Thomas Hood- Collected Poetical Works

Home > Other > Thomas Hood- Collected Poetical Works > Page 103
Thomas Hood- Collected Poetical Works Page 103

by Thomas Hood


  Last look of despairing

  Fix’d on futurity.

  Perishing gloomily,

  Spurr’d by contumely,

  Cold inhumanity,

  Burning insanity,

  Into her rest.

  Cross her hands humbly

  As if praying dumbly,

  Over her breast!

  Owning her weakness,

  Her evil behaviour,

  And leaving, with meekness,

  Her sins to her Saviour!

  EPIGRAM ON DR. ROBERT ELLIOT OF CAMBERWELL.

  Whatever Doctor Robert’s skill be worth,

  One hope within me still is stout and hearty,

  He would not hill me till the 24th

  For fear of my appearing at his party!

  May 23, 1844.

  EPIGRAM ON A CERTAIN EQUESTRIAN STATUE

  Whoever has looked upon Wellington’s breast,

  Knows well that he is not so full in the chest;

  But the sculptor, to humour the Londoners partial,

  Has turn’d the lean Duke to a plump City Marshal.

  EPIGRAM ON THE NEW HALF-FARTHINGS

  ‘Too small for any marketable shift,

  What purpose can there be for coins like these?’

  Hush, hush, good Sir! — Thus charitable Thrift

  May give a Mite to him who wants a cheese!

  EPIGRAM. CHARM’D WITH A DRINK WHICH HIGHLANDERS COMPOSE

  Charm’d with a drink which Highlanders compose,

  A German traveller exclaim’d with glee,

  ‘Potztausend! sare, if dis is Athol Brose,

  How goot dere Athol Boetry must be!’

  THE LAY OF THE LABOURER

  A spade! a rake! a hoe!

  A pickaxe, or a bill!

  A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,

  A flail, or what ye will —

  And here’s a ready hand

  To ply the needful tool,

  And skill’d enough, by lessons rough,

  In Labour’s rugged school.

  To hedge, or dig the ditch,

  To lop or fell the tree,

  To lay the swarth on the sultry field,

  Or plough the stubborn lea;

  The harvest stack to bind,

  The wheaten rick to thatch,

  And never fear in my pouch to find

  The tinder or the match.

  To a flaming barn or farm

  My fancies never roam;

  The fire I yearn to kindle and burn

  Is on the hearth of Home; —

  Where children huddle and crouch

  Through dark long winter days,

  Where starving children huddle and crouch,

  To see the cheerful rays,

  A-glowing on the haggard cheek,

  And not in the haggard’s blaze!

  To Him who sends a drought

  To parch the fields forlorn,

  The rain to flood the meadows with mud,

  The lights to blast the corn,

  To Him I leave to guide

  The bolt in its crooked path.

  To strike the miser’s rick, and show

  The skies blood-red with wrath.

  A spade! a rake! a hoe!

  A pickaxe, or a bill!

  A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,

  A flail, or what ye will —

  The corn to thrash, or the hedge to plash,

  The market-team to drive,

  Or mend the fence by the cover side,

  And leave the game alive.

  Ay, only give me work,

  And then you need not fear

  That I shall snare his worship’s hare,

  Or kill his grace’s deer;

  Break into his lordship’s house,

  To steal the plate so rich;

  Or leave the yeoman that had a purse

  To welter in a ditch. —

  Wherever Nature needs

  Wherever Labour calls,

  No job I’ll shirk of the hardest work,

  To shun the workhouse walls;

  Where savage laws begrudge

  The pauper babe its breath,

  And doom a wife to a widow’s life,

  Before her partner’s death.

  My only claim is this,

  With labour stiff and stark,

  By lawful turn, my living to earn,

  Between the light and dark;

  My daily bread, and nightly bed,

  My bacon, and drop of beer —

  But all from the hand that holds the land,

  And none from the overseer!

  No parish money, or loaf,

  No pauper badges for me,

  A son of the soil, by right of toil

  Entitled to my fee.

  No alms I ask, give me my task:

  Here are the arm, the leg,

  The strength, the sinews of a Man,

  To work, and not to beg.

  Still one of Adam’s heirs,

  Though doom’d by chance of birth

  To dress so mean, and to eat the lean

  Instead of the fat of the earth;

  To make such humble meals

  As honest labour can,

  A bone and a crust, with a grace to God,

  And little thanks to man!

  A spade! a rake! a hoe!

  A pickaxe, or a bill!

  A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,

  A flail, or what ye will —

  Whatever the tool to ply,

  Here is a willing drudge,

  With muscle and limb, and woe to him

  Who does their pay begrudge! —

  Who every weekly score

  Docks labour’s little mite,

  Bestows on the poor at the temple door,

  But robb’d them over night.

  The very shilling he hoped to save,

  As health and morals fail,

  Shall visit me in the New Bastille,

  The Spital, or the Gaol!

  SONNET TO A SONNET

  Particularly commended, with the Fifth of Sir Philip Sidney’s, and the pages of Froissart, to the perusal of certain Journalists across the Channel; and generally to their Young countrymen, who would do well to affect, with the beards and moustaches of the olden time, the gallant courtesy of the ancient manners.

  Rare Composition of a Poet-Knight,

  Most chivalrous amongst chivalric men,

  Distinguish’d for a polish’d lance and pen

  In tuneful contest, and the tourney-fight;

  Lustrous in scholarship, in honour bright,

  Accomplish’d in all graces current then,

  Humane as any in historic ken,

  Brave, handsome, noble, affable, polite,

  Most courteous to that race become of late

  So fiercely scornful of all kind advance,

  Rude, bitter, coarse, implacable in hate

  To Albion, plotting ever her mischance,

  Alas! fair Verse, how false and out of date

  Thy phrase ‘sweet enemy’ applied to France!

  EPIGRAM ON HER MAJESTY’S VISIT TO THE CITY

  We’ve heard of comets, blazing things,

  With ‘fear of change’ perplexing Kings;

  But lo! a novel sight and strange,

  A Queen who does not fear a’Change!

  EPIGRAM ON THE QUEEN’S VISIT TO THE CITY

  BY A TRADESMAN OF CORNHILL

  Sure the measure is strange

  And all Commerce so stops,

  And to open a ’Change

  Make us shut up our shops.

  EPIGRAM

  When would-be Suicides in purpose fail —

  Who could not find a morsel though they needed —

  If Peter sends them for attempts to jail,

  What would he do to them if they succeeded?

  THE SAUSAGE-MAKER’S GHOST

  A LONDON LEGEND

  Somewhere in Leather Lane —

  I wonder that it was not
Mincing,

  And for this reason most convincing,

  That Mr. Brain

  Dealt in those well-minc’d cartridges of meat

  Some people like to eat —

  However, all such quibbles overstepping.

  In Leather Lane he liv’d; and drove a trade

  In porcine sausages, though London made,

  Call’d ‘Epping.’ —

  Right brisk was the demand,

  Seldom his goods staid long on hand,

  For out of all adjacent courts and lanes

  Young Irish ladies and their swains,

  Such soups of girls and broths of boys!

  Sought his delicious chains,

  Preferr’d to all polonies, saveloys,

  And other foreign toys —

  The mere chance passengers

  Who saw his ‘sassengers,’

  Of sweetness undeniable,

  So sleek, so mottled, and so friable,

  Stepp’d in, forgetting ev’ry other thought,

  And bought.

  Meanwhile a constant thumping

  Was heard, a sort of subterranean chumping —

  Incessant was the noise

  But though he had a foreman and assistant,

  With all the tools consistent,

  (Besides a wife and two fine chopping boys) —

  His means were not yet vast enough

  For chopping fast enough

  To meet the call from streets, and lanes, and passages,

  For first-chop ‘sassages.’

  However, Mr. Brain

  Was none of those dull men and slow,

  Who, flying bird-like by a railway train,

  Sigh for the heavy mails of long ago;

  He did not set his face ‘gainst innovations

  For rapid operations,

  And therefore in a kind of waking dream

  Listen’d to some hot-water sprite that hinted

  To have his meat chopp’d, as the

  Times was printed,

  By steam !

  Accordingly in happy hour,

  A bran-new Engine went to work

  Chopping up pounds on pounds of pork

  With all the energy of Two-HorsePower,

  And wonderful celerity —

  When lo! when ev’ry thing to hope responded,

  Whether his head was turn’d by his prosperity,

  Whether he had some sly intrigue, in verity,

  The man absconded!

  His anxious Wife in vain

  Placarded Leather Lane,

  And all the suburbs with descriptive bills,

  Such as are issued when from homes and tills

  Clerks, dogs, cats, lunatics, and children roam;

  Besides advertisements in all the journals,

  Or weeklies or diurnals,

  Beginning ‘Left his Home’ —

  The sausage-maker, spite of white and black,

  Never came back.

  Never, alive! — But on the seventh night,

  Just when the yawning grave its dead releases,

  Filling his bedded Wife with sore affright

  In walk’d his grisly Sprite,

  In fifty thousand pieces!

  ‘O Mary!’ so it seem’d

  In hollow melancholy tones to say,

  Whilst thro’ its airy shape the moonlight gleam’d

  With scarcely dimmer ray —

  ‘O Mary! let your hopes no longer flatter

  Prepare at once to drink of sorrow’s cup,

  It an’t no use to mince the matter —

  The Engine’s chopped me up!’

  THE LARK AND THE ROOK

  A FABLE

  ‘Lo! hear the gentle lark! ‘ — Shakspeare.

  Once on a time — no matter where —

  A lark took such a fancy to the air,

  That though he often gaz’d beneath,

  Watching the breezy down, or heath,

  Yet very, very seldom he was found

  To perch upon the ground.

  Hour after hour,

  Through ev’ry change of weather hard or soft,

  Through sun and shade, and wind and show’r,

  Still fluttering aloft; —

  In silence now, and now in song,

  Up, up in cloudland all day long,

  On weary wing, ‘yet with unceasing flight,

  Like to those Birds of Paradise, so rare,

  Fabled to live, and love, and feed in air,

  But never to alight.

  It caused, of course, much speculation

  Among the feather’d generation;

  Who tried to guess the riddle that was in it —

  The robin puzzled at it, and the wren,

  The swallows, cock and hen,

  The wagtail, and the linnet,

  The yellow hammer, and the finch as well —

  The sparrow ask’d the tit, who couldn’t tell,

  The jay, the pie — but all were in the dark,

  Till out of patience with the common doubt,

  The Rook at last resolv’d to worm it out

  And thus accosted the mysterious Lark: —

  ‘Friend, prithee, tell me why

  You keep this constant hovering so high,

  As if you had some castle in the air,

  That you are always poising there,

  A speck against the sky —

  Neglectful of each old familiar feature

  Of Earth that nurs’d you in your callow state —

  You think you’re only soaring at heaven’s gate,

  Whereas you’re flying in the face of

  Nature!’

  ‘Friend,’ said the Lark, with melancholy tone,

  Andin each little eye a dewdrop shone,

  ‘No creature of my kind was ever fonder —

  Of that dear spot of earth

  Which gave it birth —

  And I was nestled in the furrow yonder!

  Sweet is the twinkle of the dewy heath,

  And sweet that thy my down I watch beneath,

  Saluted often with a loving sonnet:

  But Men, vile Men, have spread so thick a scurf

  Of dirt and infamy about the Turf,

  I do not like to settle on it!’

  MORAL.

  Alas! how Nobles of another race

  Appointed to the bright and lofty way

  Too willingly descend to haunt a place

  Polluted by the deeds of Birds of Prey

  SUGGESTIONS BY STEAM

  When Woman is in rags, and poor,

  And sorrow, cold, and hunger teaze her,

  If Man would only listen more

  To that small voice that crieth —

  ‘Ease her!’

  Without the guidance of a friend,

  Though legal sharks and screws attack her,

  If Man would only more attend

  To that small voice that crieth —

  ‘Back her!’

  So oft it would not be his fate —

  To witness some despairing dropper

  In Thames’s tide, and run too late

  To that small voice that crieth —

  ‘Stop her!’

  ANACREONTIC BY A FOOTMAN

  It’s wery well to talk in praise

  Of Tea and Water-drinking ways,

  In proper time and place;

  Of sober draughts, so clear and cool,

  Dipp’d out of a transparent pool

  Reflecting heaven’s face.

  Of babbling brooks, and purling rills,

  And streams as gushes from the hills,

  It s wery well to talk; —

  But what becomes of all sich schemes,

  With ponds of ice, and running streams,

  As doesn’t even walk?

  When Winter comes with piercing cold,

  And all the rivers, new or old,

  Is frozen far and wide;

  And limpid springs is solid stuff,

  A
nd crystal pools is hard enough

  To skate upon and slide; —

  What then are thirsty men to do,

  But drink of ale, and porter too,

  Champagne as makes a fizz;

  Port, sherry, or the Rhenish sort,

  And p’rhaps a drop of summut short —

  The water-pipes is friz!

  EPIGRAM. A LORD BOUGHT OF LATE AN OUTLANDISH ESTATE

  A Lord bought of late an outlandish estate,

  At its Wild Boars to Chevy and dig;

  So some people purchase a pig in a poke,

  And others, a poke in a pig.

  STANZAS

  Farewell, Life! My senses swim;

  And the world is growing dim;

  Thronging shadows cloud the light,

  Like the advent of the night,

  Colder, colder, colder still

  Upward steals a vapour chill —

  Strong the earthy odour grows —

  I smell the Mould above the Rose!

  Welcome, Life! the Spirit strives!

  Strength returns, and hope revives;

  Cloudy fears and shapes forlorn

  Fly like shadows at the morn,

  O’er the earth there comes a bloom —

  Sunny light for sullen gloom,

  Warm perfume for vapour cold —

  I smell the Rose above the Mould!

  THE SURPLICE QUESTION

  BY A BENEDICT

  A very pretty public stir

  Is making, down at Exeter,

  About the surplice fashion:

  And many bitter words and rude

  Have been bestow’d upon the feud,

  And much unchristian passion.

  For me I neither know nor care

  Whether a Parson ought to wear

  A black dress or a white dress;

  Fill’d with a trouble of my own,

 

‹ Prev