by Thomas Hood
Our dreams of bliss all coincide,
We’re all for solitudes and cots,
And love, if we may choose our lots —
As partner in the rural plan
Each paints the same dear sort of man;
One heart alone there seems to be
In our united family.
One heart, one hope, one wish, one mind,
One voice, one choice, all of a kind,
And can there be a greater bliss —
A little heav’n on earth — than this?
The truth to whisper in your ear,
It must be told! — we are not near
The happiness that ought to be
In our united family!
Alas! ’tis our congenial taste
That lays our little pleasures waste —
We all delight, no doubt, to sing,
We all delight to touch the string,
But where’s the heart that nine may touch?
‘And nine ‘May Moons’ are eight too much —
Just fancy nine, all in one key,
Of our united family! —
The play — Oh how we love a play,
But half the bliss is shorn away;
On winter nights we venture nigh,
But think of houses in July!
Nine crowded in a private box,
Is apt to pick the stifïest locks —
Our curls would all fall out, though we
Are one united family!
In art the self-same line we walk,
We all are fond of heads in chalk,
We one and all our talent strain
Adelphi prizes to obtain;
Nine turban’d Turks are duly sent,
But can the royal Duke present
Nine silver palettes — no, not he —
To our united family.
Our eating shows the very thing,
We all prefer the liver-wing,
Asparagus when scarce and thin,
And peas directly they come in,
The marrow-bone — if there be one —
The ears of hare when crisply done,
The rabbit’s brain — we all agree
In our united family.
In dress the same result is seen,
We all so doat on apple-green;
But nine in green would seem a school
Of charity to quizzing fool —
We cannot all indulge our will
With that sweet silk on Ludgate Hill,
No remnant can sufficient be
For our united family.
In reading hard is still our fate,
One cannot read o’erlooked by eight,
And nine ‘Disowned’ — nine ‘Pioneers,’
Nine ‘Chaperons,’ nine ‘Buccaneers,’
Nine ‘Maxwells,’ nine ‘Tremaines,’ and such,
Would dip into our means too much —
Three months are spent o’er volumes three,
In our united family. —
Unhappy Muses! if the Nine
Above in doom with us combine,
In vain we breathe the tender flame,
Our sentiments are all the same,
And nine complaints address’d to Hope
Exceed the editorial scope,
One in, and eight put out, must be
Of our united family!
But this is nought — of deadlier kind,
A ninefold woe remains behind.
O why were we so art and part?
So like in taste, so one in heart?
Nine cottages may be to let,
But here’s the thought to make us fret,
We cannot each add Frederick B.
To our united family.
SONNET TO OCEAN
Shall I rebuke thee, Ocean, my old love,
That once, in rage, with the wild winds at strife,
Thou darest menace my unit of a life,
Sending my clay below, my soul above,
Whilst roar’d thy waves, like lions when they rove
By night, and bound upon their prey by stealth?
Yet didst thou ne’er restore my fainting health? —
Didst thou ne’er murmur gently like the dove?
Nay, dost thou not against my own dear shore
Full break, last link between my land and me? —
My absent friends talk in thy very roar,
In thy waves’ beat their kindly pulse I see,
And, if I must not see my England more,
Next to her soil, my grave be found in thee!
Coblenz, May ‘35.
SONNET. — THINK SWEETEST
Think, sweetest, if my lids are not now wet,
The tenderest tears lie ready at the brim,
To see thine own dear eyes — so pale and dim,
Touching my soul with full and fond regret,
For on thy ease my heart’s whole care is set;
Seeing I love thee in no passionate whim,
Whose summer dates but with the rose’s trim,
Which one hot June can perish and beget,
Ah, no! I chose thee for affection’s pet,
For unworn love, and constant cherishing —
To smile but to thy smile — or else to fret
When thou art fretted — rather than to sing
Elsewhere. Alas! I ought to soothe and kiss
Thy dear pale cheek while I assure thee this!
Coblenz, ‘35.
LINES ON SEEING MY WIFE AND TWO CHILDREN SLEEPING IN THE SAME CHAMBER
And has the earth lost its so spacious round,
The sky its blue circumference above,
That in this little chamber there is found
Both earth and heaven — my universe of love
All that my God can give me, or remove,
Here sleeping, save myself, in mimic death.
Sweet that in this small compass I behove
To live their living and to breathe their breath I
Almost I wish that, with one common sigh,
We might resign all mundane care and strife,
And seek together that transcendent sky,
Where Father, Mother, Children, Husband, Wife,
Together pant in everlasting life!
Coblenz, Nov. 1835.
POETRY, PROSE, AND WORSE
‘Esaad Kiuprili solicited in verse permission to resign the government of Candia. The Grand Vizier, Hafiz Pasha, addressed a Ghazel to the Sultan to urge the necessity of greater activity in military preparations; and Murad, himself a poet, answered likewise in rhyme. Ghazi Gherai clothed in Gkasels his official complaint to the Sultan’s preceptor. The Grand Vizier, Mustafa Pasha Bahir, made his reports to the Sultan in verse, Vide Von Hammer on Othoman Literature in the Athenoeum for Nov. 14, 1835.
O Turkey! how mild are thy manners,
Whose greatest and highest of men
Are all proud to be rhymers and scanners,
And wield the poetical pen!
The Sultan rejects — he refuses —
Gives orders to bowstring his man;
But he still will coquet with the Muses,
And make it a song if he can.
The victim cut shorter for treason,
Though conscious himself of no crime,
Must submit and believe there is reason,
Whose sentence is turned into rhyme!
He bows to the metrical firman
As dulcet as song of the South,
And his head, like self-satisfied German,
Rolls off with its pipe in its mouth.
A tax would the Lord of the Crescent?
He levies it still in a lay,
And is p’rhaps the sole Bard at this present
Whose poems are certain to pay.
State edicts unpleasant to swallow
He soothes with the charm of the Muse,
And begs rays of his brother Apollo
To gild bitter pills for the Jews.
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When Jealousy sets him in motion
The fair one on whom he looks black,
He sews up with a sonnet to Ocean,
And sends her to drown in her sack.
His gifts, they are poesies latent
With sequins roll’d up in a purse,
And in making Bashaws, by the patent
Their tails are all ‘done into verse.’
He sprinkles with lilies and roses
The path of each politic plan,
And with eyes of Gazelles discomposes
The beards of the solemn Divan.
The Czar he defies in a sonnet,
And then a fit nag to endorse
With his Pegasus, jingling upon it,
Reviews all his Mussulman horse.
He sends a short verse, ere he slumbers,
Express unto Meer Ali Beg,
Who returns in poetical numbers
The thousands that die of the plague.
He writes to the Bey of a city
In tropes of heroical sound,
And is told in a pastoral ditty
The place is burnt down to the ground.
He sends a stern summons, but flow’ry,
To Melex Pasha, for some wrong,
Who describes the dark eyes of his Houri,
And throws off his yoke with a song.
His Vizier presents him a trophy,
Still, Mars to Calliope weds —
With an amorous hymn to St. Sophy
A hundred of pickled Greek heads.
Each skull with a turban upon it
By Royal example is led:
Even Mesrour the Mute has a Sonnet
To Silence composed in his head.
Ev’n Hassan while plying his hammer
To punish short weight to the poor,
With a stanza attempts to enamour
The ear that he nails to a door.
O! would that we copied from Turkey
In this little Isle of our own,
Where the times are so muddy and murky,
We want a poetical tone!
Suppose that the Throne in addresses —
For verse there is plenty of scope —
In alluding to native distresses,
Just quoted the ‘Pleasures of Hope.’
Methinks ’twould enliven and chirp us,
So dreary and dull is the time,
Just to keep a State Poet on purpose
To put the King’s speeches in rhyme.
When bringing new measures before us,
As bills for the sabbath or poor,
Let both Houses just chaunt them in chorus,
And p’rhaps they would get an encore. —
No stanzas invite to pay taxes
In notes like the notes of the south,
But we’re dunn’d by a fellow what axes
With prose and a pen in his mouth.
Suppose — as no payers are eager — Hard
times and a struggle to live —
That he sung at our doors like a beggar
For what one thought proper to give?
Our Law is of all things the dryest
That earth in its compass can show!
Of poetical efforts its highest
The rhyming its Doe with its Roe.
No documents tender and silky
Are writ such as poets would pen,
When a beadle is sent after Wilkie,
Or bailiffs to very shy men.
The warrants that put in distresses
When rates have been owing too long,
Should appear in poetical dresses,
Ere goods be sold off for a song.
Suppose that — Law making its choices
Of Bishop, Hawes, Rodwell, or Cooke,
They were all set as glees for four voices,
To sing all offenders to book?
Our criminal code’s as untender,
All prose in its legal despatch,
And no constables seize an offender
While pleasantly singing a catch.
They haul him along like a heifer,
And tell him ‘My covey, you’ll swing!’ —
Not a hint that the wanton young zephyr
Will fan his shoe-soles with her wing.
The trial has nothing that’s rosy
To soften the prisoner’s pap,
And Judge Park appears dreadfully prosy —
Whilst dooming to death in his cap.
Would culprits go into hysterics,
Their spirits more likely elope,
If the jury consulted in lyrics,
The judge made a line of the rope?
When men must behung for a warning,
How sweet if the law would incline
In the place of the ‘Eight in the morning.’
To let them indulge in the Nine!
How pleasant if ask’d upon juries
By Muses, thus mild as the doves,
In the place of the Fates and the Furies
That call us from home and our loves!
Our warfare is deadly and horrid,
Its bald bulletins are in prose,
And with gore made revoltingly florid,
Nor tinted with couleur de rose.
How pleasant in army despatches
In reading of red battle-plains,
To alight on some pastoral snatches,
To sweeten the blood and the brains!
How sweet to be drawn for the Locals
By songs setting valour a-gog!
Or be press’d to turn tar by sea-vocals
Inviting — with ‘Nothing like Grog!’
To tenants but shortish at present,
When Michaelmas comes with its day,
O! a landlord’s effusion were pleasant
That talk’d of the flowers in May!
How sweet if the bill that rehearses
The debt we’ve incurr’d in the year,
But enrich’d, as a copy of verses,
The Gem, or a new Souvenir!
O! would that we copied from Turkey
In this little Isle of our own! —
For the times are so moody and murky,
We want a poetical tone!
SONG FOR THE NINETEENTH
The morning sky is hung with mist,
The rolling drum the street alarms,
The host is paid, his daughter kiss’d,
So now to arms, so now to arms.
Our evening bowl was strong and stiff,
And may we get such quarters oft,
I ne’er was better lodged, for if
The straw was hard, the maid was soft.
So now to arms, to arms, to arms,
And fare you well, my little dear,
And if they ask who won your charms,
Why say ’twas in your Nineteenth Year.
A TOAST
Come! a health! and it’s not to be slighted with sips,
A cold pulse, or a spirit supine —
All the blood in my heart seems to rush to my lips,
To commingle its flow with the wine.
Bring a cup of the purest and solidest ware,
But a little antique in its shape;
And the juice, let it be the most racy and rare,
All the bloom, with the age, of the grape!
Even such is the love I would celebrate now,
At once young, and mature, and in prime,
Like the tree of the orange, that shows on its bough
The bud, blossom and fruit at one time!
Then with three, as is due, let the honours be paid,
Whilst I give with my hand, heart, and head,
‘Here’s to her, the fond mother, dear partner, kind maid,
Who first taught me to love, woo, and wed.’
DRINKING SONG
BY A MEMBER OF A TEMPERANCE SOCIETY, AS SUNG BY MR. SPRING AT WATERMAN’S HALL
Come, pass round the pail, boys, and give it no quart
er,
Drink deep, and drink oft, and replenish your jugs,
Fill up, and I’ll give you a toast to your water —
The Turncock for ever! that opens the plugs!
Then hey for a bucket, a bucket, a bucket,
Then hey for a bucket, filled up to the brim!
Or, best of all notions, let’s have it by oceans,
With plenty of room for a sink or a swim!
Let topers of grape-juice exultingly vapour,
But let us just whisper a word to the elves,
We water roads, horses, silks, ribands, bank-paper,
Plants, poets, and muses, and why not ourselves?
Then hey for a bucket, &c.
The vintage they cry, think of Spain’s and of France’s,
The jigs, the boleros, fandangos, and jumps;
But water’s the spring of all civilised dances,
We go to a ball not in bottles, but pumps!
Then hey for a bucket, &c.
Let others of Dorchester quaff at their pleasure,
Or honour old Meux with their thirsty regard —
We’ll drink Adam’s ale, and we get it pool measure,
Or quaff heavy wet from the butt in the yard! —
Then hey for a bucket, &c.
Some flatter gin, brandy, and rum, on their merits,
Grog, punch, and what not, that enliven a feast:
’Tis true that they stir up the animal spirits,
But may not the animal turn out a beast?
Then hey for a bucket, &c.
The Man of the Ark, who continued our species,
He saved us by water, but as for the wine,
We all know the figure, more sad than facetious,
He made after tasting the juice of the vine.
Then hey for a bucket, &c.
