composed of steel
So finely temper’d — fit for tenderest Miss
To give her passion breath,
Or Kings to sign the warrant stern of death —
But their supremest merit still is this,
Write with them all your days,
Tragedy, Comedy, all kinds of plays —
(No Dramatist should ever be without ‘em) —
And, just conceive the bliss, —
There is so little of the goose about ‘em, —
One’s safe from any hiss!
VIII
Ah! who can paint that first great awful night,
Big with a blessing or a blight,
When the poor Dramatist, all fume and fret,
Fuss, fidget, fancy, fever, funking, fright,
Ferment, fault-fearing, faintness — more f’s yet:
Flush’d, frigid, flurried, flinching, fitful, flat, —
Add famish’d, fuddled, and fatigued, to that;
Funeral, fate-foreboding — sits in doubt,
Or rather doubt with hope, a wretched marriage, —
To see his Play upon the stage come out;
No stage to him! it is Thalia’s carriage,
And he is sitting on the spikes behind it,
Striving to look as if he didn’t mind it!
IX
Witness how Beazley vents upon his hat
His nervousness, meanwhile his fate is dealt:
He kneads, moulds, pummels it, and sits it flat,
Squeezes and twists it up, until the felt
That went a Beaver in, comes out a Rat!
Miss Mitford had mis-givings, and in fright, —
Upon Rienzi’s night,
Gnaw’d up one long kid glove, and all her bag,
Quite to a rag.
Knowles has confess’d he trembled as for life,
Afraid of his own ‘Wife;’
Poole told me that he felt a monstrous pail
Of water backing him, all down his spine, —
‘The ice-brook’s temper ‘ — pleasant to the chine! —
For fear that Simpson and his Co. should fail.
Did Lord Glengall not frame a mental pray’r, —
Wishing devoutly he was Lord knowswhere?
Nay, did not Jerrold, in enormous drouth,
While doubtful of Nell Gwynne’s eventful luck,
Squeeze out and suck
More oranges with his one fevered mouth,
Than Nelly had to hawk from North to South?
Yea, Buckstone, changing colour like a mullet,
Refused, on an occasion, once, twice, thrice,
From his best friend, an ice,
Lest it should hiss in his own red-hot gullet.
X
Doth punning Peake not sit upon the points
Of his own jokes, and shake in all his joints,
During their trial?
’Tis past denial.
And does not Pocock, feeling, like a peacock,
All eyes upon him turn to very meacock?
And does not Planché, tremulous and blank,
Meanwhile his personages tread the boards,
Seem goaded by sharp swords,
And call’d upon himself to ‘walk the plank’? —
As for the Dances, Charles and George to boot
What have they more
Of ease and rest, for sole of either foot,
Than bear that capers on a hotted floor?
XI
Thus pending — does not Mathews, at sad shift
For voice, croak like a frog in waters fenny? —
Serle seem upon the surly seas adrift?
And Kenny think he’s going to Kilkenny? —
Haynes Bayly feel Old ditto, with the note —
Of Cotton in his ear, a mortal grapple
About his arms, and Adam’s apple
Big as a fine Dutch codling in his throat?
Did Rodwell, on his chimney-piece, desire
Or not to take a jump into the fire?
Did Wade feel as composed as music can?
And was not Bernard his own Nervous Man?
Lastly, don’t Farley, a bewildered elf,
Quake at the Pantomime he loves to cater,
And ere its changes ring, transform himself?
A frightful mug of human delf?
A spirit-bottle — empty of ‘the cratur’?
A leaden-platter ready for the shelf?
A thunderstruck dumb-waiter?
XII
To clench the fact,
Myself, once guilty, of one small rash act,
Committed at the Surrey
Quite in a hurry,
Felt all this flurry,
Corporal worry,
And spiritual scurry, —
Dram-devil — attic curry!
All going well,
From prompter’s bell,
Until befel
A hissing at some dull imperfect dunce —
There’s no denying,
I felt in all four elements at once!
My head was swimming, while my arms were flying,
My legs for running — all the rest was frying!
XIII
Thrice welcome, then, for this peculiar use —
Thy pens so innocent of goose!
For this shall Dramatists, when they make merry,
Discarding Port and Sherry,
Drink— ‘Perry!’
Perry, whose fame, pennated, is let loose
To distant lands,
Perry, admitted on all hands,
Text, running, German, Roman,
For Patent Perryans approach’d by no man!
And when, ah me! far distant be the hour! —
Pluto shall call thee to his gloomy bow’r,
Many shall be thy pensive mourners, many!
And Penury itself shall club its penny,
To raise thy monument in lofty place;
Higher than York’s, or any son of War;
Whilst Time all meaner effigies shall bury,
On due pentagonal base,
Shall stand the Parian, Perryan, perriwig’d Perry,
Perch’d on the proudest peak of Penman Mawr!
THE UNDYING ONE
‘He shall not die.’ — Uncle Toby.
I
Of all the verses, grave or gay,
That ever wiled an hour,
I never knew a mingled lay
At once so sweet and sour.
As that by Ladye Norton spun,
And christen’d ‘The Undying One.’
II
I’m very certain that she drew
A portrait, when she penn’d
That picture of a perfect Jew,
Whose days will never end: —
I’m sure it means my Uncle Lunn,
For he is an Undying One.
III
These twenty years he’s been the same
And may be twenty more;
But Memory’s Pleasures only claim
His features for a score;
Yet in that time the change is none —
The image of th’ Undying One!
IV
They say our climate’s damp and cold,
And lungs are tender things; —
My uncle’s much abroad and old,
But when ‘King Cole’ he sings,
A Stento
r’s voice, enough to stun,
Declares him an Undying One.
V
Others have died from needle-pricks,
And very slender blows;
From accidental slips or kicks,
Or bleedings at the nose;
Or choked by grape-stone, or a bun —
But he is the Undying One! —
VI
A soldier once, he once endur’d
A bullet in the breast —
It might have kill’d — but only cured
An asthma in the chest;
He was not to be slain with gun,
For he is the Undying One. VII
VII
In water once too long he dived,
And all supposed him beat,
He seem’d so cold — but he revived
To have another heat, —
Just when we thought his race was run,
And came in fresh — th’ Undying One!
VIII
To look at Meux’s once he went,
And tumbled in the vat —
And greater Jobs their lives have spent
In lesser boils than that, —
He left the beer quite underdone,
No bier to the Undying One!
IX
He’s been from strangulation black,
From bile, of yellow hue,
Scarlet from fever’s hot attack,
From cholera morbus blue;
Yet with these dyes — to use a pun —
He still is the Undying One.
X
He rolls in wealth, yet has no wife
His Three per Cents, to share.;
He never married in his life,
Or flirted with the fair;
The sex he made a point to shun,
For beauty an Undying One.
XI
To judge him by the present signs,
The future by the past,
So quick he lives, so slow declines,
The Last Man won’t be last,
But buried underneath a ton
Of mould by the Undying One!
XII
Next Friday week, his birth-day boast,
His ninetieth year he spends,
And I shall have his health to toast
Amongst expectant friends,
And wish — it really sounds like fun —
Long life to the Undying One!
COCKLE v. CACKLE
Those who much read advertisements and bills,
Must have seen puffs of Cockle’s Pills,
Call’d Anti-bilious —
Which some Physicians sneer at, supercilious,
But which we are assured, if timely taken,
May save your liver and bacon;
Whether or not they really give one ease,
I, who have never tried,
Will not decide;
But no two things in union go like these
Viz. — Quacks and Pills — save Ducks and Pease.
Now Mrs. W. was getting sallow,
Her lilies not of the white kind, but yellow,
And friends portended was preparing for
A human Pâté Périgord;
She was, indeed, so very far from well,
Her Son, in filial fear, procured a box
Of those said pellets to resist Bile’s shocks —
And — tho’ upon the ear it strangely knocks —
To save her by a Cockle from a shell! —
But Mrs. W., just like Macbeth,
Who very vehemently bids us ‘throw
Bark to the Bow-wows,’ hated physic so,
It seem’d to share ‘the bitterness of Death: ‘
Rhubarb — Magnesia — Jalap, and the kind —
Senna — Steel — Assa-foetida, and Squills —
Powder or Draught — but least her throat inclined
To give a course to Boluses or Pills;
No — not to save her life, in lung or lobe,
For all her lights’ or all her liver’s sake, —
Would her convulsive thorax undertake,
Only one little uncclestial globe!
’Tis not to wonder at, in such a case,
If she put by the pill-box in a place
For linen rather than for drugs intended —
Yet for the credit of the pills let’s say
After they thus were stow’d away,
Some of the linen mended;
But Mrs. W., by disease’s dint,
Kept getting still more yellow in her tint, —
When lo! her second son, like elder brother,
Marking the hue on the parental gills,
Brought a new charge of Anti-turmeric Pills,
To bleach the jaundiced visage of his Mother —
Who took them — in her cupboard — like the other.
‘Deeper and deeper, still,’ of course,
The fatal colour daily grew in force;
Till daughter W. newly come from Rome,
Acting the self-same filial, pillial, part,
To cure Mama, another dose brought home
Of Cockles; — not the Cockles of her heart!
These going where the others went before,
Of course she had a very pretty store;
And then — some hue of health her cheek adorning,
The Medicine so good must be,
They brought her dose on dose, which she
Gave to the up-stairs cupboard, ‘night and morning.’
Till wanting room at last, for other stocks,
Out of the window one fine day she pitch’d
The pillage of each box, and quite enrich’d
The feed of Mister Burrell’s hens and cocks, —
A little Barber of a by-gone day,
Over the way,
Whose stock in trade, to keep the least of shops,
Was one great head of Kemble, — that is, John,
Staring in plaster, with a Brutus on,
And twenty little Bantam fowls — with crops.
Little Dame W. thought when through the sash
She gave the physic wings,
To find the very things
So good for bile, so bad for chicken rash,
For thoughtless cock, and unreflecting pullet!
But while they gathered up the nauseous nubbles,
Each peck’d itself into a peck of troubles,
And brought the hand of Death upon its gullet.
They might as well have addled been, or ratted,
For long before the night — ah! woe betide
The Pills! each suicidal Bantam died Unfatted!
Think of poor Burrell’s shock,
Of Nature’s debt to see his hens all payers,
And laid in death as Everlasting Layers,
With Bantam’s small Ex-Emperor, the Cock,
In ruffled plumage and funereal hackle,
Giving, undone by Cockle, a last Cackle!
To see as stiff as stone his un’live stock,
It really was enough to move his block.
Down on the floor he dash’d, with horror big,
Mr. Bell’s third wife’s mother’s coachman’s wig;
And with a tragic stare like his own Kemble,
Burst out with natural emphasis enough,
And voice that grief made tremble,
Into that very speech of sad Macduff —
‘What I all my pretty chickens and their dam,
At one fell swoop! —
Just when I’d bought a coop —
To see the poor lamented creatures cram!’
After a little of this mood,
And brooding over the departed brood,
With razor he began to ope each craw,
Already turning black, as black as coals;
When lo!, the undigested cause he saw —
‘Pison’d by goles!’
To Mrs. W.’s luck a contradiction,
Her window still stood ope
n to conviction;
And by short course of circumstantial labour,
He fix’d the guilt upon his adverse neighbour; —
Lord! how he rail’d at her: declaring now,’
He’d bring an action ere next Term of Hilary,
Then, in another moment, swore a vow,
He’d make her do pill-penance in the pillory!
She, meanwhile distant from the dimmest dream
Of combating with guilt, yard-arm or arm-yard,
Lapp’d in a paradise of tea and cream;
When up ran Betty with a dismal scream
‘Here’s Mr. Burrell, ma’am, with all his farmyard!
Straight in he came, unbowing and unbending,
With all the warmth that iron and a barber
Can harbour;
To dress the head and front of her offending,
The fuming phial of his wrath uncorking;
In short, he made her pay him altogether,
In hard cash, very hard, for ev’ry feather,
Charging, of course, each Bantam as a Dorking;
Nothing could move him, nothing make him supple,
So the sad dame unpocketing her loss,
Had nothing left but to sit hands across,
And see her poultry ‘going down ten couple.’
Now birds by poison slain,
As venom’d dart from Indian’s hollow cane,
Are edible; and Mrs. W.’s thrift, —
She had a thrifty vein, —
Destined one pair for supper to make shift, —
Supper as usual at the hour of ten:
But ten o’clock arrived and quickly pass’d,
Eleven — twelve — and one o’clock at last,
Without a sign of supper even then!
At length, the speed of cookery to quicken,
Betty was called, and with reluctant feet,
Came up at a white heat —
‘Well, never I see chicken like them chicken!
My saucepans they have been a pretty while in ‘em!
Enough to stew them, if it comes to that,
To flesh and bones, and perfect rags; but drat
Those Anti-biling Pills! there is no bile in ‘em!’
THE SWEEP’S COMPLAINT