Thomas Hood- Collected Poetical Works

by Thomas Hood

  SEA SONG

  SERENADE

  SHE IS FAR FROM THE LAND.

  SHOOTING PAINS

  SILENCE.

  SIR JOHN BOWRING

  SKIPPING. A MYSTERY

  SONG FOR THE NINETEENTH

  SONG TO MY WIFE

  SONG. MY MOTHER BIDS ME SPEND MY SMILES

  SONG. O LADY, LEAVE THY SILKEN THREAD.

  SONG. THE STARS ARE WITH THE VOYAGER.

  SONG. THE SUMMER — THE SUMMER

  SONG. THERE IS DEW FOR THE FLOW’RET

  SONG: A LAKE AND A FAIRY BOAT

  SONNET ON STEAM

  SONNET TO A DECAYED SEAMAN

  SONNET TO A SCOTCH GIRL, WASHING LINEN AFTER HER COUNTRY FASHION

  SONNET TO A SONNET

  SONNET TO LORD WHARNCLIFFE, ON HIS GAME BILL

  SONNET TO MY WIFE.

  SONNET TO OCEAN

  SONNET TO VAUXHALL

  SONNET WRITTEN IN A WORKHOUSE

  SONNET WRITTEN IN KEATS’S ‘ENDYMION’

  SONNET. — A SOMNAMBULIST

  SONNET. — THINK SWEETEST

  SONNET. BY EV’RY SWEET TRADITION OF TRUE HEARTS.

  SONNET. I HAD A GIG-HORSE

  SONNET. LOVE, DEAREST LADY, SUCH AS I WOULD SPEAK,

  SONNET. LOVE, I AM JEALOUS OF A WORTHLESS MAN

  SONNET. MY HEART IS SICK WITH LONGING, THO’ I FEED

  SONNET. THE SKY IS GLOWING IN ONE RUDDY SHEET

  SONNET. WRITTEN IN A VOLUME OF SHAKSPEARE.

  SONNET: ALONG THE WOODFORD ROAD THERE COMES A NOISE

  SONNET: THE WORLD IS WITH ME

  SONNETS.

  SPRING

  STANZAS

  STANZAS

  STANZAS

  STANZAS COMPOSED IN A SHOWER-BATH

  STANZAS ON COMING OF AGE

  STANZAS TO TOM WOODGATE, OF HASTINGS

  STANZAS WRITTEN UNDER THE FEAR OF BAILIFFS

  SUGGESTED BY A BUNCH OF ENGLISH GRAPES

  SUGGESTIONS BY STEAM

  SYMPTOMS OF OSSIFICATION

  THE ANGLER’S FAREWELL

  THE APPARITION

  THE ASSISTANT DRAPERS’ PETITION

  THE BACHELOR’S DREAM

  THE BALLAD

  THE BANDIT

  THE BEADLE’S ANNUAL ADDRESS

  THE BLUE BOAR

  THE BOY AT THE NORE

  THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS

  THE BURNING OF THE LOVE-LETTER

  THE CAPTAIN’S COW

  THE CARELESSE NURSE MAYD

  THE CHINA-MENDER

  THE CIGAR

  THE COMET AN ASTRONOMICAL ANECDOTE

  THE COMPASS, WITH VARIATIONS

  THE DEAD ROBBERY

  THE DEATH-BED

  THE DEMON-SHIP.

  THE DEPARTURE OF SUMMER.

  THE DESERT-BORN

  THE DEVIL’S ALBUM

  THE DOCTOR

  THE DOUBLE KNOCK

  THE DOVES AND THE CROWS

  THE DREAM OF EUGENE ARAM.

  THE DROWNING DUCKS

  THE DUEL. A SERIOUS BALLAD

  THE ELM TREE

  THE EPPING HUNT.

  THE EXILE.

  THE FALL

  THE FALL OF THE DEER.

  THE FAREWELL

  THE FLOWER

  THE FORGE.

  THE FORLORN SHEPHERD’S COMPLAINT

  THE FORSAKEN.

  THE FOX AND THE HEN

  THE GHOST

  THE GREEN MAN

  THE HAUNTED HOUSE

  THE IRISH SCHOOLMASTER.

  THE KANGAROOS

  THE KEY

  THE KNIGHT AND THE DRAGON

  THE LADY’S DREAM

  THE LAMENT OF TOBY, THE LEARNED PIG

  THE LARK AND THE ROOK

  THE LAST MAN.

  THE LAST WISH

  THE LAY OF THE LABOURER

  THE LEE SHORE

  THE LOGICIANS

  THE LORD MAYOR’S SHOW

  THE LOST HEIR

  THE MARY

  THE MERMAID OF MARGATE.

  THE MONKEY-MARTYR.

  THE OLD POLER’S WARNING

  THE PAINTER PUZZLED

  THE PAUPER’S CHRISTMAS CAROL

  THE PLEA OF THE MIDSUMMER FAIRIES.

  THE POACHER

  THE POET’S PORTION

  THE PROGRESS OF ART.

  THE PURSUIT OF LETTERS

  THE QUAKERS’ CONVERSAZIONE

  THE ROMANCE OF COLOGNE

  THE SAUSAGE-MAKER’S GHOST

  THE SCHOOLMASTER’S MOTTO

  THE SEA OF DEATH.

  THE SEA SPELL.

  THE SEASON

  THE SHIP LAUNCH

  THE SONG OF THE SHIRT

  THE STAGE-STRUCK HERO

  THE STAG-EYED LADY.

  THE STEAM SERVICE

  THE STREAMLET

  THE SUB-MARINE

  THE SUPPER SUPERSTITION

  THE SURPLICE QUESTION

  THE SWEEP’S COMPLAINT

  THE SWEETS OF YOUTH

  THE TURTLES

  THE TWO PEACOCKS OF BEDFONT.

  THE TWO SWANS.

  THE UNDYING ONE

  THE UNITED FAMILY

  THE UNIVERSITY FEUD

  THE VISION

  THE VOLUNTEER.

  THE WATER LADY.

  THE WATER PERI’S SONG.

  THE WEE MAN.

  THE WIDOW.

  THE WORKHOUSE CLOCK

  THERE’S NO ROMANCE IN THAT

  THOSE EVENING BELLS

  TIM TURPIN.

  TIME, HOPE, AND MEMORY

  TO ——

  TO A BAD RIDER

  TO A CHILD EMBRACING HIS MOTHER

  TO A COLD BEAUTY.

  TO A CRITIC

  TO A FALSE FRIEND

  TO A SLEEPING CHILD.

  TO AN ABSENTEE.

  TO AN ENTHUSIAST.

  TO C. DICKENS, ESQ.

  TO CELIA.

  TO FANCY.

  TO FANNY

  TO HENRIETTA

  TO HOPE.

  TO MARY HOUSEMAID

  TO MINERVA

  TO MISS KELLY OF THE ENGLISH OPERA HOUSE

  TO MR. WRENCH AT THE ENGLISH OPERA HOUSE

  TO MY DAUGHTER ON HER BIRTHDAY.

  TO MY DEAR MARIANNE

  TO THOMAS BISH, ESQ.

  TO* * * * *

  TO* * * * * WITH A FLASK OF RHINE WATER

  TOM TATTERS’ BIRTHDAY ODE

  TRIMMER’S EXERCISE FOR THE USE OF CHILDREN

  UP THE RHINE

  VALENTINE’S DAY

  VAUXHALL

  VERSES IN AN ALBUM

  VERSES MISTAKEN FOR AN INCENDIARY SONG

  WRITTEN ON THE BACK OF THE FOREGOING

  YE TOURISTS AND TRAVELLERS

  YOUTH AND AGE

  The Biography

  8 Finchley Road, St. John’s Wood — Hood’s last home and where he died in 1845.

  Thomas Hood by unknown artist, c. 1840

  BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION TO THOMAS HOOD by William Michael Rossetti

  There were scarcely any events in the life of Thomas Hood. One condition there was of too potent determining importance — life-long ill health; and one circumstance of moment — a commercial failure, and consequent expatriation. Beyond this, little presents itself for record in the outward facts of this upright and beneficial career, bright with genius and coruscating with wit, dark with the lengthening and deepening shadow of death.

  The father of Thomas Hood was engaged in business as a publisher and bookseller in the Poultry, in the city of London, — a member of the firm of Vernor, Hood, and Sharpe. He was a Scotchman, and had come up to the capital early in life, to make his way. His interest in books was not solely confined to their saleable quality. He reprinted various old works with success; published Bloomfield’s poems, and dealt handsomely with him; and was himself the author of two novels, which are stated to have had some success in their day. For the sake of the son rather than the father, one would like to see some account, with adequa
te specimens, of these long-forgotten tales; for the queries which Thomas Hood asks concerning the piteous woman of his Bridge of Sighs interest us all concerning a man of genius, and interest us moreover with regard to the question of intellectual as well as natural affinity: —

  “Who was his father,

  Who was his mother?

  Had he a sister,

  Had he a brother?”

  Another line of work in which the elder Hood is recorded to have been active was the opening of the English book-trade with America. He married a sister of the engraver Mr. Sands, and had by her a large family; two sons and four daughters survived the period of childhood. The elder brother, James, who died early of consumption, drew well, as did also one or two of the sisters. It would seem therefore, when we recall Thomas Hood’s aptitudes and frequent miscellaneous practice in the same line, that a certain tendency towards fine art, as well as towards literature, ran in the family. The consumption which killed James appears to have been inherited from his mother; she, and two of her daughters, died of the same disease; and a pulmonary affection of a somewhat different kind became, as we shall see, one of the poet’s most inveterate persecutors. The death of the father, which was sudden and unexpected, preceded that of the mother, but not of James, and left the survivors in rather straitened circumstances.

  Thomas, the second of the two sons, was born in the Poultry, on or about the 23d of May, 1799. He is stated to have been a retired child, with much quiet humor; chuckling, we may guess, over his own quaint imaginings, which must have come in crowds, and of all conceivable or inconceivable sorts, to judge from the products of his after years; keeping most of these fancies and surprises to himself, but every now and then letting some of them out, and giving homely or stolid bystanders an inkling of insight into the many-peopled crannies of his boyish brain. He received his education at Dr. Wanostrocht’s school at Clapham. It is not very clear how far this education extended: I should infer that it was just about enough, and not more than enough, to enable Hood to shift for himself in the career of authorship, without serious disadvantage from inadequate early training, and also without much aid thence derived — without, at any rate, any such rousing and refining of the literary sense as would warrant us in attributing to educational influences either the inclination to become an author, or the manipulative power over language and style which Hood displayed in his serious poems, not to speak of those of a lighter kind. We seem to see him sliding, as it were, into the profession of letters, simply through capacity and liking, and the course of events — not because he had resolutely made up his mind to be an author, nor because his natural faculty had been steadily or studiously cultivated. As to details, it may be remarked that his schooling included some amount — perhaps a fair average amount — of Latin. We find it stated that he had a Latin prize at school, but was not apt at the language in later years. He had however one kind of aptitude at it — being addicted to the use of familiar Latin quotations or phrases, cited with humorous verbal perversions.

  In all the relations of family life, and the forms of family affection, Hood was simply exemplary. The deaths of his elder brother and of his father left him the principal reliance of his mother, herself destined soon to follow them to the tomb: he was an excellent and devoted son. His affection for one of his sisters, Anne, who also died shortly afterwards, is attested in the beautiful lines named The Deathbed, —

  “We watched her breathing through the night.”

  At a later date, the loves of a husband and a father seem to have absorbed by far the greater part of his nature and his thoughts: his letters to friends are steeped and drenched In “Jane,” “Fanny,” and “Tom junior.” These letters are mostly divided between perpetual family details and perennial jocularity: a succession of witticisms, or at lowest of puns and whimsicalities, mounts up like so many squibs and crackers, fizzing through, sparkling amid, or ultimately extinguished by, the inevitable shower — the steady rush and downpour — of the home-affections. It may easily be inferred from this account that there are letters which one is inclined to read more thoroughly, and in greater number consecutively, than Hood’s.

  The vocation first selected for Hood, towards the age of fifteen, was one which he did not follow up for long — that of an engraver. He was apprenticed to his uncle Mr. Sands, and afterwards to one of the Le Keux family. The occupation was ill-suited to his constantly ailing health, and this eventually conduced to his abandoning it. He then went to Scotland to recruit, remaining there among his relatives about five years. According to a statement made by himself, he was in a merchant’s office within this interval; it is uncertain, however, whether this assertion is to be accepted as genuine, or as made for some purpose of fun. His first published writing appeared in the Dundee Advertiser in 1814 — his age being then, at the utmost, fifteen and a half; this was succeeded by some contribution to a local magazine. But as yet he had no idea of authorship as a profession.

  Towards the middle of the year 1820, Hood was re-settled in London, improved in health, and just come of age. At first he continued practising as an engraver; but in 1821 he began to act as a sort of sub-editor for the London Magazine after the death of the editor, Mr. Scott, in a duel. He concocted fictitious and humorous answers to correspondents — a humble yet appropriate introduction to the insatiable habit and faculty for out-of-the-way verbal jocosity which marked-off his after career from that of all other excellent poets.

  His first regular contribution to the magazine, in July, 1821, was a little poem To Hope: even before this, as early at any rate as 1815, he was in the frequent practice of writing correctly and at some length in verse, as witnessed by selections, now in print, from what he had composed for the amusement of his relatives. Soon afterwards, a private literary society was the recipient of other verses of the same order. The lines To Hope were followed, in the London Magazine, by the Ode to Dr. Kitchener and some further poems, including the important work, Lycus the Centaur — after the publication of which, there could not be much doubt of the genuine and uncommon powers of the new writer. The last contribution of Hood to this magazine was the Lines to a Cold Beauty. Another early work of his, and one which, like the verses To the Moon, affords marked evidence of the impression which he had received from Keats’s poetry, is the unfinished drama (or, as he termed it, “romance”) of Lamia: I do not find its precise date recorded. Its verse is lax, and its tone somewhat immature; yet it shows a great deal of sparkling and diversified talent. Hood certainly takes a rather more rational view than Keats did of his subject as a moral invention, or a myth having some sort of meaning at its root. A serpent transformed into a woman, who beguiles a youth of the highest hopes into amorous languid self-abandonment, is clearly not, in morals, the sort of person that ought to be left uncontrolled to her own devices. Keats ostentatiously resents the action of the unimpassioned philosopher Appollonius in revealing the true nature of the woman-serpent, and dissolving her spell. An elderly pedant to interfere with the pretty whims of a viper when she wears the outer semblance of a fine woman! Intolerable!

  (Such is the sentiment of Keats; but such plainly is not altogether the conviction of Hood, although his story remains but partially developed.)

  By this time it may have become pretty clear to himself and others that his proper vocation and destined profession was literature. Through the London Magazine, he got to know John Hamilton Reynolds (author of the Garden of Florence and other poems, and a contributor to this serial under the pseudonym of Edward Herbert), Charles Lamb, Allan Cunningham, De Quincey, and other writers of reputation. To Hood the most directly important of all these acquaintances was Mr. Reynolds; this gentleman having a sister, Jane, to whom Hood was introduced. An attachment ensued, and shortly terminated in marriage, the wedding taking place on the 5th of May, 1824. The father of Miss Reynolds was the head writing-master at Christ Hospital. She is stated to have had good manners, a cultivated mind, and literary tastes, though a high educational standa
rd is not always traceable in her letters. At any rate the marriage was a happy one; Mrs. Hood being a tender and attentive wife, unwearied in the cares which her husband’s precarious health demanded, and he being (as I have said) a mirror of marital constancy and devotion, distinguishable from a lover rather by his intense delight in all domestic relations and details than by any cooling-down in his fondness. It would appear that, in the later years of Hood’s life, he was not on entirely good terms with some members of his wife’s family, including his old friend John Hamilton Reynolds. What may have caused this I do not find specified: all that we know of the character of Hood justifies us in thinking that he was little or not at all to blame, for he appears throughout a man of just, honorable, and loving nature, and free besides from that sort of self-assertion which invites a collision. Every one, however, has his blemishes; and we may perhaps discern in Hood a certain over-readiness to think himself imposed upon, and the fellow-creatures with whom he had immediately to do a generation of vipers — a state of feeling not characteristic of a mind exalted and magnanimous by habit, or “gentle” in the older and more significant meaning of the term.

  The time was now come for Hood to venture a volume upon the world. Conjointly with Reynolds, he wrote, and published in 1825, his Odes and Addresses to Great People. The title-page bore no author’s name; but the extraordinary talent and point of the work could hardly fail to be noticed, even apart from its appeal to immediate popularity, dealing as it did so continually with the uppermost topics of the day. It had what it deserved, a great success. This volume was followed, in 1826, by the first series of Whims and Oddities, which also met with a good sale; the second series appeared in 1827. Next came two volumes of National Tales, somewhat after the manner of Boccaccio (but how far different from his spirit may easily be surmised), which are now little known. The volume containing the Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, Hero and Leander, and some other of Hood’s most finished and noticeable poems, came out in 1827. The Midsummer Fairies itself was one of the authors own favorite works, and certainly deserved to be so, as far as dainty elegance of motive and of execution is concerned: but the conception was a little too ingeniously remote for the public to ratify the author’s predilection. The Hero and Leander will be at once recognized as modelled on the style of Elizabethan narrative poems: indeed Marlow treated the very same subject, and his poem, left uncompleted, was finished by Chapman. Hood’s is a most astonishing example of revivalist poetry: it is reproductive and spontaneous at the same time. It resembles its models closely, not servilely — significantly, not mechanically; and has the great merit of resembling them with comparative moderation. Elizabethan here both in spirit and in letter, Hood is nevertheless a little less extreme than his prototypes. Where they loaded, he does not find it needful to overload, which is the ready and almost the inevitable resource of revivalists, all but the fewest: on the contrary, he alleviates a little, — but only a little.