Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Hood Read online

  You might go and skim the creme off Mr. Muck-Adam’s milky ways — that’s

  what you might,

  Or bete Carpets — or get into Parleamint, — or drive Crabrolays from

  morning to night,

  Or, if you must be of our sects, be Watchmen, and slepe upon a poste!

  (Which is an od way of sleping, I must say, — and a very hard pillow at

  most,)

  Or you might be any trade, as we are not on that I’m awares,

  Or be Watermen now, (not Water-wommen) and roe peple up and down

  Hungerford stares,

  Or if You Was even to Turn Dust Men a dry sifting Dirt!

  But you oughtint to Hurt Them as never Did You no Hurt!

  Yourn with Anymocity,

  BRIDGET JONES.

  ODE TO CAPTAIN PARRY

  “By the North Pole, I do challenge thee!”

  Love’s Labour’s Lost.

  I.

  Parry, my man! has thy brave leg

  Yet struck its foot against the peg

  On which the world is spun?

  Or hast thou found No Thoroughfare

  Writ by the hand of Nature there

  Where man has never run!

  II.

  Hast thou yet traced the Great Unknown

  Of channels in the Frozen Zone,

  Or held at Icy Bay,

  Hast thou still miss’d the proper track

  For homeward Indian men that lack

  A bracing by the way?

  III.

  Still hast thou wasted toil and trouble

  On nothing but the North-Sea Bubble

  Of geographic scholar?

  Or found new ways for ships to shape,

  Instead of winding round the Cape,

  A short cut thro’ the collar?

  IV.

  Hast found the way that sighs were sent to

  The Pole — tho’ God knows whom they went to!

  That track reveal’d to Pope —

  Or if the Arctic waters sally,

  Or terminate in some blind alley,

  A chilly path to grope?

  V.

  Alas! tho’ Ross, in love with snows,

  Has painted them couleur de rose,

  It is a dismal doom,

  As Clauclio saith, to Winter thrice,

  “In regions of thick-ribbed ice” —

  All bright, — and yet all gloom!

  VI.

  ’Tis well for Gheber souls that sit

  Before the fire and worship it

  With pecks of Wallsend coals,

  With feet upon the fender’s front,

  Roasting their corns — like Mr. Hunt —

  To speculate on poles.

  VII.

  ’Tis easy for our Naval Board —

  ’Tis easy for our Civic Lord

  Of London and of ease,

  That lies in ninety feet of down,

  With fur on his nocturnal gown,

  To talk of Frozen Seas!

  VIII.

  ’Tis fine for Monsieur Ude to sit,

  And prate about the mundane spit,

  And babble of Cook’s track —

  He’d roast the leather off his toes,

  Ere he would trudge thro’ polar snows,

  To plant a British Jack!

  IX.

  Oh, not the proud licentious great,

  That travel on a carpet skate,

  Can value toils like thine!

  What ’tis to take a Hecla range,

  Through ice unknown to Mrs. Grange,

  And alpine lumps of brine?

  X.

  But we, that mount the Hill o’ Rhyme,

  Can tell how hard it is to climb

  The lofty slippery steep,

  Ah! there are more Snow Hills than that

  Which doth black Newgate, like a hat,

  Upon its forehead, keep.

  XI.

  Perchance thou’rt now — while I am writing —

  Feeling a bear’s wet grinder biting

  About thy frozen spine!

  Or thou thyself art eating whale,

  Oily, and underdone, and stale,

  That, haply, cross’d thy line!

  XII.

  But I’ll not dream such dreams of ill —

  Rather will I believe thee still

  Safe cellar’d in the snow, —

  Reciting many a gallant story,

  Of British kings and British glory,

  To crony Esquimaux —

  XIII.

  Cheering that dismal game where Night

  Makes one slow move from black to white

  Thro’ all the tedious year, —

  Or smitten by some fond frost fair,

  That comb’d out crystals from her hair,

  Wooing a seal-skin dear!

  XIV.

  So much a long communion tends,

  As Byron says, to make us friends

  With what we daily view —

  God knows the daintiest taste may come

  To love a nose that’s like a plum

  In marble, cold and blue!

  XV.

  To dote on hair, an oily fleece!

  As tho’ it hung from Helen o’ Greece —

  They say that love prevails

  Ev’n in the veriest polar land —

  And surely she may steal thy hand

  That used to steal thy nails!

  XVI.

  But ah, ere thou art fixed to marry,

  And take a polar Mrs. Parry,

  Think of a six months’ gloom —

  Think of the wintry waste, and hers,

  Each furnish’d with a dozen furs,

  Think of thine icy dome!

  XVII.

  Think of the children born to blubber!

  Ah me! hast thou an Indian rubber

  Inside! — to hold a meal

  For months, — about a stone and half

  Of whale, and part of a sea calf —

  A fillet of salt veal! —

  XVIII.

  Some walrus ham — no trifle but

  A decent steak — a solid cut

  Of seal — no wafer slice!

  A reindeer’s tongue and drink beside!

  Gallons of sperm — not rectified!

  And pails of water-ice!

  XIX.

  Oh, canst thou fast and then feast thus?

  Still come away, and teach to us

  Those blessed alternations —

  To-day to run our dinners fine,

  To feed on air and then to dine

  With Civic Corporations —

  XX.

  To save th’ Old Bailey daily shilling,

  And then to take a half-year’s filling

  In P.N.’s pious Row —

  When ask’d to Hock and haunch o’ ven’son,

  Thro’ something we have worn our pens on

  For Longman and his Co.

  XXI.

  O come and tell us what the Pole is —

  Whether it singular and sole is, —

  Or straight, or crooked bent, —

  If very thick or very thin, —

  Made of what wood — and if akin

  To those there be in Kent?

  XXII.

  There’s Combe, there’s Spurzheim, and there’s Gall,

  Have talk’d of poles — yet, after all,

  What has the public learn’d?

  And Hunt’s account must still defer, —

  He sought the poll at Westminster —

  And is not yet return’d!

  XXIII.

  Alvanly asks if whist, dear soul,

  Is play’d in snow-towns near the Pole,

  And how the fur-man deals?

  And Eldon doubts if it be true,

  That icy Chancellors really do

  Exist upon the seals!

  XXIV.

  Barrow, by well-fed office grates,

  Talks of his own b
echristen’d Straits,

  And longs that he were there;

  And Croker, in his cabriolet,

  Sighs o’er his brown horse, at his Bay,

  And pants to cross the mer!

  XXV.

  O come away, and set us right,

  And, haply, throw a northern light

  On questions such as these: —

  Whether, when this drown’d world was lost.

  The surflux waves were lock’d in frost,

  And turned to Icy Seas!

  XXVI.

  Is Ursa Major white or black?

  Or do the Polar tribes attack

  Their neighbors — and what for?

  Whether they ever play at cuffs,

  And then, if they take off their muffs

  In pugilistic war?

  XXVII.

  Tells us, is Winter champion there,

  As in our milder fighting air?

  Say, what are Chilly loans?

  What cures they have for rheums beside,

  And if their hearts get ossified

  From eating bread of bones?

  XXVIII.

  Whether they are such dwarfs — the quicker

  To circulate the vital liquor, —

  And then, from head to heel —

  How short the Methodists must choose

  Their dumpy envoys not to lose

  Their toes in spite of zeal?

  XXIX.

  Whether ‘twill soften or sublime it

  To preach of Hell in such a climate —

  Whether may Wesley hope

  To win their souls — or that old function

  Of seals — with the extreme of unction —

  Bespeaks them for the Pope?

  XXX.

  Whether the lamps will e’er be “learn’d”

  Where six months’ “midnight oil” is burn’d

  Or Letters must confer

  With people that have never conn’d

  An A, B, C, but live beyond

  The Sound of Lancaster!

  XXXI.

  O come away at any rate —

  Well hast thou earn’d a downier state —

  With all thy hardy peers —

  Good lack, thou must be glad to smell dock,

  And rub thy feet with opodeldock,

  After such frosty years.

  XXXII.

  Mayhap, some gentle dame at last,

  Smit by the perils thou hast pass’d.

  However coy before,

  Shall bid thee now set up thy rest

  In that Brest Harbor, woman’s breast,

  And tempt the Fates no more!

  ODE TO W. KITCHENER, M.D.

  AUTHOR OF “THE COOK’S ORACLE,” “OBSERVATIONS ON VOCAL MUSIC,” “THE ART OF INVIGORATING AND PROLONGING LIFE,” “PRACTICAL OBSERVATIONS ON TELESCOPES, OPERA-GLASSES, AND SPECTACLES,” “THE HOUSEKEEPER’S LEDGER,” AND “THE PLEASURE OF MAKING A WILL.”

  “I rule the roast, as Milton says! “ — Caleb Quotem.

  Oh! multifarious man!

  Thou Wondrous, Admirable Kitchen Crichton!

  Born to enlighten

  The laws of Optics, Peptics, Music, Cooking —

  Master of the Piano — and the Pan —

  As busy with the kitchen as the skies!

  Now looking

  At some rich stew thro’ Galileo’s eyes, —

  Or boiling eggs — timed to a metronome —

  As much at home

  In spectacles as in mere isinglass —

  In the art of frying brown — as a digression

  On music and poetical expression,

  Whereas, how few of all our cooks, alas!

  Could tell Calliope from “Callipee!”

  How few there be

  Could leave the lowest for the highest stories, (Observatories,)

  And turn, like thee, Diana’s calculator,

  However cook’s synonymous with Kater!

  Alas! still let me say,

  How few could lay

  The carving knife beside the tuning fork,

  Like the proverbial Jack ready for any work!

  II.

  Oh, to behold thy features in thy book!

  Thy proper head and shoulders in a plate,

  How it would look!

  With one rais’d eye watching the dial’s date,

  And one upon the roast, gently cast down —

  Thy chops — done nicely brown —

  The garnish’d brow — with “a few leaves of bay” —

  The hair— “done Wiggy’s way!”

  And still one studious finger near thy brains,

  As if thou wert just come

  From editing some

  New soup — or hashing Dibdin’s cold remains;

  Or, Orpheus-like, — fresh from thy dying strains

  Of music, — Epping luxuries of sound,

  As Milton says, “in many a bout

  Of linked sweetness long drawn out,”

  Whilst all thy tame stuff’d leopards listen’d round!

  III.

  Oh, rather thy whole proper length reveal,

  Standing like Fortune, — on the jack — thy wheel.

  (Thou art, like Fortune, full of chops and changes,

  Thou hast a fillet too before thine eye!)

  Scanning our kitchen, and our vocal ranges,

  As tho’ it were the same to sing or fry —

  Nay, so it is — hear how Miss Paton’s throat

  Makes “fritters” of a note!

  And how Tom Cook (Fryer and Singer born

  By name and nature) oh! how night and morn

  He for the nicest public taste doth dish up

  The good things from that Pan of music, Bishop!

  And is not reading near akin to feeding,

  Or why should Oxford Sausages be fit

  Receptacles for wit?

  Or why should Cambridge put its little, smart,

  Minc’d brains into a Tart?

  Nay, then, thou wert but wise to frame receipts,

  Book-treats,

  Equally to instruct the Cook and cram her —

  Receipts to be devour’d, as well as read,

  The Culinary Art in gingerbread —

  The Kitchen’s Eaten Grammar!

  IV.

  Oh, very pleasant is thy motley page —

  Aye, very pleasant in its chatty vein —

  So — in a kitchen — would have talk’d Montaigne,

  That merry Gascon — humorist, and sage!

  Let slender minds with single themes engage,

  Like Mr. Bowles with his eternal Pope, —

  Or Haydon on perpetual Haydon, — or

  Hume on “Twice three make four,”

  Or Lovelass upon Wills, — Thou goest on

  Plaiting ten topics, like Tate Wilkinson!

  Thy brain is like a rich Kaleidoscope,

  Stuff’d with a brilliant medley of odd bits,

  And ever shifting on from change to change,

  Saucepans — old Songs — Pills — Spectacles — and Spits!

  Thy range is wider than a Rumford Range!

  Thy grasp a miracle! — till I recall

  Th’ indubitable cause of thy variety —

  Thou art, of course, th’ Epitome of all

  That spying — frying — singing — mix’d Society

  Of Scientific Friends, who used to meet

  Welch Rabbits — and thyself — in Warren Street!

  V.

  Oh, hast thou still those Conversazioni,

  Where learned visitors discoursed — and fed?

  There came Belzoni,

  Fresh from the ashes of Egyptian dead —

  And gentle Poki — and that Royal Pair,

  Of whom thou didst declare —

  “Thanks to the greatest Cooke we ever read —

  They were — what Sandwiches should be — half bred”!

  There fam’d M’Adam from his manual to
il

  Relax’d — and freely own’d he took thy hints

  On “making Broth with Flints” —

  There Parry came, and show’d thee polar oil

  For melted butter — Combe with his medullary

  Notions about the Skullery,

  And Mr. Poole, too partial to a broil —

  There witty Rogers came, that punning elf!

  Who used to swear thy book

  Would really look

  A Delphic “Oracle,” if laid on Delf —

  There, once a month, came Campbell and discuss’d

  His own — and thy own— “Magazine of Taste” —

  There Wilberforce the Just

  Came, in his old black suit, till once he trac’d

  Thy sly advice to Poachers of Black Folks,

  That “do not break their yolks” —

  Which huff’d him home, in grave disgust and haste!

  VI.

  There came John Clare, the poet, nor forbore

  Thy Patties — thou wert hand-and-glove with Moore,

  Who call’d thee “Kitchen Addison” — for why?

  Thou givest rules for Health and Peptic Pills,

  Forms for made dishes, and receipts for Wills,

  “Teaching us how to live and how to die!”

  There came thy Cousin-Cook, good Mrs. Fry —

  There Trench, the Thames Projector, first brought on

  His sine Quay non, —

  There Martin would drop in on Monday eves,

  Or Fridays, from the pens, and raise his breath

  ‘Gainst cattle days and death, —

  Answer’d by Mellish, feeder of fat beeves,

  Who swore that Frenchmen never could be eager

  For fighting on soup meagre —

  “And yet, (as thou would’st add,) the French have seen

  A Marshall Tureen”!

  VII.