by Thomas Hood
You might go and skim the creme off Mr. Muck-Adam’s milky ways — that’s
what you might,
Or bete Carpets — or get into Parleamint, — or drive Crabrolays from
morning to night,
Or, if you must be of our sects, be Watchmen, and slepe upon a poste!
(Which is an od way of sleping, I must say, — and a very hard pillow at
most,)
Or you might be any trade, as we are not on that I’m awares,
Or be Watermen now, (not Water-wommen) and roe peple up and down
Hungerford stares,
Or if You Was even to Turn Dust Men a dry sifting Dirt!
But you oughtint to Hurt Them as never Did You no Hurt!
Yourn with Anymocity,
BRIDGET JONES.
ODE TO CAPTAIN PARRY
“By the North Pole, I do challenge thee!”
Love’s Labour’s Lost.
I.
Parry, my man! has thy brave leg
Yet struck its foot against the peg
On which the world is spun?
Or hast thou found No Thoroughfare
Writ by the hand of Nature there
Where man has never run!
II.
Hast thou yet traced the Great Unknown
Of channels in the Frozen Zone,
Or held at Icy Bay,
Hast thou still miss’d the proper track
For homeward Indian men that lack
A bracing by the way?
III.
Still hast thou wasted toil and trouble
On nothing but the North-Sea Bubble
Of geographic scholar?
Or found new ways for ships to shape,
Instead of winding round the Cape,
A short cut thro’ the collar?
IV.
Hast found the way that sighs were sent to
The Pole — tho’ God knows whom they went to!
That track reveal’d to Pope —
Or if the Arctic waters sally,
Or terminate in some blind alley,
A chilly path to grope?
V.
Alas! tho’ Ross, in love with snows,
Has painted them couleur de rose,
It is a dismal doom,
As Clauclio saith, to Winter thrice,
“In regions of thick-ribbed ice” —
All bright, — and yet all gloom!
VI.
’Tis well for Gheber souls that sit
Before the fire and worship it
With pecks of Wallsend coals,
With feet upon the fender’s front,
Roasting their corns — like Mr. Hunt —
To speculate on poles.
VII.
’Tis easy for our Naval Board —
’Tis easy for our Civic Lord
Of London and of ease,
That lies in ninety feet of down,
With fur on his nocturnal gown,
To talk of Frozen Seas!
VIII.
’Tis fine for Monsieur Ude to sit,
And prate about the mundane spit,
And babble of Cook’s track —
He’d roast the leather off his toes,
Ere he would trudge thro’ polar snows,
To plant a British Jack!
IX.
Oh, not the proud licentious great,
That travel on a carpet skate,
Can value toils like thine!
What ’tis to take a Hecla range,
Through ice unknown to Mrs. Grange,
And alpine lumps of brine?
X.
But we, that mount the Hill o’ Rhyme,
Can tell how hard it is to climb
The lofty slippery steep,
Ah! there are more Snow Hills than that
Which doth black Newgate, like a hat,
Upon its forehead, keep.
XI.
Perchance thou’rt now — while I am writing —
Feeling a bear’s wet grinder biting
About thy frozen spine!
Or thou thyself art eating whale,
Oily, and underdone, and stale,
That, haply, cross’d thy line!
XII.
But I’ll not dream such dreams of ill —
Rather will I believe thee still
Safe cellar’d in the snow, —
Reciting many a gallant story,
Of British kings and British glory,
To crony Esquimaux —
XIII.
Cheering that dismal game where Night
Makes one slow move from black to white
Thro’ all the tedious year, —
Or smitten by some fond frost fair,
That comb’d out crystals from her hair,
Wooing a seal-skin dear!
XIV.
So much a long communion tends,
As Byron says, to make us friends
With what we daily view —
God knows the daintiest taste may come
To love a nose that’s like a plum
In marble, cold and blue!
XV.
To dote on hair, an oily fleece!
As tho’ it hung from Helen o’ Greece —
They say that love prevails
Ev’n in the veriest polar land —
And surely she may steal thy hand
That used to steal thy nails!
XVI.
But ah, ere thou art fixed to marry,
And take a polar Mrs. Parry,
Think of a six months’ gloom —
Think of the wintry waste, and hers,
Each furnish’d with a dozen furs,
Think of thine icy dome!
XVII.
Think of the children born to blubber!
Ah me! hast thou an Indian rubber
Inside! — to hold a meal
For months, — about a stone and half
Of whale, and part of a sea calf —
A fillet of salt veal! —
XVIII.
Some walrus ham — no trifle but
A decent steak — a solid cut
Of seal — no wafer slice!
A reindeer’s tongue and drink beside!
Gallons of sperm — not rectified!
And pails of water-ice!
XIX.
Oh, canst thou fast and then feast thus?
Still come away, and teach to us
Those blessed alternations —
To-day to run our dinners fine,
To feed on air and then to dine
With Civic Corporations —
XX.
To save th’ Old Bailey daily shilling,
And then to take a half-year’s filling
In P.N.’s pious Row —
When ask’d to Hock and haunch o’ ven’son,
Thro’ something we have worn our pens on
For Longman and his Co.
XXI.
O come and tell us what the Pole is —
Whether it singular and sole is, —
Or straight, or crooked bent, —
If very thick or very thin, —
Made of what wood — and if akin
To those there be in Kent?
XXII.
There’s Combe, there’s Spurzheim, and there’s Gall,
Have talk’d of poles — yet, after all,
What has the public learn’d?
And Hunt’s account must still defer, —
He sought the poll at Westminster —
And is not yet return’d!
XXIII.
Alvanly asks if whist, dear soul,
Is play’d in snow-towns near the Pole,
And how the fur-man deals?
And Eldon doubts if it be true,
That icy Chancellors really do
Exist upon the seals!
XXIV.
Barrow, by well-fed office grates,
Talks of his own b
echristen’d Straits,
And longs that he were there;
And Croker, in his cabriolet,
Sighs o’er his brown horse, at his Bay,
And pants to cross the mer!
XXV.
O come away, and set us right,
And, haply, throw a northern light
On questions such as these: —
Whether, when this drown’d world was lost.
The surflux waves were lock’d in frost,
And turned to Icy Seas!
XXVI.
Is Ursa Major white or black?
Or do the Polar tribes attack
Their neighbors — and what for?
Whether they ever play at cuffs,
And then, if they take off their muffs
In pugilistic war?
XXVII.
Tells us, is Winter champion there,
As in our milder fighting air?
Say, what are Chilly loans?
What cures they have for rheums beside,
And if their hearts get ossified
From eating bread of bones?
XXVIII.
Whether they are such dwarfs — the quicker
To circulate the vital liquor, —
And then, from head to heel —
How short the Methodists must choose
Their dumpy envoys not to lose
Their toes in spite of zeal?
XXIX.
Whether ‘twill soften or sublime it
To preach of Hell in such a climate —
Whether may Wesley hope
To win their souls — or that old function
Of seals — with the extreme of unction —
Bespeaks them for the Pope?
XXX.
Whether the lamps will e’er be “learn’d”
Where six months’ “midnight oil” is burn’d
Or Letters must confer
With people that have never conn’d
An A, B, C, but live beyond
The Sound of Lancaster!
XXXI.
O come away at any rate —
Well hast thou earn’d a downier state —
With all thy hardy peers —
Good lack, thou must be glad to smell dock,
And rub thy feet with opodeldock,
After such frosty years.
XXXII.
Mayhap, some gentle dame at last,
Smit by the perils thou hast pass’d.
However coy before,
Shall bid thee now set up thy rest
In that Brest Harbor, woman’s breast,
And tempt the Fates no more!
ODE TO W. KITCHENER, M.D.
AUTHOR OF “THE COOK’S ORACLE,” “OBSERVATIONS ON VOCAL MUSIC,” “THE ART OF INVIGORATING AND PROLONGING LIFE,” “PRACTICAL OBSERVATIONS ON TELESCOPES, OPERA-GLASSES, AND SPECTACLES,” “THE HOUSEKEEPER’S LEDGER,” AND “THE PLEASURE OF MAKING A WILL.”
“I rule the roast, as Milton says! “ — Caleb Quotem.
Oh! multifarious man!
Thou Wondrous, Admirable Kitchen Crichton!
Born to enlighten
The laws of Optics, Peptics, Music, Cooking —
Master of the Piano — and the Pan —
As busy with the kitchen as the skies!
Now looking
At some rich stew thro’ Galileo’s eyes, —
Or boiling eggs — timed to a metronome —
As much at home
In spectacles as in mere isinglass —
In the art of frying brown — as a digression
On music and poetical expression,
Whereas, how few of all our cooks, alas!
Could tell Calliope from “Callipee!”
How few there be
Could leave the lowest for the highest stories, (Observatories,)
And turn, like thee, Diana’s calculator,
However cook’s synonymous with Kater!
Alas! still let me say,
How few could lay
The carving knife beside the tuning fork,
Like the proverbial Jack ready for any work!
II.
Oh, to behold thy features in thy book!
Thy proper head and shoulders in a plate,
How it would look!
With one rais’d eye watching the dial’s date,
And one upon the roast, gently cast down —
Thy chops — done nicely brown —
The garnish’d brow — with “a few leaves of bay” —
The hair— “done Wiggy’s way!”
And still one studious finger near thy brains,
As if thou wert just come
From editing some
New soup — or hashing Dibdin’s cold remains;
Or, Orpheus-like, — fresh from thy dying strains
Of music, — Epping luxuries of sound,
As Milton says, “in many a bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,”
Whilst all thy tame stuff’d leopards listen’d round!
III.
Oh, rather thy whole proper length reveal,
Standing like Fortune, — on the jack — thy wheel.
(Thou art, like Fortune, full of chops and changes,
Thou hast a fillet too before thine eye!)
Scanning our kitchen, and our vocal ranges,
As tho’ it were the same to sing or fry —
Nay, so it is — hear how Miss Paton’s throat
Makes “fritters” of a note!
And how Tom Cook (Fryer and Singer born
By name and nature) oh! how night and morn
He for the nicest public taste doth dish up
The good things from that Pan of music, Bishop!
And is not reading near akin to feeding,
Or why should Oxford Sausages be fit
Receptacles for wit?
Or why should Cambridge put its little, smart,
Minc’d brains into a Tart?
Nay, then, thou wert but wise to frame receipts,
Book-treats,
Equally to instruct the Cook and cram her —
Receipts to be devour’d, as well as read,
The Culinary Art in gingerbread —
The Kitchen’s Eaten Grammar!
IV.
Oh, very pleasant is thy motley page —
Aye, very pleasant in its chatty vein —
So — in a kitchen — would have talk’d Montaigne,
That merry Gascon — humorist, and sage!
Let slender minds with single themes engage,
Like Mr. Bowles with his eternal Pope, —
Or Haydon on perpetual Haydon, — or
Hume on “Twice three make four,”
Or Lovelass upon Wills, — Thou goest on
Plaiting ten topics, like Tate Wilkinson!
Thy brain is like a rich Kaleidoscope,
Stuff’d with a brilliant medley of odd bits,
And ever shifting on from change to change,
Saucepans — old Songs — Pills — Spectacles — and Spits!
Thy range is wider than a Rumford Range!
Thy grasp a miracle! — till I recall
Th’ indubitable cause of thy variety —
Thou art, of course, th’ Epitome of all
That spying — frying — singing — mix’d Society
Of Scientific Friends, who used to meet
Welch Rabbits — and thyself — in Warren Street!
V.
Oh, hast thou still those Conversazioni,
Where learned visitors discoursed — and fed?
There came Belzoni,
Fresh from the ashes of Egyptian dead —
And gentle Poki — and that Royal Pair,
Of whom thou didst declare —
“Thanks to the greatest Cooke we ever read —
They were — what Sandwiches should be — half bred”!
There fam’d M’Adam from his manual to
il
Relax’d — and freely own’d he took thy hints
On “making Broth with Flints” —
There Parry came, and show’d thee polar oil
For melted butter — Combe with his medullary
Notions about the Skullery,
And Mr. Poole, too partial to a broil —
There witty Rogers came, that punning elf!
Who used to swear thy book
Would really look
A Delphic “Oracle,” if laid on Delf —
There, once a month, came Campbell and discuss’d
His own — and thy own— “Magazine of Taste” —
There Wilberforce the Just
Came, in his old black suit, till once he trac’d
Thy sly advice to Poachers of Black Folks,
That “do not break their yolks” —
Which huff’d him home, in grave disgust and haste!
VI.
There came John Clare, the poet, nor forbore
Thy Patties — thou wert hand-and-glove with Moore,
Who call’d thee “Kitchen Addison” — for why?
Thou givest rules for Health and Peptic Pills,
Forms for made dishes, and receipts for Wills,
“Teaching us how to live and how to die!”
There came thy Cousin-Cook, good Mrs. Fry —
There Trench, the Thames Projector, first brought on
His sine Quay non, —
There Martin would drop in on Monday eves,
Or Fridays, from the pens, and raise his breath
‘Gainst cattle days and death, —
Answer’d by Mellish, feeder of fat beeves,
Who swore that Frenchmen never could be eager
For fighting on soup meagre —
“And yet, (as thou would’st add,) the French have seen
A Marshall Tureen”!
VII.
