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

Chapter 26: SONNET. TO LORD WHARNCLIFFE, ON HIS GAME-BILL.

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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.

DICKY BIRDS.

SONNET.
TO LORD WHARNCLIFFE, ON HIS GAME-BILL.

I’m fond of partridges, I’m fond of snipes,

I’m fond of black cocks, for they’re very good cocks—

I’m fond of wild ducks, and I’m fond of woodcocks—

And grouse that set up such strange moorish pipes.

I’m fond of pheasants with their splendid stripes—

I’m fond of hares, whether from Whig or Tory—

I’m fond of capercailzies in their glory,—

Teal, widgeons, plovers, birds in all their types:

All these are in your care, Law-giving Peer,

And when you next address your Lordly Babel,

Some clause put in your Bill, precise and clear,

With due and fit provision to enable

A man that holds all kinds of game so dear

To keep, like Crockford, a good Gaming Table.