by Thomas Hood
‘I like to meet a sweep — such as come forth with the dawn, or somewhat earlier, with their little professional notes, sounding like the peep, peep, of a young sparrow.’ — Essays of Elia.
‘A voice cried Sweep no more!
Macbeth hath murdered sweep.’ — Shakspeare.
One morning ere my usual time
I rose, about the seventh chime,
When little stunted boys that climb
Still linger in the street;
And as I walked, I saw indeed
A sample of the sooty breed,
Though he was rather run to seed,
In height above five feet.
A mongrel tint he seem’d to take,
Poetic simile to make, —
DAY through his Martin ‘gan to break,
White overcoming jet.
From side to side he cross’d oblique,
Like Frenchman who has friends to seek,
And yet no English word can speak,
He walk’d upon the fret:
And while he sought the dingy job
His lab’ring breast appear’d to throb,
And half a hiccup half a sob
Betray’d internal woe.
To cry the cry he had by rote
He yearn’d, but law forbade the note,
Like Chanticleer with roupy throat,
He gaped — but not a crow!
I watch’d him,’ and the glimpse I snatch’d
Disclosed his sorry eyelids patch’d
With red, as if the soot had catch’d
That hung about the lid;
And soon I saw the tear-drop stray,
He did not care to brush away; —
Thought I, the cause he will betray —
And thus at last he did.
Well, here’s a pretty go! here’s a Gagging Act, if ever there was a gagging!
But I’m bound the members as silenced us, in doing it had plenty of magging.
They had better send us all off, they had, to the School for the Deaf and Dumb,
To unlarn us our mother tongues, and to make signs and be regularly mum.
But they can’t undo natur — as sure as ever the morning begins to peep,
Directly I open my eyes, I can’t help calling out Sweep
As natural as the sparrows among the chimbley-pots that say Cheep!
For my own part I find my suppress’d voice very uneasy, —
And comparable to nothing but having your tissue stopt when you are sneezy.
Well, it’s all up with us! tho’ I suppose we, mustn’t cry all up.
Here’s a precious merry Christmas, I’m blest if I can earn either bit or sup!
If crying Sweep, of mornings, is going beyond quietness’s border,
Them as pretends to be fond of silence oughtn’t to cry hear, hear, and order, order,
I wonder Mr. Sutton, as we’ve sut-on too, don’t sympathise with us
As a Speaker what don’t speak, and that’s exactly our own cus.
God help us if we don’t not cry, how are we to pursue our callings?
I’m sure we’re not half so bad as other businesses with their bawlings.
For instance, the general postmen, that at six o’clock go about ringing,
And wake up all the babbies that their mothers have just got to sleep with singing.
Greens oughtn’t to be cried no more than blacks — to do the unpartial job,
If they bring in a Sooty Bill, they ought to have brought in a Dusty Bob.
Is a dustman’s voice more sweet than ourn, when he comes a seeking arter the cinders,
Instead of a little boy, like a blackbird in spring, singing merrily under your windows?
There’s the omnibus cads as plies in Cheapside, and keeps calling out Bank and City;
Let his Worship, the Mayor, decide if our call of Sweep is not just as pretty.
I can’t see why the Jews should be let go about crying Old Close thro’ their hooky noses,
And Christian laws should be ten times more hard than the old stone laws of Moses.
Why isn’t the mouths of the muffin-men compell’d to be equally shut?
Why, because Parliament members eat muffins, but they never eat no sut.
Next year there won’t be any May-day at all, we shan’t have no heart to dance,
And Jack in the Green will go in black like mourning for our mischance,
If we live as long as May, that’s to say, through the hard winter and pinching weather,
For I don’t see how we’re to earn enough to keep body and soul together.
I only wish Mr. Wilberforce, or some of them that pities the niggers,
Would take a peep down in our cellars, and look at our miserable starving figures,
A-sitting idle on our empty sacks, and all ready to eat each other,
And a brood of little ones crying for bread to a heart-breaking Father and Mother.
They haven’t a rag of clothes to mend, if their mothers had thread and needles,
But crawl naked about the cellars, poor things, like a swarm of common black beadles.
If they’d only inquired before passing the Act, and taken a few such peeps,
I don’t think that any real gentleman would have set his face against sweeps.
Climbing’s an ancient respectable art, and if History’s of any vally,
Was recommended by Queen Elizabeth to the great Sir Walter Raleigh,
When he wrote on a pane of glass how I’d climb, if the way I only knew,
And she writ beneath, if your heart’s afeard, don’t venture up the flue.
As for me, I was always loyal and respected all powers that are higher,
But how can I now say’God save the King, if I an’t to be a Cryer?
There’s London milk, that’s one of the cries, even on Sunday the law allows,
But ought black sweeps, that are human beasts, to be worser off than black cows?
Do we go calling about, when it’s church time, like the noisy Billingsgate vermin,
And disturb the parson with ‘All alive O! ‘in the middle of a funeral sermon?
But the fish won’t keep, not the mackerel won’t, is the cry of the Parliament elves,
Every thing, except the sweeps I think, is to be allowed to keep themselves!
Lord help us! what’s to become of us if we mustn’t cry no more?
We shan’t do for black mutes to go a standing at a death’s door.
And we shan’t do to emigrate, no not even to the Hottentot nations,
For as time wears on, our black will wear off, and then think of our situations!
And we should not do, in lieu of black-a-moor footmen, to serve ladies of quality nimbly,
For when we were drest in our sky-blue and silver, and large frills, all clean
and neat, and white silk stockings, if they pleased to desire us to sweep
the hearth, we couldn’t resist the chimbley.
THE SUB-MARINE
It was a brave and jolly wight,
His cheek was baked and brown,
For he had been in many climes
With captains of renown,
And fought with those who fought so well
At Nile and Camperdown.
His coat it was a soldier coat,
Of red with yellow faced,
But (merman-like) he look’d marine
All downward from the waist; —
His trowsers were so wide and blue,
And quite in sailor taste!
He put the rummer to his lips,
And drank a jolly draught;
He raised the rummer many times —
And ever as he quaff’d,
The more he drank, the more the ship
Seem’d pitching fore and aft!
The ship seem’d pitching fore and aft,
As in a heavy squall; —
It gave a lurch and down he went,
Head-foremost in his fall!
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br /> Three times he did not rise, alas!
He never rose at all!
But down he went right down at once,
Like any stone he dived,
He could not see, or hear, or feel —
Of senses all deprived!
At last he gave a look around
To see where he arrived!
And all that he could see was green,
Sea-green on every hand!
And then he tried to sound beneath,
And all he felt was sand!
There he was fain to lie, for he
Could neither sit nor stand!
And lo! above his head there bent
A strange and staring lass!
One hand was in her yellow hair,
The other held a glass; —
A mermaid she must surely be
If ever mermaid was!
Her fish-like mouth was open’d wide,
Her eyes were blue and pale,
Her dress was of the ocean green,
When ruffled by a gale;
Thought he ‘beneath that petticoat
She hides a salmon-tail!’
She look’d as siren ought to look,
A sharp and bitter shrew, —
To sing deceiving lullabies
For mariners to rue, —
But when he saw her lips apart,
It chill’d him through and through!
With either hand he stopp’d his ears
Against her evil cry;
Alas, alas, for all his care,
His doom it seem’d to die,
Her voice went ringing through his head,
It was so sharp and high!
He thrust his fingers farther in
At each unwilling ear,
But still, in very spite of all,
The words were plain and clear;
‘I can’t stand here the whole day long
To hold your glass of beer!’
With open’d mouth and open’d eyes,
Up rose the Sub-marine,
And gave a stare to find the sands
And deeps where he had been:
There was no siren with her glass!
No waters ocean-green!
The wet deception from his eyes
Kept fading more and more,
He only saw the bar-maid stand
With pouting lip before —
The small green parlour of The Ship,
And little sanded floor!
DOG-GREL VERSES, BY A POOR BLIND
‘Hark! hark! the dogs do bark.
The beggars are coming.. ‘ — Old Ballad.
Oh what shall I do for a dog?
Of sight I have not got a particle,
Globe, Standard, or Sun,
Times, Chronicle — none
Can give me a good leading article.
A Mastiff once led me about,
But people appear’d so to fear him —
I might have got pence
Without his defence, —
But Charity would not come near him.
A Blood-hound was not much amiss,
But instinct at last got the upper;
And tracking Bill Soames,
And thieves to their homes,
I never could get home to supper.
A Fox-hound once served me as guide,
A good one at hill and at valley;
But day after day
He led me astray,
To follow a milk-woman’s tally.
A Turnspit once did me good turns
At going, and crossing, and stopping;
Till one day his breed
Went off at full speed,
To spit at a great fire in Wapping.
A Pointer once pointed my way,
But did not turn out quite so pleasant;
Each hour I’d a stop
At a Poulterer’s shop
To point at a very high pheasant.
A Pug did not suit me at all,
The feature unluckily rose up;
And folks took offence
When offering pence,
Because of his turning his nose up.
A Butcher once gave me a dog,
That turn’d out the worst one of any;
A Bull dog’s own pup,
I got a toss up,
Before he had brought me a penny.
My next was a Westminster Dog,
From Aistrop the regular cadger;
But, sightless, I saw
He never would draw
A blind man so well as a badger.
A greyhound I got by a swop,
But, Lord! we soon came to divorces;
He treated my strip
Of cord like a slip,
And left me to go my own courses.
A poodle once tow’d me along,
But always we came to one harbour;
To keep his curls smart,
And shave his hind part,
He constantly call’d on a barber.
My next was a Newfoundland brute,
As big as a calf fit for slaughter;
But my old cataract
So truly he back’d
I always fell into the water.
I once had a sheep-dog for guide,
His worth did not value a button;
I found it no go,
A Smithfield Ducrow,
To stand on four saddles of mutton.
My next was an Esquimaux dog,
A dog that my bones ache to talk on,
For picking his ways
On cold frosty days —
He pick’d out the slides for a walk on.
Bijou was a lady-like dog,
But vex’d me at night not a little,
When tea-time was come
She would not go home,
Her tail had once trail’d a tin kettle.
I once had a sort of a Shock,
And kiss’d a street post like a brother,
And lost every tooth
In learning this truth —
One blind cannot well lead another.
A terrier was far from a trump,
He had one defect, and a thorough,
I never could stir,
‘Od rabbit the cur!
Without going into the Borough.
My next was Dalmatian, the dog!
And led me in danger, oh crikey!
By chasing horse heels,
Between carriage wheels,
Till I come upon boards that were spiky.
The next that I had was from Cross,
And once was a favourite spaniel
With Nero, now dead,
And so I was led
Right up to his den, like a Daniel.
A mongrel I tried, and he did,
As far as the profit and lossing,
Except that the kind
Endangers the blind,
The breed is so fond of a crossing.
A setter was quite to my taste,
In alleys or streets broad or narrow,
Till one day I met
A very dead set,
At a very dead horse in a barrow.
I once had a dog that went mad,
And sorry I was that I got him;
It came to a run,
And a man with a gun
Pepper’d me when he ought to have shot him.
My profits have gone to the dogs,
My trade has been such a deceiver,
I fear that my aim
Is a mere losing game,
Unless I can find a Retriever.
THE KANGAROOS
A FABLE
A pair of married kangaroos
(The case is oft a human one too)
Were greatly puzzled once to choose
A trade to put their eldest son to:
A little brisk and busy chap,
As all the little K.’s just then are —
About some two months off the lap, —
They ‘re no
t so long in arms as men are.
A twist in each parental muzzle
Betray’d the hardship of the puzzle —
So much the flavour of life’s cup
Is framed by early wrong or right,
And Kangaroos we know are quite
Dependent on their ‘rearing up.’
The question, with its ins and outs,
Was intricate and full of doubts;
And yet they had no squeamish carings
For trades unfit or fit for gentry,
Such notion never had an entry,
For they had no armorial bearings.
Howbeit they’re not the last on earth
That might indulge in pride of birth;
Who’er has seen their infant young
Bob in and out their mother’s pokes,
Would own, with very ready tongue,
They are not horn like common folks.
Well, thus the serious subject stood,
It kept the old pair watchful nightly,
Debating for young hopeful’s good,
That he might earn his livelihood,
And go through life (like them) uprightly.
Arms would not do at all; no; marry,
In that line all his race miscarry;
And agriculture was not proper,
Unless they meant the lad to tarry
For ever as a mere clod-hopper.
He was not well cut out for preaching,
At least in any striking style: —
And as for being mercantile —
He was not form’d for over-reaching.
The law — while there still fate illstarr’d him: —
And plainly from the bar debarr’d him:
A doctor — who would ever fee him?
In music he could scarce engage,
And as for going on the stage,
In tragic socks I think I see him!
He would not make a rigging-mounter;
A haberdasher had some merit,
But there the counter still ran counter,
For just suppose —
A lady chose
To ask him for a yard of ferret!
A gardener digging up his beds,
The puzzled parents shook their heads.
