Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Hood Page 10

Came with the sack the lady to enclose;

  In vain from her stag-eyes the big round tears

  Coursed one another down her innocent nose

  In vain her tongue wept sorrow in their ears;

  Though there were some felt willing to oppose,

  Yet when their heads came in their heads, that minute,

  Though ’twas a piteous case, they put her in it.

  And when the sack was tied, some two or three

  Of these black undertakers slowly brought her

  To a kind of Moorish Serpentine; for she

  Was doom’d to have a winding sheet of water.

  Then farewell, earth — farewell to the green tree —

  Farewell, the sun — the moon — each little daughter!

  She’s shot from off the shoulders of a black,

  Like bag of Wall’s-End from a coalman’s back.

  The waters oped, and the wide sack full-fill’d

  All that the waters oped, as down it fell;

  Then closed the wave, and then the surface rill’d

  A ring above her, like a water-knell;

  A moment more, and all its face was still’d,

  And not a guilty heave was left to tell

  That underneath its calm and blue transparence

  A dame lay drowned in her sack, like Clarence.

  But Heaven beheld, and awful witness bore, —

  The moon in black eclipse deceased that night,

  Like Desdemona smother’d by the Moor —

  The lady’s natal star with pale afright

  Fainted and fell — and what were stars before,

  Turn’d comets as the tale was brought to light;

  And all looked downward on the fatal wave,

  And made their own reflections on her grave.

  Next night, a head — a little lady head,

  Push’d through the waters a most glassy face,

  With weedy tresses, thrown apart and spread,

  Comb’d by ‘live ivory, to show the space

  Of a pale forehead, and two eyes that shed

  A soft blue mist, breathing a bloomy grace

  Over their sleepy lids — and so she rais’d

  Her aqualine nose above the stream, and gazed.

  She oped her lips — lips of a gentle blush,

  So pale it seem’d near drowned to a white, —

  She oped her lips, and forth there sprang a gush

  Of music bubbling through the surface light;

  The leaves are motionless, the breezes hush

  To listen to the air — and through the night

  There come these words of a most plaintive ditty,

  Sobbing as they would break all hearts with pity:

  THE WATER PERI’S SONG.

  Farewell, farewell, to my mother’s own daughter.

  The child that she wet-nursed is lapp’d in the wave;

  The Mussul-man, coming to fish in this water,

  Adds a tear to the flood that weeps over her grave.

  This sack is her coffin, this water’s her bier,

  This grayish bath cloak is her funeral pall;

  And, stranger, O stranger! this song that you hear

  Is her epitaph, elegy, dirges, and all!

  Farewell, farewell, to the child of Al Hassan,

  My mother’s own daughter — the last of her race —

  She’s a corpse, the poor body! and lies in this basin,

  And sleeps in the water that washes her face.

  REMONSTRATORY ODE, FROM THE ELEPHANT AT EXETER CHANGE, TO MR. MATHEWS AT THE ENGLISH OPERA-HOUSE.

  “ — See with what courteous action,

  He beckons you to a more removed ground.” — Hamlet.

  [WRITTEN BY A FRIEND.]

  OH, Mr. Mathews! Sir!

  (If a plain elephant may speak his mind,

  And that I have a mind to speak I find

  By my inward stir)

  I long have thought, and wished to say, that we

  Mar our well-merited prosperity

  By being such near neighbours,

  My keeper now hath lent me pen and ink,

  Shov’d in my truss of lunch, and tub of drink,

  And left me to my labours.

  The whole menagerie is in repose,

  The Coatamundi is in his Sunday clothes,

  Watching the Lynx’s most unnatural doze;

  The Panther is asleep, and the Macaw;

  The Lion is engaged on something raw;

  The white Bear cools his chin

  ‘Gainst the wet tin;

  And the confined old Monkey’s in the straw:

  All the nine little Lionets are lying

  Slumbering in milk, and sighing;

  Miss Cross is sipping ox-tail soup,

  In her front coop,

  So here’s the happy mid-day moment; yes,

  I seize it, Mr. Mathews, to address

  A word or two

  To you

  On the subject of the ruin which must come

  By both being in the Strand, and both at home

  On the same nights; two treats

  So very near each other,

  As, oh my brother!

  To play old gooseberry with both receipts.

  When you begin

  Your summer fun, three times a week, at eight,

  And carriages roll up, and cits roll in,

  I feel a change in Exeter ’Change’s change.

  And, dash my trunk! I hate

  To ring my bell, when you ring yours, and go,

  With a diminish’d glory through my show!

  It is most strange;

  But crowds that meant to see me eat a stack,

  And sip a water-butt or so, and crack

  A root of mangel-wurzel with my foot,

  Eat little children’s fruit,

  Pick from the floor small coins,

  And then turn slowly round and show my India-rubber

  loins:

  ’Tis strange — most strange, but true,

  That these same crowds seek you!

  Pass my abode and pay at your next door!

  It makes me roar

  With anguish when I think of this; I go

  With sad severity my nightly rounds

  Before one poor front row,

  My fatal funny foe!

  And when I stoop, as duty bids, I sigh

  And feel that, while poor elephantine I,

  Pick up a sixpence, you pick up the pounds!

  Could you not go?

  Could you not take the Cobourg or the Surrey?

  Or Sadler’s Wells, — (I am not in a hurry,

  I never am!) for the next season? — oh!

  Woe! woe! woe!

  To both of us, if we remain; for not

  In silence will I bear my altered lot,

  To have you merry, sir, at my expense;

  No man of any sense,

  No true great person (and we both are great

  In our own ways) would tempt another’s fate.

  I would myself depart

  In Mr. Cross’s cart;

  But, like Othello, “am not easily moved.”

  There’s a nice house in Tottenham Court, they say,

  Fit for a single gentleman’s small play:

  And more conveniently near your home;

  You’ll easily go and come.

  Or get a room in the City — in some street-

  Coachmakers’ Hall, or the Paul’s Head,

  Cateaton Street;

  Any large place, in short, in which to get your bread;

  But do not stay, and get

  Me into the Gazette!

  Ah! The Gazette!

  I press my forehead with my trunk, and wet

  My tender cheek with elephantine tears,

  Shed of a walnut size

  From my wise eyes,

  To think of ruin after prosperous years.

  What a dread case would be

  For me — lar
ge me!

  To meet at Basinghall Street, the first and seventh

  And the eleventh!

  To undergo (D —— n!)

  My last examination!

  To cringe, and to surrender,

  Like a criminal offender,

  All my effects — my bell-pull, and my bell,

  My bolt, my stock of hay, my new deal cell.

  To post my ivory, Sir!

  And have some curious commissioner

  Very irreverently search my trunk;

  ‘Sdeath! I should die

  With rage, to find a tiger in possession

  Of my abode; up to his yellow knees

  In my old straw; and my profound profession

  Entrusted to two beasts of assignees!

  The truth is simply this, — if you will stay

  Under my very nose,

  Filling your rows

  Just at my feeding time, to see your play,

  My mind’s made up,

  No more at nine I sup,

  Except on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays. Sundays,

  From eight to eleven,

  As I hope for heaven,

  On Thursdays, and on Saturdays, and Mondays,

  I’ll squeak and roar, and grunt without cessation,

  And utterly confound your recitation.

  And, mark me! all my friends of the furry snout

  Shall join a chorus shout:

  We will be heard — we’ll spoil

  Your wicked ruination toil.

  Insolvency must ensue

  To you, Sir, you;

  Unless you move your opposition shop;

  And let me stop.

  I have no more to say: — I do not write

  In anger, but in sorrow; I must look,

  However, to my interests every night,

  And they detest your “Memorandum-book.”

  If we could join our forces — I should like it;

  You do the dialogue, and I the songs.

  A voice to me belongs;

  (The Editors of the Globe and Traveller ring

  With praises of it, when I hourly sing

  God save the King.)

  If such a bargain could be schemed, I’d strike it!

  I think, too, I could do the Welch old man

  In the Youthful Days, if dress’d upon your plan;

  And the attorney in your Paris trip, —

  I’m large about the hip!

  Now think of this! — for we cannot go on

  As next door rivals, that my mind declares:

  I must be pennyless, or you be gone!

  We must live separate, or else have shares.

  I am a friend or foe

  As you take this;

  Let me your profitable hubbub miss,

  Or be it “Mathews, Elephant, and Co.!”

  THE IRISH SCHOOLMASTER.

  I.

  Alack! ’tis melancholy theme to think

  How Learning doth in rugged states abide,

  And, like her bashful owl, obscurely blink,

  In pensive glooms and corners, scarcely spied;

  Not, as in Founders’ Halls and domes of pride,

  Served with grave homage, like a tragic queen,

  But with one lonely priest compell’d to hide,

  In midst of foggy moors and mosses green,

  In that clay cabin hight the College of Kilreen!

  II.

  This College looketh South and West alsoe,

  Because it hath a cast in windows twain;

  Crazy and crack’d they be, and wind doth blow

  Through transparent holes in every pane,

  Which Pan, with many paines, makes whole again

  With nether garments, which his thrift doth teach

  To stand for glass, like pronouns, and when rain

  Stormeth, he puts, “once more unto the breach,”

  Outside and in, tho’ broke, yet so he mendeth each.

  III.

  And in the midst a little door there is,

  Whereon a board that doth congratulate

  With painted letters, red as blood I wis,

  Thus written,

  “CHILDREN TAKEN IN TO BATE”:

  And oft, indeed, the inward of that gate,

  Most ventriloque, doth utter tender squeak,

  And moans of infants that bemoan their fate,

  In midst of sounds of Latin, French, and Greek,

  Which, all i’ the Irish tongue, he teacheth them to speak.

  IV.

  For some are meant to right illegal wrongs,

  And some for Doctors of Divinitie,

  Whom he doth teach to murder the dead tongues,

  And soe win academical degree;

  But some are bred for service of the sea,

  Howbeit, their store of learning is but small,

  For mickle waste he counteth it would be

  To stock a head with bookish wares at all,

  Only to be knock’d off by ruthless cannon-ball.

  V.

  Six babes he sways, — some little and some big,

  Divided into classes six; — alsoe,

  He keeps a parlour boarder of a pig,

  That in the College fareth to and fro,

  And picketh up the urchins’ crumbs below, —

  And eke the learned rudiments they scan,

  And thus his A, B, C, doth wisely know, —

  Hereafter to be shown in caravan,

  And raise the wonderment of many a learned man.

  VI.

  Alsoe, he schools some tame familiar fowls,

  Whereof, above his head, some two or three

  Sit darkly squatting, like Minerva’s owls,

  But on the branches of no living tree,

  And overlook the learned family;

  While, sometimes, Partlet, from her gloomy perch,

  Drops feather on the nose of Dominie,

  Meanwhile, with serious eye, he makes research

  In leaves of that sour tree of knowledge — now a birch.

  VII.

  No chair he hath, the awful Pedagogue,

  Such as would magisterial hams imbed,

  But sitteth lowly on a beechen log,

  Secure in high authority and dread:

  Large, as a dome for Learning, seems his head,

  And, like Apollo’s, all beset with rays,

  Because his locks are so unkempt and red,

  And stand abroad in many several ways: —

  No laurel crown he wears, howbeit his cap is baize.

  VIII.

  And, underneath, a pair of shaggy brows

  O’erhang as many eyes of gizzard hue,

  That inward giblet of a fowl, which shows

  A mongrel tint, that is ne brown ne blue;

  His nose, — it is a coral to the view;

  Well nourish’d with Pierian Potheen, —

  For much he loves his native mountain dew; —

  But to depict the dye would lack, I ween,

  A bottle-red, in terms, as well as bottle-green.

  IX.

  As for his coat, ’tis such a jerkin short

  As Spenser had, ere he composed his Tales;

  But underneath he hath no vest, nor aught,

  So that the wind his airy breast assails;

  Below, he wears the nether garb of males,

  Of crimson plush, but non-plushed at the knee; —

  Thence further down the native red prevails,

  Of his own naked fleecy hosierie: —

  Two sandals, without soles, complete his cap-a-pie.

  X.

  Nathless, for dignity, he now doth lap

  His function in a magisterial gown,

  That shows more countries in it than a map, —

  Blue tinct, and red, and green, and russet brown,

  Besides some blots, standing for country-town;

  And eke some rents, for streams and rivers wide;

  But, sometimes, bashful when
he looks adown,

  He turns the garment of the other side,

  Hopeful that so the holes may never be espied!

  XI.

  And soe he sits, amidst the little pack,

  That look for shady or for sunny noon,

  Within his visage, like an almanack, —

  His quiet smile foretelling gracious boon:

  But when his mouth droops down, like rainy moon,

  With horrid chill each little heart unwarms,

  Knowing that infant show’rs will follow soon,

  And with forebodings of near wrath and storms

  They sit, like timid hares, all trembling on their forms.

  XII.

  Ah! luckless wight, who cannot then repeat

  “Corduroy Colloquy,” — or “Ki, Kæ, Kod,” —

  Full soon his tears shall make his turfy seat

  More sodden, tho’ already made of sod,

  For Dan shall whip him with the word of God, —

  Severe by rule, and not by nature mild,

  He never spoils the child and spares the rod,

  But spoils the rod and never spares the child,

  And soe with holy rule deems he is reconcil’d.

  XIII.

  But, surely, the just sky will never wink

  At men who take delight in childish throe,

  And stripe the nether-urchin like a pink

  Or tender hyacinth, inscribed with woe;

  Such bloody Pedagogues, when they shall know,

  By useless birches, that forlorn recess,

  Which is no holiday, in Pit below,

  Will hell not seem design’d for their distress, —

  A melancholy place, that is all bottomlesse?

  XIV.

  Yet would the Muse not chide the wholesome use

  Of needful discipline, in due degree.

  Devoid of sway, what wrongs will time produce,

  Whene’er the twig untrained grows up a tree.

  This shall a Carder, that a Whiteboy be,

  Ferocious leaders of atrocious bands,

  And Learning’s help be used for infamie,