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The Works of Thomas Hood; Vol. 02 (of 11) / Comic and Serious, in Prose and Verse, With All the Original Illustrations cover

The Works of Thomas Hood; Vol. 02 (of 11) / Comic and Serious, in Prose and Verse, With All the Original Illustrations

Chapter 16: SONNET TO A DECAYED SEAMAN.
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About This Book

This collection gathers comic and serious shorter pieces in verse and prose, ranging from playful nautical ballads and satirical sketches to reflective sonnets and melancholy vignettes. The contents alternate burlesque humour and domestic observation, presenting character portraits, fables, reminiscences, odes, and occasional social or political barbs. Recurring motifs include seaside life and maritime mishaps, everyday urban scenes, human foibles, and compassionate notices of poverty and infirmity. The tone shifts between witty wordplay and tender pathos, and the sequence mixes lyrical experiments, mock‑heroic pieces, and short prose narratives that foreground irony, linguistic invention, and moral observation.

THE TOP OF HIS PROFESSION.

SONNET TO A DECAYED SEAMAN.

HAIL! seventy-four cut down! Hail, Top and Lop!
Unless I’m much mistaken in my notion,
Thou wast a stirring Tar, before that hop
Became so fatal to thy locomotion;—
Now, thrown on shore, like a mere weed of ocean,
Thou readest still to men a lesson good,
To King and Country showing thy devotion,
By kneeling thus upon a stump of wood!
Still is thy spirit strong as alcohol;
Spite of that limb, begot of acorn-egg,—
Methinks,—thou Naval History in one Vol.—
A virtue shines, e’en in that timber leg,
For unlike others that desert their Poll,
Thou walkest ever with thy “Constant Peg!”