Thomas Hood- Collected Poetical Works
Page 79
Rush bellowing, and breathing fire and smoke,
At crippled Papistry to butt and poke,
Exactly as a skittish Scottish bull
Hunts an old woman in a scarlet cloak!
Why leave a serious, moral, pious home,
Scotland, renown’d for sanctity of old,
Far distant Catholics to rate and scold
For — doing as the Romans do at Rome?
With such a bristling spirit wherefore quit
The Land of Cakes for any land of wafers,
About the graceless images to flit,
And buzz and chafe importunate as chafers,
Longing to carve the carvers to Scotch collops? —
People who hold such absolute opinions
Should stay at home, in Protestant dominions,
Not travel like male Mrs. Trollopes.
Gifted with noble tendency to climb,
Yet weak at the same time,...
Faith is a kind of parasitic plant,
That grasps the nearest stem with tendril-rings;
And as the climate and the soil may grant,
So is the sort of tree to which it clings.
Consider then, before, like Hurlothrumbo,
You aim your club at any creed on earth,
That, by the simple accident of birth,
You might have been High Priest to Mumbo Jumbo.
For me — thro’ heathen ignorance perchance,
Not having knelt in Palestine, I feel
None of that griffinish excess of zeal,
Some travellers would blaze with here in France.
Dolls I can see in Virgin-like array,
Nor for a scuffle with the idols hanker —
Like crazy Quixote at the puppet’s play,
If their ‘offence be rank,’ should mine be rancour?
Mild light, and by degrees, should be the plan
To cure the dark and erring mind;
But who would rush at a benighted man,
And give him two black eyes for being blind?
Suppose the tender but luxuriant hop
Around a canker’d stem should twine,
What Kentish boor would tear away the prop
So roughly as to wound, nay, kill the bine?
The images, ’tis true, are strangely dress’d,
With gauds and toys extremely out of season;
The carving nothing of the very best,
The whole repugnant to the eye of reason,
Shocking to Taste, and to Fine Arts a treason —
Yet ne’er o’erlook in bigotry of sect
One truly Catholic, one common form,
At which uncheck’d
All Christian hearts may kindle or keep warm.
Say, was it to my spirit’s gain or loss,
One bright and balmy morning, as I went
From Liege’s lovely environs to Ghent,
If hard by the wayside I found a cross,
That made me breathe a pray’r upon the spot —
While Nature of herself, as if to trace
The emblem’s use, had trail’d around its base
The blue significant Forget-Me-Not?
Methought, the claims of Charity to urge
More forcibly, along with Faith and Hope,
The pious choice had pitch’d upon the verge
Of a delicious slope,
Giving the eye much variegated scope; —
‘Look round,’ it whispered, ‘on that prospect rare,
Those vales so verdant, and those hills so blue;
Enjoy the sunny world, so fresh, and fair,
But’ — (how the simple legend pierc’d me thro’!)
‘Priez pour les Malheureux.’
With sweet kind natures, as in honey’d cells,
Religion lives, and feels herself at home;
But only on a formal visit dwells
Where wasps instead of bees have form’d the comb.
Shun pride, O Rae! — whatever sort beside
You take in lieu, shun spiritual pride!
A pride there is of rank — a pride of birth,
A pride of learning, and a pride of purse,
A London pride — in short, there be on earth
A host of prides, some better and some worse;
But of all prides, since Lucifer’s attaint,
The proudest swells a self-elected Saint.
To picture that cold pride so harsh and hard,
Fancy a peacock in a poultry yard.
Behold him in conceited circles sail,
Strutting and dancing, and now planted stiff,
In all his pomp of pageantry, as if
He felt ‘the eyes of Europe’ on his tail!
As for the humble breed retain’d by man,
He scorns the whole domestic clan —
He bows, he bridles,
He wheels, he sidles,
At last, with stately dodgings, in a corner
He pens a simple russet hen, to scorn her
Full in the blaze of his resplendent fan!
‘Look here,’ he cries (to give him words),
‘Thou feather’d clay — thou scum of birds!’
Flirting the rustling plumage in her eyes,
‘Look here, thou vile predestin’d sinner,
Doom’d to be roasted for a dinner,
Behold these lovely variegated dyes!
These are the rainbow colours of the skies,
That heav’n has shed upon me con amore —
A Bird of Paradise? — a pretty story!
I am that Saintly Fowl, thou paltry chick!
Look at my crown of glory!
Thou dingy, dirty, drabbled, draggled jill!’
And off goes Partlet, wriggling from a kick,
With bleeding scalp laid open by his bill!
That little simile exactly paints
How sinners are despis’d by saints.
By saints! — the Hypocrites that ope heav’n’s door
Obsequious to the sinful man of riches —
But put the wicked, naked, barelegg’d poor
In parish stocks instead of breeches.
The Saints! — the Bigots that in public spout,
Spread phosphorus of zeal on scraps of fustian,
And go like walking ‘Lucifers’ about
Mere living bundles of combustion.
The Saints! — the aping Fanatics that talk
All cant and rant, and rhapsodies high-flown —
That bid you baulk
A Sunday walk,
And shun God’s work as you should shun your own.
The Saints! — the Formalists, the extra pious,
Who think the mortal husk can save the soul,
By trundling with a mere mechanic bias,
To church, just like a lignum-vitæ bowl!
The Saints! — the Pharisees, whose beadle stands
Beside a stern coercive kirk.
A piece of human mason-work,
Calling all sermons contrabands,
In that great Temple that’s not made with hands!
Thrice blessed, rather, is the man, with whom
The gracious prodigality of nature,
The balm, the bliss, the beauty, and the bloom,
The bounteous providence in ev’ry feature,
Recall the good Creator to his creature,
Making all earth a fane, all heav’n its dome!
To his tun’d spirit the wild heather-bells
Ring Sabbath knells;
The jubilate of the soaring lark
Is chaunt of clerk;
For choir, the thrush and the gregarious linnet;
The sod’s a cushion for his pious want;
And, consecrated by the heav’n within it,
The sky-blue pool, a font.
Each cloud-capp’d mountain is a holy altar;
An organ breathes in every grove;
And the full heart’s a Psalter,
Sufficiently by stern necessitarians
Poor Nature, with her face begrim’d by dust,
Is stok’d, cok’d, smok’d, and almost chok’d; but must
Religion have its own Utilitarians,
Labell’d with evangelical phylacteries,
To make the road to heav’n a railway trust,
And churches — that’s the naked fact — mere factories?
Oh! simply open wide the Temple door,
And let the solemn, swelling, organ greet,
With Voluntaries meet,
The willing advent of the rich and poor!
And while to God the loud Hosannas soar,
With rich vibrations from the vocal throng —
From quiet shades that to the woods belong,
And brooks with music of their own,
Voices may come to swell the choral song
With notes of praise they learn’d in musings lone.
How strange it is while on all vital questions,
That occupy the House and public mind,
We always meet with some humane suggestions
Of gentle measures of a healing kind,
Instead of harsh severity and vigour,
The Saint alone his preference retains
For bills of penalties and pains,
And marks his narrow code with legal rigour!
Why shun, as worthless of affiliation,
What men of all political persuasion
Extol — and even use upon occasion —
That Christian principle, conciliation?
But possibly the men who make such fuss
With Sunday pippins and old Trots infirm,
Attach some other meaning to the term,
As thus:
One market morning, in my usual rambles,
Passing along Whitechapel’s ancient shambles,
Where meat was hung in many a joint and quarter,
I had to halt awhile, like other folks,
To let a killing butcher coax
A score of lambs and fatted sheep to slaughter.
A sturdy man he look’d to fell an ox,
Bull-fronted, ruddy, with a formal streak
Of well-greas’d hair down either cheek,
As if he dee-dash-dee’d some other flocks
Beside those woolly-headed stubborn blocks
That stood before him, in vexatious huddle —
Poor little lambs, with bleating wethers group’d,
While, now and then, a thirsty creature stoop’d
And meekly snuff’d, but did not taste the puddle.
Fierce bark’d the dog, and many a blow was dealt,
That loin, and chump, and scrag and saddle felt,
Yet still, that fatal step they all declin’d it,
And shunn’d the tainted door as if they smelt
Onions, mint sauce, and lemon juice behind it.
At last there came a pause of brutal force,
The cur was silent, for his jaws were full
Of tangled locks of tarry wool,
The man had whoop’d and bellow’d till dead hoarse.
The time was ripe for mild expostulation,
And thus it stammer’d from a stander-by —
‘Zounds! — my good fellow, it quite makes me — why,
It really — my dear fellow — do just try
Conciliation!’
Stringing his nerves like flint,
The sturdy butcher seiz’d upon the hint,
At least he seiz’d upon the foremost wether,
And hugg’d and lugg’d and tugg’d him neck and crop
Just nolens volens thro’ the open shop —
If tails come off he didn’t care a feather,
Then walking to the door and smiling grim,
He rubb’d his forehead and his sleeve together —
‘There! — I have conciliated him!’
Again — good-humouredly to end our quarrel —
(Good humour should prevail!)
I’ll fit you with a tale,
Whereto is tied a moral.
Once on a time a certain English lass
Was seiz’d with symptoms of such deep decline,
Cough, hectic flushes, ev’ry evil sign,
That, as their wont is at such desperate pass,
The Doctors gave her over — to an ass.
Accordingly, the grisly Shade to bilk,
Each morn the patient quaff’d a frothy bowl —
Of asinine new milk,
Robbing a shaggy suckling of a foal
Which got proportionately spare and skinny —
Meanwhile the neighbours cried ‘poor Mary Ann!
She can’t get over it! she never can! ‘
When lo! to prove each prophet was a ninny
The one that died was the poor wet-nurse Jenny.
To aggravate the case,
There were but two grown donkeys in the place;
And most unluckily for Eve’s sick daughter,
The other long-ear’d creature was a male,
Who never in his life had given a pail
Of milk, or even chalk and water.
No matter: at the usual hour of eight
Down trots a donkey to the wicket-gate,
With Mister Simon Gubbins on its back,
‘Your sarvant, Miss, a werry spring-like day,
Bad time for hasses tho’! good lack! good lack!
Jenny be dead, Miss, but I’ze brought ye Jack,
He doesn’t give no milk — but he can bray.’ —
So runs the story,
And, in vain self-glory,
Some Saints would sneer at Gubbins for his blindness —
But what the better are their pious saws
To ailing souls, than dry hee-haws,
Without the milk of human kindness?
NAPOLEON’S MIDNIGHT REVIEW
A NEW VERSION
In his bed, bolt upright,
In the dead of the night,
The French Emperor starts like a ghost!
By a dream held in charm,
He uplifts his right arm,
For he dreams of reviewing his host.
To the stable he glides,
For the charger he rides;
And he mounts him, still under the spell;
Then, with echoing tramp,
They proceed through the camp,
All intent on a task he loves well.
Such a sight soon alarms,
And the guards present arms,
As he glides to the posts that they keep;
Then he gives the brief word,
And the bugle is heard,
Like a hound giving tongue in its sleep.
Next the drums they arouse,
But with dull row-de-dows,
And they give but a somnolent sound;
Whilst the foot and horse, both,
Very slowly and loth,
Begin drowsily mustering round.
To the right and left hand,
They fall in, by command,
In a line that might be better dress’d;
Whilst the steeds blink and nod,
And the lancers think odd
To be rous’d like the spears from their rest. —
With their mouths of wide shape,
Mortars seem all agape,
Heavy guns look more heavy with sleep;
And, whatever their bore,
Seem to think it one more
In the night such a field day to keep.
Then the arms, christened small,
Fire no volley at all,
But go off, like the rest, in a doze;
And the eagles, poor things,
Tuck their heads ‘neath their wings,
And the band ends in tunes through the nose.
Till each pupil of Mars
Takes a wink like the stars —
Open order no eye
can obey:
If the plumes in their heads
Were the feathers of beds,
Never top could be sounder than they!
So, just wishing good night,
Bows Napoleon, polite; —
But instead of a loyal endeavour
To reply with a cheer;
Not a sound met his ear,
Though each face seem’d to say ‘Nap for ever!’
HIT OR MISS
Twa dogs, that were na thrang at hame
Forgather’d ance upon a lime.’
Burns.
One morn — it was the very morn
September’s sportive month was born —
The hour, about the sunrise, early;
The sky grey, sober, still, and pearly,
With sundry orange streaks and tinges
Through daylight’s door, at cracks and hinges;
The air, calm, bracing, freshly cool,
As if just skimm’d from off a pool;
The scene, red, russet, yellow, leaden,
From stubble, fern, and leaves that deaden,
Save here and there a turnip patch,
Too verdant with the rest to match;
And far a-field a hazy figure,
Some roaming lover of the trigger.
Meanwhile the level light perchance
Pick’d out his barrel with a glance;
For all around a distant popping
Told birds were flying off or dropping.
Such was the morn — a morn right fair
To seek for covey or for hare —
When, lo! too far from human feet
For even Ranger’s boldest beat,
A Dog, as in some doggish trouble,
Came cant’ring through the crispy stubble,
With dappled head in lowly droop,
But not the scientific stoop;
And flagging, dull, desponding ears,
As if they had been soak’d in tears,
And not the beaded dew that hung
The filmy stalks and weeds among.
His pace, indeed, seem’d not to know
An errand, why, or where to go,
To trot, to walk, or scamper swift —
In short, he seem’d a dog adrift;
His very tail, a listless thing,
With just an accidental swing,
Like rudder to the ripple veering,
When nobody on board is steering.