Thomas Hood- Collected Poetical Works
Page 103
Last look of despairing
Fix’d on futurity.
Perishing gloomily,
Spurr’d by contumely,
Cold inhumanity,
Burning insanity,
Into her rest.
Cross her hands humbly
As if praying dumbly,
Over her breast!
Owning her weakness,
Her evil behaviour,
And leaving, with meekness,
Her sins to her Saviour!
EPIGRAM ON DR. ROBERT ELLIOT OF CAMBERWELL.
Whatever Doctor Robert’s skill be worth,
One hope within me still is stout and hearty,
He would not hill me till the 24th
For fear of my appearing at his party!
May 23, 1844.
EPIGRAM ON A CERTAIN EQUESTRIAN STATUE
Whoever has looked upon Wellington’s breast,
Knows well that he is not so full in the chest;
But the sculptor, to humour the Londoners partial,
Has turn’d the lean Duke to a plump City Marshal.
EPIGRAM ON THE NEW HALF-FARTHINGS
‘Too small for any marketable shift,
What purpose can there be for coins like these?’
Hush, hush, good Sir! — Thus charitable Thrift
May give a Mite to him who wants a cheese!
EPIGRAM. CHARM’D WITH A DRINK WHICH HIGHLANDERS COMPOSE
Charm’d with a drink which Highlanders compose,
A German traveller exclaim’d with glee,
‘Potztausend! sare, if dis is Athol Brose,
How goot dere Athol Boetry must be!’
THE LAY OF THE LABOURER
A spade! a rake! a hoe!
A pickaxe, or a bill!
A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what ye will —
And here’s a ready hand
To ply the needful tool,
And skill’d enough, by lessons rough,
In Labour’s rugged school.
To hedge, or dig the ditch,
To lop or fell the tree,
To lay the swarth on the sultry field,
Or plough the stubborn lea;
The harvest stack to bind,
The wheaten rick to thatch,
And never fear in my pouch to find
The tinder or the match.
To a flaming barn or farm
My fancies never roam;
The fire I yearn to kindle and burn
Is on the hearth of Home; —
Where children huddle and crouch
Through dark long winter days,
Where starving children huddle and crouch,
To see the cheerful rays,
A-glowing on the haggard cheek,
And not in the haggard’s blaze!
To Him who sends a drought
To parch the fields forlorn,
The rain to flood the meadows with mud,
The lights to blast the corn,
To Him I leave to guide
The bolt in its crooked path.
To strike the miser’s rick, and show
The skies blood-red with wrath.
A spade! a rake! a hoe!
A pickaxe, or a bill!
A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what ye will —
The corn to thrash, or the hedge to plash,
The market-team to drive,
Or mend the fence by the cover side,
And leave the game alive.
Ay, only give me work,
And then you need not fear
That I shall snare his worship’s hare,
Or kill his grace’s deer;
Break into his lordship’s house,
To steal the plate so rich;
Or leave the yeoman that had a purse
To welter in a ditch. —
Wherever Nature needs
Wherever Labour calls,
No job I’ll shirk of the hardest work,
To shun the workhouse walls;
Where savage laws begrudge
The pauper babe its breath,
And doom a wife to a widow’s life,
Before her partner’s death.
My only claim is this,
With labour stiff and stark,
By lawful turn, my living to earn,
Between the light and dark;
My daily bread, and nightly bed,
My bacon, and drop of beer —
But all from the hand that holds the land,
And none from the overseer!
No parish money, or loaf,
No pauper badges for me,
A son of the soil, by right of toil
Entitled to my fee.
No alms I ask, give me my task:
Here are the arm, the leg,
The strength, the sinews of a Man,
To work, and not to beg.
Still one of Adam’s heirs,
Though doom’d by chance of birth
To dress so mean, and to eat the lean
Instead of the fat of the earth;
To make such humble meals
As honest labour can,
A bone and a crust, with a grace to God,
And little thanks to man!
A spade! a rake! a hoe!
A pickaxe, or a bill!
A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what ye will —
Whatever the tool to ply,
Here is a willing drudge,
With muscle and limb, and woe to him
Who does their pay begrudge! —
Who every weekly score
Docks labour’s little mite,
Bestows on the poor at the temple door,
But robb’d them over night.
The very shilling he hoped to save,
As health and morals fail,
Shall visit me in the New Bastille,
The Spital, or the Gaol!
SONNET TO A SONNET
Particularly commended, with the Fifth of Sir Philip Sidney’s, and the pages of Froissart, to the perusal of certain Journalists across the Channel; and generally to their Young countrymen, who would do well to affect, with the beards and moustaches of the olden time, the gallant courtesy of the ancient manners.
Rare Composition of a Poet-Knight,
Most chivalrous amongst chivalric men,
Distinguish’d for a polish’d lance and pen
In tuneful contest, and the tourney-fight;
Lustrous in scholarship, in honour bright,
Accomplish’d in all graces current then,
Humane as any in historic ken,
Brave, handsome, noble, affable, polite,
Most courteous to that race become of late
So fiercely scornful of all kind advance,
Rude, bitter, coarse, implacable in hate
To Albion, plotting ever her mischance,
Alas! fair Verse, how false and out of date
Thy phrase ‘sweet enemy’ applied to France!
EPIGRAM ON HER MAJESTY’S VISIT TO THE CITY
We’ve heard of comets, blazing things,
With ‘fear of change’ perplexing Kings;
But lo! a novel sight and strange,
A Queen who does not fear a’Change!
EPIGRAM ON THE QUEEN’S VISIT TO THE CITY
BY A TRADESMAN OF CORNHILL
Sure the measure is strange
And all Commerce so stops,
And to open a ’Change
Make us shut up our shops.
EPIGRAM
When would-be Suicides in purpose fail —
Who could not find a morsel though they needed —
If Peter sends them for attempts to jail,
What would he do to them if they succeeded?
THE SAUSAGE-MAKER’S GHOST
A LONDON LEGEND
Somewhere in Leather Lane —
I wonder that it was not
Mincing,
And for this reason most convincing,
That Mr. Brain
Dealt in those well-minc’d cartridges of meat
Some people like to eat —
However, all such quibbles overstepping.
In Leather Lane he liv’d; and drove a trade
In porcine sausages, though London made,
Call’d ‘Epping.’ —
Right brisk was the demand,
Seldom his goods staid long on hand,
For out of all adjacent courts and lanes
Young Irish ladies and their swains,
Such soups of girls and broths of boys!
Sought his delicious chains,
Preferr’d to all polonies, saveloys,
And other foreign toys —
The mere chance passengers
Who saw his ‘sassengers,’
Of sweetness undeniable,
So sleek, so mottled, and so friable,
Stepp’d in, forgetting ev’ry other thought,
And bought.
Meanwhile a constant thumping
Was heard, a sort of subterranean chumping —
Incessant was the noise
But though he had a foreman and assistant,
With all the tools consistent,
(Besides a wife and two fine chopping boys) —
His means were not yet vast enough
For chopping fast enough
To meet the call from streets, and lanes, and passages,
For first-chop ‘sassages.’
However, Mr. Brain
Was none of those dull men and slow,
Who, flying bird-like by a railway train,
Sigh for the heavy mails of long ago;
He did not set his face ‘gainst innovations
For rapid operations,
And therefore in a kind of waking dream
Listen’d to some hot-water sprite that hinted
To have his meat chopp’d, as the
Times was printed,
By steam !
Accordingly in happy hour,
A bran-new Engine went to work
Chopping up pounds on pounds of pork
With all the energy of Two-HorsePower,
And wonderful celerity —
When lo! when ev’ry thing to hope responded,
Whether his head was turn’d by his prosperity,
Whether he had some sly intrigue, in verity,
The man absconded!
His anxious Wife in vain
Placarded Leather Lane,
And all the suburbs with descriptive bills,
Such as are issued when from homes and tills
Clerks, dogs, cats, lunatics, and children roam;
Besides advertisements in all the journals,
Or weeklies or diurnals,
Beginning ‘Left his Home’ —
The sausage-maker, spite of white and black,
Never came back.
Never, alive! — But on the seventh night,
Just when the yawning grave its dead releases,
Filling his bedded Wife with sore affright
In walk’d his grisly Sprite,
In fifty thousand pieces!
‘O Mary!’ so it seem’d
In hollow melancholy tones to say,
Whilst thro’ its airy shape the moonlight gleam’d
With scarcely dimmer ray —
‘O Mary! let your hopes no longer flatter
Prepare at once to drink of sorrow’s cup,
It an’t no use to mince the matter —
The Engine’s chopped me up!’
THE LARK AND THE ROOK
A FABLE
‘Lo! hear the gentle lark! ‘ — Shakspeare.
Once on a time — no matter where —
A lark took such a fancy to the air,
That though he often gaz’d beneath,
Watching the breezy down, or heath,
Yet very, very seldom he was found
To perch upon the ground.
Hour after hour,
Through ev’ry change of weather hard or soft,
Through sun and shade, and wind and show’r,
Still fluttering aloft; —
In silence now, and now in song,
Up, up in cloudland all day long,
On weary wing, ‘yet with unceasing flight,
Like to those Birds of Paradise, so rare,
Fabled to live, and love, and feed in air,
But never to alight.
It caused, of course, much speculation
Among the feather’d generation;
Who tried to guess the riddle that was in it —
The robin puzzled at it, and the wren,
The swallows, cock and hen,
The wagtail, and the linnet,
The yellow hammer, and the finch as well —
The sparrow ask’d the tit, who couldn’t tell,
The jay, the pie — but all were in the dark,
Till out of patience with the common doubt,
The Rook at last resolv’d to worm it out
And thus accosted the mysterious Lark: —
‘Friend, prithee, tell me why
You keep this constant hovering so high,
As if you had some castle in the air,
That you are always poising there,
A speck against the sky —
Neglectful of each old familiar feature
Of Earth that nurs’d you in your callow state —
You think you’re only soaring at heaven’s gate,
Whereas you’re flying in the face of
Nature!’
‘Friend,’ said the Lark, with melancholy tone,
Andin each little eye a dewdrop shone,
‘No creature of my kind was ever fonder —
Of that dear spot of earth
Which gave it birth —
And I was nestled in the furrow yonder!
Sweet is the twinkle of the dewy heath,
And sweet that thy my down I watch beneath,
Saluted often with a loving sonnet:
But Men, vile Men, have spread so thick a scurf
Of dirt and infamy about the Turf,
I do not like to settle on it!’
MORAL.
Alas! how Nobles of another race
Appointed to the bright and lofty way
Too willingly descend to haunt a place
Polluted by the deeds of Birds of Prey
SUGGESTIONS BY STEAM
When Woman is in rags, and poor,
And sorrow, cold, and hunger teaze her,
If Man would only listen more
To that small voice that crieth —
‘Ease her!’
Without the guidance of a friend,
Though legal sharks and screws attack her,
If Man would only more attend
To that small voice that crieth —
‘Back her!’
So oft it would not be his fate —
To witness some despairing dropper
In Thames’s tide, and run too late
To that small voice that crieth —
‘Stop her!’
ANACREONTIC BY A FOOTMAN
It’s wery well to talk in praise
Of Tea and Water-drinking ways,
In proper time and place;
Of sober draughts, so clear and cool,
Dipp’d out of a transparent pool
Reflecting heaven’s face.
Of babbling brooks, and purling rills,
And streams as gushes from the hills,
It s wery well to talk; —
But what becomes of all sich schemes,
With ponds of ice, and running streams,
As doesn’t even walk?
When Winter comes with piercing cold,
And all the rivers, new or old,
Is frozen far and wide;
And limpid springs is solid stuff,
A
nd crystal pools is hard enough
To skate upon and slide; —
What then are thirsty men to do,
But drink of ale, and porter too,
Champagne as makes a fizz;
Port, sherry, or the Rhenish sort,
And p’rhaps a drop of summut short —
The water-pipes is friz!
EPIGRAM. A LORD BOUGHT OF LATE AN OUTLANDISH ESTATE
A Lord bought of late an outlandish estate,
At its Wild Boars to Chevy and dig;
So some people purchase a pig in a poke,
And others, a poke in a pig.
STANZAS
Farewell, Life! My senses swim;
And the world is growing dim;
Thronging shadows cloud the light,
Like the advent of the night,
Colder, colder, colder still
Upward steals a vapour chill —
Strong the earthy odour grows —
I smell the Mould above the Rose!
Welcome, Life! the Spirit strives!
Strength returns, and hope revives;
Cloudy fears and shapes forlorn
Fly like shadows at the morn,
O’er the earth there comes a bloom —
Sunny light for sullen gloom,
Warm perfume for vapour cold —
I smell the Rose above the Mould!
THE SURPLICE QUESTION
BY A BENEDICT
A very pretty public stir
Is making, down at Exeter,
About the surplice fashion:
And many bitter words and rude
Have been bestow’d upon the feud,
And much unchristian passion.
For me I neither know nor care
Whether a Parson ought to wear
A black dress or a white dress;
Fill’d with a trouble of my own,