Thomas Hood- Collected Poetical Works
Page 113
The noiseless tenor of their way? (see Gray.)
What line of road should poets take to bring
Themselves unto those waters, lov’d the first! —
Those waters which can wet a man to sing!
Which, like thy fame, ‘from granite basins burst,
Leap into life, and, sparkling, woo the thirst?’
6
— That thou’rt a proser, even thy birth-place might
Vouchsafe; — and Mr. Cadell may, God wot,
Have paid thee many a pound for many a blot, —
Cadell’s a wayward wight!
Although no Walter, still thou art a Scot,
And I can throw, I think, a little light
Upon some works thou hast written for the town, —
And publish’d, like a Lilliput Unknown!
‘Highways and Byeways,’ is thy book, no doubt,
(One whole edition’s out,)
And next, for it is fair
That Fame,
Seeing her children, should confess she had ‘em; —
‘Some Passages from the life of Adam Blair,’ —
(Blair is a Scottish name,)
What are they, but thy own good roads, M’Adam?
7
O! indefatigable labourer
In the paths of men! when thou shalt die, ‘twill be
A mark of thy surpassing industry,
That of the monument, which men shall rear
Over thy most inestimable bone,
Thou did’st thy very self lay the first stone! —
Of a right ancient line thou comest, — through
Each crook and turn we trace the unbroken clue,
Until we see thy sire before our eyes, —
Rolling his gravel walks in Paradise!
But he, our great Mac Parent, err’d, and ne’er
Have our walks since been fair!
Yet Time, who, like the merchant, lives on’Change,
For ever varying, through his varying range,
Time maketh all things even!
In this strange world, turning beneath high heaven!
He hath redeem’d the Adams, and contrived, —
(How are Time’s wonders hiv’d!)
In pity to mankind and to befriend ‘em —
(Time is above all praise,)
That he, who first did make our evil ways,
Reborn in Scotland, should be first to mend ‘em!
ADDRESS TO MR. DYMOKE
THE CHAMPION OF ENGLAND
‘Arma virumque cano.’ — Virgil.
1
MR. DYMOKE! Sir Knight! if I may be so bold —
(I’m a poor simple gentleman just come to town,)
Is your armour put by, like the sheep in a fold? —
Is your gauntlet ta’en up, which you lately flung down?
2
Are you — who that day rode so mail’d and admir’d,
Now sitting at ease in a library chair?
Have you sent back to Astley the war-horse you hir’d,
With a cheque upon Chambers to settle the fare?
3
What’s become of the cup? Great tin-plate worker! say!
Cup and ball is a game which some people deem fun!
Oh! three golden balls haven’t lur’d you to play
Rather false, Mr. D., to all pledges but one?
4
How defunct is the show that was chivalry’s mimic!
The breast-plate — the feathers — the gallant array!
So fades, so grows dim, and so dies, Mr. Dymoke!
The day of brass breeches! as Wordsworth would say!
5
Perchance in some village remote, with a cot,
And a cow, and a pig, and a barn-door, and all; —
You show to the parish that peace is your lot,
And plenty, — tho’ absent from Westminster Hall!
6
And of course you turn every accoutrement now
To its separate use, that your wants may be well met; —
You toss in your breast-plate your pancakes, and grow
A salad of mustard and cress in your helmet.
7
And you delve the fresh earth with your falchion, less bright
Since hung up in sloth from its Westminster task; —
And you bake your own bread in your tin; and, Sir Knight,
Instead of your brow, put your beer in the casque!
8
How delightful to sit by your beans and your peas,
With a goblet of gooseberry gallantly clutch’d, —
And chat of the blood that had delug’d the Pleas,
And drench’d the King’s Bench, — if the glove had been touch’d!
9
If Sir Columbine Daniel, with knightly pretensions,
Had snatch’d your ‘ best doe,’ — he’d have flooded the floor; —
Nor would even the best of his crafty inventions,
‘Life Preservers,’ have floated him out of his gore!
10
Oh, you and your horse! what a couple was there!
The man and his backer, — to win a great fight!
Though the trumpet was loud, — you’d an undisturb’d air!
And the nag snuff’d the feast and the fray sans affright!
11
Yet strange was the course which the good Cato bore
When he waddled tail-wise with the cup to his stall; —
For though his departure was at the front door,
Still he went the back way out of Westminster Hall.
12
He went — and ’twould puzzle historians to say,
When they trust Time’s conveyance to carry your mail, —
Whether caution or courage inspir’d him that day,
For, though he retreated, he never turn’d tail.
13
By my life, he’s a wonderful charger! — The best:
Though not for a Parthian corps! — yet for you! —
Distinguish’d alike at a fray and a feast,
What a Horse for a grand Retrospective Review!
14
What a creature to keep a hot warrior cool
When the sun’s in the face, and the shade’s far aloof!
What a tail-piece for Bewick! — or pyebald for Poole,
To bear him in safety from Elliston’s hoof!
15
Well! hail to Old Cato! the hero of scenes!
May Astley or age ne’er his comforts abridge; —
Oh, long may he munch Amphitheatre beans,
Well ‘pent up in Utica’ over the Bridge!
16
And to you, Mr. Dymoke, Cribb’s rival, I keep
Wishing all country pleasures, the bravest and best!
And oh! when you come to the Hummums to sleep,
May you lie ‘like a warrior taking his rest!’
ADDRESS TO SYLVANUS URBAN, ESQ.
EDITOR OF THE GENTLEMAN’S MAGAZINE
‘Dost thou not suspect my years?’ — Much Ado about Nothing.
1
OH! Mr. Urban! never must thou lurch
A sober age made serious drunk by thee;
Hop in thy pleasant way from church to church,
And nurse thy little bald Biography.
2
Oh, my Sylvanus! what a heart is thine!
And what a page attends thee! Long may I
Hang in demure confusion o’er each line
That asks thy little questions with a sigh!
3
Old tottering years have nodded to their falls,
Like pensioners that creep about and die; —
But thou, Old Parr of periodicals,
Livest in monthly immortality
4
How sweet! — as Byron of his infant said —
‘Knowledge of objects’ in thine eye to trace;
To see the mild no-meanings of thy head,
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br /> Taking a quiet nap upon thy face!
5
How dear through thy Obituary to roam,
And not a name of any name to catch!
To meet thy Criticism walking home,
Averse from rows, and never calling ‘Watch!’
6
Rich is thy page in soporific things, —
Composing compositions, — lulling men, —
Faded old posies of unburied rings, —
Confessions dozing from an opiate pen: —
7
Lives of Right Reverends that have never lived, —
Deaths of good people that have really died, —
Parishioners, — hatch’d, — husbanded, — and wiv’d, —
Bankrupts and Abbots breaking side by side!
8
The sacred query, — the remote response, —
The march of serious mind, extremely slow, —
The graver’s cut at some right aged sconce,
Famous for nothing many years ago!
9
B. asks of C. if Milton e’er did write
‘Cornus,’ obscured beneath some Ludlow lid; —
And C., next month, an answer doth indite,
Informing B. that Mr. Milton did!
10
X. sends the portrait of a genuine flea,
Caught upon Martin Luther years agone; —
And Mr. Parkes, of Shrewsbury, draws a bee,
Long dead, that gather’d honey for King John.
11
There is no end of thee, — there is no end,
Sylvanus, of thy A, B, C, D-merits!
Thou dost, with alphabets, old walls attend,
And poke the letters into holes, like ferrets!
12
Go on, Sylvanus! — Bear a wary eye,
The churches cannot yet be quite run out,
Some parishes must yet have been passed by, —
There’s Bullock-Smithy has a church no doubt!
13
Go on — and close the eyes of distant ages!
Nourish the names of the undoubted dead!
So Epicures shall pick thy lobster-pages,
Heavy and lively, though but seldom red.
14
Go on! and thrive! Demurest of odd fellows!
Bottling up dulness in an ancient binn!
Still live! still prose! continue still to tell us
Old truths! no strangers, though we take them in!
ADDRESS TO R. W. ELLISTON, ESQUIRE
THE GREAT LESSEE!
‘Do you know, you villain, that I am at this moment the greatest man living?’ — Wild Oats.
1
OH! Great Lessee! Great Manager! Great Man!
Oh, Lord High Elliston! Immortal Pan
Of all the pipes that play in Drury Lane!
Macready’s master! Westminster’s high Dane l
As Galway Martin, in the House’s walls,
Hamlet and Doctor Ireland justly calls!
Friend to the sweet and ever-smiling Spring!
Magician of the lamp and prompter’s ring I
Drury’s Aladdin! Whipper-in of Actors!
Kicker of rebel-preface-malefactors! —
Glass-blowers’ corrector! King of the cheque-taker!
At once Great Leamington and Winston-Maker!
Dramatic Bolter of plain Bunns and Cakes!
In silken hose the most reformed of Rakes!
Oh, Lord High Elliston! lend me an ear!
(Poole is away, and Williams shall keep clear)
While I, in little slips of prose, not verse,
Thy splendid course, as pattern-work, rehearse!
2
Bright was thy youth — thy manhood brighter still —
The greatest Romeo upon Holborn Hill —
Lightest comedian of the pleasant day,
When Jordan threw her sunshine o’er a play!
[When fair Thalia held a merry reign,
And Wit was at her Court in Drury Lane!
Before the day when Authors wrote, of course,
The ‘Entertainment not for Man but Horse.
But these, though happy, were but subject times,
And no man cares for bottom-steps that climbs —
Far from my wish it is to stifle down
The hours that saw thee snatch the Surrey crown
Tho’ now thy hand a mightier sceptre wields,
Fair was thy reign in sweet St. George’s Fields.
Dibdin was Premier — and a golden age
For a short time enrich’d the subject stage.
Thou hadst, than other Kings, more peace-and-plenty;
Ours but one Bench could boast, whilst thou hadst twenty
But the times changed — and Booth-acting no more
Drew Rulers’ shillings to the gallery door.
Thou didst, with bag and baggage, wander thence,
Repentant, like thy neighbour Magdalens!
3
Next,-the Olympic Games were tried, each feat
Practised, the most bewitching in Wych Street.
Charles had his royal ribaldry restor’d,
And in a downright neighbourhood drank and whor’d;
Rochester there in dirty ways again
Revell’d — and liv’d once more in Drury Lane:
But thou, R. W.! kept’st thy moral ways,
Pit-lecturing twixt the farces and the plays,
A lamplight Irving to the butcher boys
That soil’d the benches and that made a noise: —
[Rebuking — Half a Robert, Half a Charles —
The well-billed Man that called for promised Carles;
‘Sir! — Have you yet to know! Hush — hear me out!
A man — pray silence! — may be down with gout,
Or want — or, Sir — aw! — listen! — may be fated,
Being in debt, to be incarcerated!
You — in the back! — can scarcely hear a line!
Down from those benches — butchers — they are mine!’
4
Lastly — and thou wert built for it by nature. —
Crown’d was thy head in Drury Lane Theatre!
Gentle George Robins saw that it was good,
And Renters cluck’d around thee in a brood.
King thou wert made of Drury and of Kean!
Of many a lady and of many a Quean!
With Poole and Larpent was thy reign begun —
But now thou turnest from the Dead and Dun,
Hook’s in thine eye, to write thy plays, no doubt,
And Colman lives to cut the damnlets out!
5
Oh, worthy of the house! the King’s commission!
Isn’t thy condition ‘a most bless’d condition?’
Thou reignest over Winston, Kean, and all
The very lofty and the very small —
Showest the plumbless Bunn the way to kick —
Keepest a Williams for thy ^veriest stick —
Seest a Vestris in her sweetest moments,
Without the danger of newspaper comments —
Tellest Macready, as none dared before,
Thine open mind from the half-open door! —
(Alas! I fear he has left Melpomene’s crown,
To be a Boniface in Buxton town!) —
Thou holdest the watch, as half-price people know,
And callest to them, to a moment, ‘ Go!’
Teachest the sapient Sapio how to sing —
Hangest a cat most oddly by the wing —
[(To prove, no doubt, the endless free list ended,
And all, except the public press, suspended,)]
Hast known the length of a Cubitt-foot — and’ kiss’d
The pearly whiteness of a Stephens’ wrist —
Kissing and pitying — tender and humane!
‘By heaven she loves me! Oh, it is too plain!’
A sigh like this thy trembli
ng passion slips,
Dimpling the warm Madeira at thy lips!
6
Go on, Lessee! Go on, and prosper well!
Fear not, though, forty glass-blowers should rebel —
Show them how thou hast long befriended them,
And teach Dubois their treason to condemn!
Go on! addressing pits in prose and worse!
Be long, be slow, be anything but terse —
Kiss to the gallery the hand that’s glov’d —
Make Bunn the Great, and Winston the Belov’d,
[Ask the two shilling Gods for leave to dun
With words, the cheaper Deities in the One!
Kick Mr. Roole unseen from, scene to scene,
Cane Williams still, and stick to Mr. Kean, — ,
Warn from the benches all the rabble rout;
Say, those are mine—’ In parliament, or out!’
Swing cats — for in thy house there’s surely space —
O Beasley, for such pastime, planned the place!
Do anything! — Thy fame, thy fortune, nourish!
Laugh and grow fat! be eloquent, and flourish!]
Go on — and but in this reverse the thing,
Walk backward with wax lights before the King —
Go on! Spring ever in thine eye! Go on!
Hope’s favourite child! ethereal Elliston!
AN ADDRESS TO THE VERY REVEREND JOHN
IRELAND, D.D.
CHARLES FYNES CLINTON, LL.D.
THOMAS CAUSTON, D.D.
HOWELL HOLLAND EDWARDS, M.A.
JOSEPH ALLEN, M.A.