by Thomas Hood
Thy name shall perish never,
But be magnified for ever —
— By all whose eyes are bigger than their belly.
Yea, till the world is done —
— To a turn — and Time puts out the sun,
Shall live the endless echo of thy name.
But, as for thy more fleshy frame,
Ah! Death’s carnivorous teeth will tittle
Thee out of breath, and eat it for cold victual;
But still thy fame shall be among the nation
Preserved to the last course of generations.
Ah me, my soul is touch’d with sorrow!
To think how flesh must pass away-
So mutton, that is warm to-day,
Is cold, and turn’d to hashes, on the morrow!
Farewell! I would say more, but I
Have other fish to fry.
TO A CRITIC
O cruel One how littel dost thou knowe
How manye Poetes with Unhappyenesse
Thou may’st have slaine ; ere they began to blowe
Like to yonge Buddes in theyre firste Sappyenesse!
Even as Pinkes from littel Pipinges growe,
Great Poetes yet maye come of Singinges small;
Which if an hungrede Worme doth gnawe belowe
Fold up theyre stryped leaves and dye withal.
Alake, that pleasant Flowre must fayde and fall
Because a Grubbe hath eat into its Head,
That els had growne so fayre and eke soe tal
Towards the Heaven and opende forthe and spreade
Its blossoms to the Sunne for Men to read
In soe bright hues of Lovelinesse indeede!
TO CELIA.
OLD fictions say that Love hath eyes
Yet sees, unhappy boy! with none;
Blind as the night! but fiction lies,
For Love doth always see with one.
To one our graces all unveil,
To one our flaws are all exposed;
But when with tenderness we hail,
He smiles, and keeps the critic closed.
But when he’s scorned, abused, estranged.
He opes the eye of evil ken,
And all his angel friends are changed
To demons — and are hated then!
Yet once it happ’d that, semi-blind,
He met thee on a summer day,
And took thee for his mother kind,
And frown’d as he was push’d away.
But still he saw thee shine the same,
Though he had oped his evil eye,
And found that nothing but her shame
Was left to know his mother by!
And ever since that morning sun
He thinks of thee, and blesses Fate
That he can look with both on one
Who hath no ugliness to hate.
FARE THEE WELL
Before our banns be published like a tax,
Ask’d on the portals of St. Mary Axe,
If thou wilt marry me — then prythee tell —
Oh now — or fare thee well !
Think of old maids of seventy — fourscore,
Fourscore old women at the temple’s door,
Those that can read, and those that learn to spell —
Oh now — or fare thee well !
Suppose our names a history — suppose
Our love forepicked to pieces, like a rose
Shed blushing all abroad — my Isabel!
Oh now — or fare thee well!
MIDNIGHT.
Unfathomable Night! how dost thou sweep
Over the flooded earth, and darkly hide
The mighty city under thy full tide;
Making a silent palace for old Sleep,
Like his own temple under the hush’d deep,
Where all the busy day he doth abide,
And forth at the late dark, outspreadeth wide
His dusky wings, whence the cold waters sweep!
How peacefully the living millions lie!
Lull’d unto death beneath his poppy spells;
There is no breath — no living stir — no cry
No tread of foot — no song — no music-call —
Only the sound of melancholy bells —
The voice of Time — survivor of them all!
TO A SLEEPING CHILD.
I.
Oh, ’tis a touching thing, to make one weep, —
A tender infant with its curtain’d eye,
Breathing as it would neither live nor die
With that unchanging countenance of sleep!
As if its silent dream, serene and deep,
Had lined its slumber with a still blue sky
So that the passive cheeks unconscious lie
With no more life than roses — just to keep
The blushes warm, and the mild, odorous breath.
O blossom boy! so calm is thy repose.
So sweet a compromise of life and death,
’Tis pity those fair buds should e’er unclose
For memory to stain their inward leaf,
Tinging thy dreams with unacquainted grief.
II.
Thine eyelids slept so beauteously, I deem’d
No eyes could wake so beautiful as they:
Thy rosy cheeks in such still slumbers lay,
I loved their peacefulness, nor ever dream’d
Of dimples: — for those parted lips so seem’d,
I never thought a smile could sweetlier play,
Nor that so graceful life could chase away
Thy graceful death, — till those blue eyes upbeam’d.
Now slumber lies in dimpled eddies drown’d
And roses bloom more rosily for joy,
And odorous silence ripens into sound,
And fingers move to sound. — All-beauteous boy!
How thou dost waken into smiles, and prove,
If not more lovely thou art more like Love!
SONNET WRITTEN IN KEATS’S ‘ENDYMION’
I saw pale Dian, sitting by the brink
Of silver falls, the overflow of fountains
From cloudy steeps; and I grew sad to think
Endymion’s foot was silent on those mountains,
And he but a hush’d name, that Silence keeps
In dear remembrance, — lonely, and forlorn,
Singing it to herself until she weeps
Tears that perchance still glisten in the morn ; —
And as I mused, in dull imaginings,
There came a flash of garments, and I knew
The awful Muse by her harmonious wings
Charming the air to music as she flew —
Anon there rose an echo through the vale
Gave back Endymion in a dream-like tale.
EPIGRAM WRITTEN ON A PICTURE IN THE EXHIBITION, CALLED ‘THE DOUBTFUL SNEEZE’
The doubtful sneeze ! a failure quite —
A winker half, and half a gaper —
Alas ! to paint on canvas here
What should have been on tissue-paper !
SONG. O LADY, LEAVE THY SILKEN THREAD.
O Lady, leave thy silken thread
And flowery tapestrie:
There’s living roses on the bush,
And blossoms on the tree;
Stoop where thou wilt, thy careless hand
Some random bud will meet;
Thou canst not tread, but thou wilt find
The daisy at thy feet.
’Tis like the birthday of the world,
When earth was born in bloom;
The light is made of many dyes,
The air is all perfume;
There’s crimson buds, and white and blue —
The very rainbow showers
Have turn’d to blossoms where they fell,
And sown the earth with flowers.
There’s fairy tulips in the east,
The garden of the sun;
Th
e very streams reflect the hues,
And blossom as they run:
While Morn opes like a crimson rose,
Still wet with pearly showers;
Then, lady, leave the silken thread
Thou twinest into flowers!
THE TWO SWANS.
A FAIRY TALE.
I.
Immortal Imogen, crown’d queen above
The lilies of thy sex, vouchsafe to hear
A fairy dream in honor of true love —
True above ills, and frailty, and all fear, —
Perchance a shadow of his own career
Whose youth was darkly prison’d and long-twined
By serpent-sorrow, till white Love drew near,
And sweetly sang him free, and round his mind
A bright horizon threw, wherein no grief may wind.
II.
I saw a tower builded on a lake,
Mock’d by its inverse shadow, dark and deep —
That seem’d a still intenser night to make,
Wherein the quiet waters sank to sleep, —
And, whatso’er was prison’d in that keep,
A monstrous Snake was warden: — round and round
In sable ringlets I beheld him creep
Blackest amid black shadows to the ground,
Whilst his enormous head, the topmost turret crown’d.
III.
From whence he shot fierce light against the stars,
Making the pale moon paler with affright;
And with his ruby eye out-threaten’d Mars —
That blaz’d in the mid-heavens, hot and bright —
Nor slept, nor wink’d, but with a steadfast spite
Watch’d their wan looks and tremblings in the skies;
And that he might not slumber in the night,
The curtain-lids were pluck’d from his large eyes,
So he might never drowse, but watch his secret prize.
IV.
Prince or princess in dismal durance pent,
Victims of old Enchantment’s love or hate,
Their lives must all in painful sighs be spent,
Watching the lonely waters soon and late,
And clouds that pass and leave them to their fate,
Or company their grief with heavy tears: —
Meanwhile that Hope can spy no golden gate
For sweet escapement, but in darksome fears
They weep and pine away as if immortal years.
V.
No gentle bird with gold upon its wing
Will perch upon the grate — the gentle bird
Is safe in leafy dell, and will not bring
Freedom’s sweet key-note and commission-word
Learn’d of a fairy’s lips, for pity stirr’d —
Lest while he trembling sings, untimely guest!
Watch’d by that cruel Snake and darkly heard,
He leave a widow on her lonely nest,
To press in silent grief the darlings of her breast.
VI.
No gallant knight, adventurous, in his bark,
Will seek the fruitful perils of the place,
To rouse with dipping oar the waters dark
That bear that serpent image on their face.
And Love, brave Love! though he attempt the base,
Nerved to his loyal death, he may not win
His captive lady from the strict embrace
Of that foul Serpent, clasping her within
His sable folds — like Eve enthrall’d by the old Sin.
VII.
But there is none — no knight in panoply,
Nor Love, intrench’d in his strong steely coat:
No little speck — no sail — no helper nigh,
No sign — no whispering — no plash of boat: —
The distant shores show dimly and remote,
Made of a deeper mist, — serene and gray, —
And slow and mute the cloudy shadows float
Over the gloomy wave, and pass away,
Chased by the silver beams that on their marges play.
VIII.
And bright and silvery the willows sleep
Over the shady verge — no mad winds tease
Their hoary heads; but quietly they weep
Their sprinkling leaves — half fountains and half trees:
Their lilies be — and fairer than all these,
A solitary Swan her breast of snow
Launches against the wave that seems to freeze
Into a chaste reflection, still below
Twin shadow of herself wherever she may go.
IX.
And forth she paddles in the very noon
Of solemn midnight like an elfin thing,
Charm’d into being by the argent moon —
Whose silver light for love of her fair wing
Goes with her in the shade, still worshipping
Her dainty plumage: — all around her grew
A radiant circlet, like a fairy ring;
And all behind, a tiny little clue
Of light, to guide her back across the waters blue.
X.
And sure she is no meaner than a fay,
Redeem’d from sleepy death, for beauty’s sake,
By old ordainment: — silent as she lay,
Touched by a moonlight wand I saw her wake,
And cut her leafy slough, and so forsake
The verdant prison of her lily peers,
That slept amidst the stars upon the lake —
A breathing shape — restored to human fears,
And new-born love and grief — self-conscious of her tears.
XI.
And now she clasps her wings around her heart,
And near that lonely isle begins to glide,
Pale as her fears, and oft-times with a start
Turns her impatient head from side to side
In universal terrors — all too wide
To watch; and often to that marble keep
Upturns her pearly eyes, as if she spied
Some foe, and crouches in the shadows steep
That in the gloomy wave go diving fathoms deep.
XII.
And well she may, to spy that fearful thing
All down the dusky walls in circlets wound;
Alas! for what rare prize, with many a ring
Girding the marble casket round and round?
His folded tail, lost in the gloom profound,
Terribly darkeneth the rocky base;
But on the top his monstrous head is crown’d
With prickly spears, and on his doubtful face
Gleam his unwearied eyes, red watchers of the place.
XIII.
Alas! of the hot fires that nightly fall,
No one will scorch him in those orbs of spite,
So he may never see beneath the wall
That timid little creature, all too bright,
That stretches her fair neck, slender and white,
Invoking the pale moon, and vainly tries
Her throbbing throat, as if to charm the night
With song — but, hush — it perishes in sighs,
And there will be no dirge sad-swelling, though she dies!
XIV.
She droops — she sinks — she leans upon the lake,
Fainting again into a lifeless flower;
But soon the chilly springs anoint and wake
Her spirit from its death, and with new power
She sheds her stifled sorrows in a shower
Of tender song, timed to her falling tears —
That wins the shady summit of that tower,
And, trembling all the sweeter for its fears,
Fills with imploring moan that cruel monster’s ears.
XV.
And, lo! the scaly beast is all deprest,
Subdued like Argus by the might of sound —
What time Apollo his sweet lute addrest
To magic converse with the air, and bound
The many monster eyes, all slumber-drown’d: —
So on the turret-top that watchful Snake
Pillows his giant head, and lists profound,
As if his wrathful spite would never wake,
Charm’d into sudden sleep for Love and Beauty’s sake!
XVI.
His prickly crest lies prone upon his crown,
And thirsty lip from lip disparted flies,
To drink that dainty flood of music down —
His scaly throat is big with pent-up sighs —
And whilst his hollow ear entranced lies,
His looks for envy of the charmed sense
Are fain to listen, till his steadfast eyes,
Stung into pain by their own impotence,
Distil enormous tears into the lake immense.
XVII.
Oh, tuneful Swan! oh, melancholy bird!
Sweet was that midnight miracle of song,
Rich with ripe sorrow, needful of no word
To tell of pain, and love, and love’s deep wrong —
Hinting a piteous tale — perchance how long
Thy unknown tears were mingled with the lake,
What time disguised thy leafy mates among —
And no eye knew what human love and ache
Dwelt in those dewy leaves, and heart so nigh to break.
XVIII.
Therefore no poet will ungently touch
The water-lily, on whose eyelids dew
Trembles like tears; but ever hold it such
As human pain may wander through and through,
Turning the pale leaf paler in its hue —
Wherein life dwells, transfigured, not entomb’d,
By magic spells. Alas! who ever knew
