by Thomas Hood
Astronomy was most Lorenzo’s whim,
(’Tis studied by a Prince amongst the Burmans);
He loved those heavenly bodies which, the Hymn
Of Addison declares, preach solemn sermons,
While waltzing on their pivots like young Germans.
Night after night, with telescope in hand,
Supposing that the night was fair and clear,
Aloft, on the house-top, he took his stand,
Till he obtained to know each twinkling sphere
Better, I doubt, than Milton’s ‘Starry Vere;’
Thus, reading thro’ poor Ellen’s fond epistle,
He soon espied the flaw — the lapse so sheer
That made him raise his hair in such a bristle,
And like the Boatswain of the Storm-Ship whistle.
‘The moon’s at full, love, and I think of thee,’ —
‘Indeed! I’m very much her humble debtor,
But not the moon-calf she would have me be,
Zounds! does she fancy that I know no better?’
Herewith, at either corner of the letter
He gave a most ferocious, rending, pull; —
‘O woman! woman! that no vows can fetter,
A moon to stay for three weeks at the full!
By Jove; a very pretty cock-and-bull!
‘The moon at full! ’twas very finely reckon’d!
Why so she wrote me word upon the first —
The twelfth, and now upon the twenty-second —
Full! — yes — it must be full enough to burst!
But let her go — of all vile jilts the worst’ —
Here with his thumbs he gave contemptuous snaps,
Anon he blubber’d like the child that’s nurs’d,
And then he hit the table frightful raps,
And stamp’d till he had broken both his straps.
The moon’s at full — and I am in her thought —
No doubt: I do believe it in my soul!’
Here he threw up his head, and gave a snort
Like a young horse first harness’d to a pole:
The moon is full — aye, so is this d — d bowl!
And, grinning like the sourest of curmudgeons,
Globe — water — fishes — he dash’d down the whole,
Strewing the carpet with the gasping gudgeons;
Men do the strangest things in such love-dudgeons.
‘I fill her thoughts — her memory’s vice-gerent?
No, no, — some paltry puppy — three weeks old —
And round as Norval’s shield’ — thus incoherent
His fancies grew as he went on to scold;
So stormy waves are into breakers roll’d,
Work’d up at last to mere chaotic wroth —
This — that — heads — tails — thoughts jumbled uncontroll’d
As onions, turnips, meat, in boiling broth,
By turns bob up, and splutter in the froth.
‘Fool that I was to let a baby face —
A full one — like a hunter’s — round and red —
Ass that I am, to give her more a place
Within this heart’ — and here he struck his head.
‘‘Sdeath are the Almanack-compilers dead? —
But no— ’tis all an artifice — a trick,
Some newer face — some dandy under-bred —
Well — be it so — of all the sex I’m sick!’
Here Juno wonder’d why she got a kick.
‘“ The moon is full” — where’s her infernal scrawl?
“And you are in my thought: that silver ray
Will ever your dear image thus recall” —
My image? Mine! She’d barter it away
For Pretty Poll’s on an Italian’s tray!
Three weeks, full weeks, — it is too plain — too bad
Too gross and palpable! Oh cursed day!
My senses have not crazed — but if they had —
Such moons would worry a Mad Doctor mad!
‘Oh Nature! wherefore did you frame a lip
So fair for falsehood? Wherefore have you drest
Deceit so angel-like?’ With sudden rip
He tore six new buff buttons from his vest,
And groped with hand impetuous at his breast,
As if some flea from Juno’s fleecy curls
Had skipp’d to batten on a human chest, —
But no — the hand comes forth, and down it hurls
A lady’s miniature beset with pearls.
Yet long upon the floor it did not tarry,
Before another outrage could be plann’d:
Poor Juno, who had learn’d to fetch and carry,
Pick’d up and brought it to her master’s hand,
Who seized it, and the mimic feature scann’d;
Yet not with the old loving ardent drouth,
He only saw in that fair face, so bland,
Look how he would at it, east, west, north, south, —
A moon, a full one, with eyes, nose, and mouth.
‘I’ll go to her,’ — herewith his hat he touch’d,
And gave his arm a most heroic brandish;
‘But no — I’ll write’ — and here a spoon he clutch’d,
And ramm’d it with such fury in the standish,
A sable flood, like Niger the outlandish,
Came rushing forth — Oh Antics and Buffoons!
Ye never danced a caper so ran-dan-dish;
He jump’d, thump’d — tore — swore, more than ten dragoons
At all nights, noons, moons, spoons, and pantaloons! —
But soon ashamed, or weary, of such dancing,
Without a Collinet’s or Weippert’s band,
His rampant arms and legs left off their prancing,
And down he sat again, with pen in hand,
Not fiddle-headed, or King’s-pattern grand,
But one of Bramah’s patent Caligraphics;
And many a sheet it spoil’d before he plann’d
A likely letter. Used to pure seraphics,
Philippics sounded strangely after Sapphics.
Long while he rock’d like Yankee in his chair, —
Staring as he would stare the wainscot through,
And then he thrust his fingers in his hair,
And set his crest up like a cockatoo;
And trampled with his hoofs, a mere Yahoo:
At last, with many a tragic frown and start,
He penn’d a billet, very far from doux,
’Twas sour, severe — but think of a man’s smart
Writing with lunar caustic on his heart!
The letter done and closed, he lit his taper,
And sealing, as it were, his other mocks, —
He stamp’d a grave device upon the paper,
No Cupid toying with his Psyche’s locks,
But some stern head of the old Stoic stocks —
Then, fiercely striding through the staring streets,
He dropt the bitter missive in a box,
Beneath the cakes, and tarts, and sugar’d treats,
In Mrs. Smelling’s window-full of sweets.
Soon sped the letter — thanks to modern plans,
Our English mails run little in the style
Of those great German wild-beast caravans, —
Eil-wagens — tho’ they do not ‘go like ilc,’ —
But take a good twelve minutes to the mile —
On Monday morning, just at ten o’clock,
As Ellen humm’d ‘The Young May Moon’ the while,
Her ear was startled by that double knock
Which thrills the nerves like an electric shock!
Her right hand instantly forgot its cunning,
And down into the street it dropt, or flung,
Right on the hat and wig of Mr. Gunning,
The jug that o’er her ten-week-stocks had hung;
Then down the stairs by twos and
threes she sprung,
And through the passage like a burglar darted.
Alas! how sanguine are the fond and young —
She little thought, when with the coin she parted,
She paid a sixpence to be broken-hearted!
Too dear at any price — had she but paid
Nothing and taken discount, it was dear;
Yet, worthless as it was, the sweet-lipped maid
Oft kissed the letter in her brief career
Between the lower and the upper sphere, —
Where, seated in a study bistre-brown,
She tried to pierce a mystery as clear
As that I saw once puzzling a young clown —
‘Reading Made Easy,’ but turned upside down.
Yet Ellen, like most misses in the land,
Had sipped sky blue, through certain of her teens,
At one of those establishments which stand
In highways, byeways, squares, and village greens;
’Twas called ‘The Grove,’ — a name that always means
Two poplars stand like sentries at the gate
Each window had its close Venetian screens
And Holland blind, to keep in a cool state
The twenty-four Young Ladies of Miss Bate.
But when the screens were left unclosed by chance,
The blinds not down, as if Miss B. were dead,
Each upper window to a passing glance
Revealed a little dimity white bed;
Each lower one a cropp’d or curly head;
And thrice a week, for soul’s and health’s economies,
Along the road the twenty-four were led, —
Like coupled hounds, whipped in by two she-dominies
With faces rather graver than Melpomene’s.
And thus their studies they pursued: — On Sunday,
Beef, collects, batter, texts from Dr. Price;
Mutton, French, pancakes, grammar — of a Monday;
Tuesday — hard dumplings, globes, Chapone’s Advice;
Wednesday — fancy-work, rice-milk (no spice);
Thursday — pork, dancing, currant-bolsters, reading;
Friday — beef, Mr. Butler, and plain rice;
Saturday — scraps, short lessons and short feeding, —
Stocks, back-boards, hash, steel-collars, and good breeding.
From this repertory of female learning,
Came Ellen once a quarter, always fatter!
To gratify the eyes of parents yearning.
’Twas evident in bolsters, beef, and batter,
Hard dumplings, and rice-milk, she did not smatter,
But heartily, as Jenkins says, ‘demollidge;’
But as for any learning, not to flatter,
As often happens when girls leave their college,
She had done nothing but grow out of knowledge.
At Long Division sums she had no chance,
And History was quite as bad a balk;
Her French it was too small for Petty France,
And Priscian suffered in her English talk:
Her drawing might be done with cheese or chalk;
As for the globes — the use of the terrestrial
She knew when she went out to take a walk,
Or take a ride; but, touching the celestial,
Her knowledge hardly soared above the bestial.
Nothing she learned of Juno, Pallas, Mars; —
Georgium, for what she knew, might stand for Burgo,
Sidus, for Master: then, for northern stars,
The Bear she fancied did in sable fur go,
The Bull was Farmer Giles’s bull, and, ergo,
The Ram the same that butted at her brother;
As for the twins, she only guessed that Virgo,
From coining after them, must be their mother;
The Scales weighed soap, tea, figs, like any other.
As ignorant as donkeys in Gallicia,
She thought that Saturn, with his Belt, was but —
A private, may be, in the Kent Militia;
That Charles’s Wain would stick in a deep rut,
That Venus was a real West-End slut —
Oh, Gods and Goddesses of Greek Theogony!
That Berenice’s Hair would curl and cut,
That Cassiopeia’s Chair was good Mahogany,
Nicely french-polished, — such was her cosmogony!
Judge, then, how puzzled by the scientifics
Lorenzo’s letter came now to dispense;
A lizard, crawling over hieroglyphics, —
Knows quite as much of their Egyptian sense;
A sort of London fog, opaque and dense,
Hung over verbs, nouns, genitives, and datives;
In vain she pored and pored, with eyes intense,
As well is known to oyster-operatives,
Mere looking at the shells won’t open natives.
Yet mixed with the hard words, so called, she found
Some easy ones that gave her heart the staggers;
Words giving tongue against her, like a hound
At picking out a fault — words speaking daggers.
The very letters seemed, in hostile swaggers,
To lash their tails, but not as horses do,
Nor like the tails of spaniels, gentle waggers,
But like the lion’s, ere he tears in two
A black, to see if he is black all through.
With open mouth, and eyeballs at full stretch,
She gazed upon the paper sad and sorry,
No sound — no stir — quite petrified, poor wretch!
As when Apollo, in old allegory,
Down-stooping like a falcon, made his quarry
Of Niobe, just turned to Purbeck stone;
In fact, since Cupid grew into a worry,
Judge if a suing lover, let alone
A lawyer, ever wrote in such a tone.
‘Ellen, I will no longer call you mine,
That time is past, and ne’er can come again;
However other lights undimmed may shine,
And undiminishing, one truth is plain,
Which I, alas! have learned, — that love can wane.
The dream is pass’d away, the veil is rent,
Your heart was not intended for my reign;
A sphere so full, I feel, was never meant
With one poor man in it to be content.
‘It must, no doubt, be pleasant beyond measure,
To wander underneath the whispering bough
With Dian, a perpetual round of pleasure.
Nay, fear not, — I absolve of every vow, —
Use, — use your own celestial pleasure now,
Your apogee and perigee arrange.
Herschel might aptly stare and wonder how,
To me that constant disk has nothing strange —
A counterfeit is sometimes hard to change.
‘Oh Ellen! I once little thought to write
Such words unto you, with so hard a pen;
Yet outraged love will change its nature quite,
And turn like tiger hunted to its den —
How Falsehood trips in her deceits on men!
And stands abash’d, discover’d, and forlorn!
Had it been only cusp’d — but gibbous — then
It had gone down — but Faith drew back in scorn,
And would not swallow it — without a horn!
‘I am in occultation, — that is plain:
My culmination’s past, — that’s quite as clear.
But think not I will suffer your disdain
To hang a lunar rainbow on a tear.
Whate’er my pangs, they shall be buried here;
No murmur, — not a sigh, — shall thence exhale:
Smile on, — and for your own peculiar sphere
Choose some eccentric path, — you cannot fail,
And pray stick on a most portentous tail!
‘Fare
well! I hope you are in health and gay;
For me, I never felt so well and merry —
As for the bran-new idol of the day,
Monkey or man, I am indifferent — very!
Nor e’en will ask who is the Happy Jerry;
My jealousy is dead, or gone to sleep,
But let me hint that you will want a wherry,
Three weeks’ spring-tide, and not a chance of neap,
Your parlours will be flooded six feet deep!
‘Oh Ellen! how delicious was that light
Wherein our plighted shadows used to blend,
Meanwhile the melancholy bird of night —
No more of that — the lover’s at an end.
Yet if I may advise you, as a friend,
Before you next pen sentiments so fond,
Study your cycles — I would recommend
Our Airy — and let South be duly conn’d,
And take a dip, I beg, in the great Pond.
‘Farewell again! it is farewell for ever!
Before your lamp of night be lit up thrice,
I shall be sailing, haply, for Swan River,
Jamaica, or the Indian land of rice,
Or Boothia Felix — happy clime of ice!
For Trebizond, or distant Scanderoon,
Ceylon, or Java redolent of spice,
Or settling, neighbour of the Cape baboon,
Or roaming o’er — The Mountains of the Moon!
‘What matters where? my world no longer owns
That dear meridian spot from which I dated
Degrees of distance, hemispheres, and zones,
A globe all blank and barren and belated.
What matters where my future life be fated?
With Lapland hordes, or Koords or Afric peasant,
A squatter in the western woods located,
What matters where? My bias, at the present,
Leans to the country that reveres the Crescent!
‘Farewell! and if for ever, fare thee well!
As wrote another of my fellow-martyrs:
I ask no sexton for his passing-bell,
I do not ask your tear-drops to be starters,
However I may die, transfix’d by Tartars,
By Cobras poisoned, by Constrictors strangled,
By shark or cayman snapt above the garters.
By royal tiger or Cape lion mangled,