The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Comic Poems of Thomas Hood.

Now Ben he loved a pretty maid,
Her name was Nelly Gray;
So he went to pay her his devours,
When he’d devoured his pay!

But when he called on Nelly Gray,
She made him quite a scoff;
And when she saw his wooden legs,
Began to take them off!

“O, Nelly Gray! O, Nelly Gray!
Is this your love so warm?
The love that loves a scarlet coat,
Should be more uniform!”

Said she, “I loved a soldier once,
For he was blythe and brave;
But I will never have a man
With both legs in the grave!

“Before you had those timber toes,
Your love I did allow,
But then, you know, you stand upon
Another footing now!”

“O, Nelly Gray! O, Nelly Gray!
For all your jeering speeches,
At duty’s call, I left my legs
In Badajos’s breaches!”

“Why, then,” said she, “you’ve lost the feet
Of legs in war’s alarms,
And now you cannot wear your shoes
Upon your feats of arms!”

“O, false and fickle Nelly Gray!
I know why you refuse:
Though I’ve no feet—some other man
Is standing in my shoes!

“I wish I ne’er had seen your face;
But, now, a long farewell!
For you will be my death;—alas!
You will not be my Nell!”

Now when he went from Nelly Gray,
His heart so heavy got—
And life was such a burthen grown,
It made him take a knot!

So round his melancholy neck,
A rope he did entwine,
And, for his second time in life,
Enlisted in the Line!

One end he tied around a beam,
And then removed his pegs,
And, as his legs were off,—of course,
He soon was off his legs!

And there he hung, till he was dead
As any nail in town,—
For though distress had cut him up,
It could not cut him down!

A dozen men sat on his corpse,
To find out why he died—
And they buried Ben in four cross-roads,
With a stake in his inside!

IT was a jolly mariner!
The tallest man of three,—
He loosed his sail against the wind,
And turned his boat to sea:
The ink-black sky told every eye,
A storm was soon to be!

But still that jolly mariner
Took in no reef at all,
For, in his pouch, confidingly,
He wore a baby’s caul;
A thing, as gossip-nurses know,
That always brings a squall!

His hat was new, or, newly glazed,
Shone brightly in the sun;
His jacket, like a mariner’s,
True blue as e’er was spun;
His ample trowsers, like Saint Paul,
Bore forty stripes save one.

And now the fretting foaming tide
He steer’d away to cross;
The bounding pinnace play’d a game
Of dreary pitch and toss;
A game that, on the good dry land,
Is apt to bring a loss!

Good Heaven befriend that little boat,
And guide her on her way!
A boat, they say, has canvas wings,
But cannot fly away!
Though, like a merry singing-bird,
She sits upon the spray!

Still east by south the little boat,
With tawny sail, kept beating:
Now out of sight, between two waves,
Now o’er th’ horizon fleeting:
Like greedy swine that feed on mast,—
The waves her mast seem’d eating!

The sullen sky grew black above,
The wave as black beneath;
Each roaring billow show’d full soon
A white and foamy wreath;
Like angry dogs that snarl at first,
And then display their teeth.

The boatman looked against the wind,
The mast began to creak,
The wave, per saltum, came and dried,
In salt, upon his cheek!
The pointed wave against him rear’d,
As if it own’d a pique!

Nor rushing wind, nor gushing wave,
That boatman could alarm,
But still he stood away to sea,
And trusted in his charm;
He thought by purchase he was safe,
And arm’d against all harm!

Now thick and fast and far aslant,
The stormy rain came pouring,
He heard, upon the sandy bank,
The distant breakers roaring,—
A groaning intermitting sound,
Like Gog and Magog snoring!

The sea-fowl shriek’d around the mast,
Ahead the grampus tumbled,
And far off, from a copper cloud,
The hollow thunder rumbled;
It would have quail’d another heart,
But his was never humbled.

For why? he had that infant’s caul;
And wherefore should he dread?
Alas! alas! he little thought,
Before the ebb-tide sped,—
That like that infant, he should die,
And with a watery head!

The rushing brine flow’d in apace;
His boat had ne’er a deck;
Fate seem’d to call him on, and he
Attended to her beck;
And so he went, still trusting on,
Though reckless—to his wreck!

For as he left his helm, to heave
The ballast-bags a-weather,
Three monstrous seas came roaring on,
Like lions leagued together.
The two first waves the little boat
Swam over like a feather.—

The two first waves were past and gone,
And sinking in her wake;
The hugest still came leaping on,
And hissing like a snake;
Now helm a-lee! for through the midst,
The monster he must take!

Ah, me! it was a dreary mount!
Its base as black as night,
Its top of pale and livid green,
Its crest of awful white,
Like Neptune with a leprosy,—
And so it rear’d upright!

With quaking sails, the little boat
Climb’d up the foaming heap;
With quaking sails it paused awhile;
At balance on the steep;
Then rushing down the nether slope,
Plunged with a dizzy sweep!

Look, how a horse, made mad with fear,
Disdains his careful guide;
So now the headlong headstrong boat,
Unmanaged, turns aside,
And straight presents her reeling flank
Against the swelling tide!

The gusty wind assaults the sail;
Her ballast lies a-lee!
The sheet’s to windward taught and stiff!
Oh! the Lively—where is she?
Her capsiz’d keel is in the foam,
Her pennon’s in the sea!

The wild gull, sailing overhead,
Three times beheld emerge
The head of that bold mariner,
And then she screamed his dirge!
For he had sunk within his grave,
Lapp’d in a shroud of surge!

The ensuing wave, with horrid foam,
Rush’d o’er and cover’d all,—
The jolly boatman’s drowning scream
Was smother’d by the squall,—
Heaven never heard his cry, nor did
The ocean heed his caul.

’Twas off the Wash—the sun went down—the sea looked black and grim,
For stormy clouds, with murky fleece, were mustering at the brim;
Titanic shades! enormous gloom!—as if the solid night
Of Erebus rose suddenly to seize upon the light!
It was a time for mariners to bear a wary eye,
With such a dark conspiracy between the sea and sky!

Down went my helm—close reef’d—the tack held freely in my hand—
With ballast snug—I put about, and scudded for the land.
Loud hiss’d the sea beneath her lee—my little boat flew fast,
But faster still the rushing storm came borne upon the blast.
Lord! what a roaring hurricane beset the straining sail!
What furious sleet, with level drift, and fierce assaults of hail!
What darksome caverns yawn’d before! what jagged steeps behind!
Like battle-steeds, with foamy manes, wild tossing in the wind.
Each after each sank down astern, exhausted in the chase,
But where it sank another rose and gallop’d in its place;
As black as night—they turned to white, and cast against the cloud
A snowy sheet, as if each surge upturn’d a sailor’s shroud:—
Still flew my boat; alas! alas! her course was nearly run!
Behold yon fatal billow rise—ten billows heap’d in one!
With fearful speed the dreary mass came rolling, rolling, fast,
As if the scooping sea contain’d one only wave at last!
Still on it came, with horrid roar, a swift pursuing grave;
It seem’d as though some cloud had turned its hugeness to a wave!
Its briny sleet began to beat beforehand in my face—
I felt the rearward keel begin to climb its swelling base!
I saw its alpine hoary head impending over mine!
Another pulse—and down it rush’d—an avalanche of brine!
Brief pause had I, on God to cry, or think of wife and home;
The waters closed—and when I shriek’d, I shriek’d below the
foam!
Beyond that rush I have no hint of any after deed—
For I was tossing on the waste, as senseless as a weed.
* * * * * *
“Where am I? in the breathing world, or in the world of death?”
With sharp and sudden pang I drew another birth of breath;
My eyes drank in a doubtful light, my ears a doubtful sound—
And was that ship a real ship whose tackle seem’d around?
A moon, as if the earthly moor, was shining up aloft;
But were those beams the very beams that I had seen so oft?
A face, that mock’d the human face, before me watch’d alone;
But were those eyes the eyes of man that look’d against my own?

Oh! never may the moon again disclose me such a sight
As met my gaze, when first I look’d, on that accursed night!
I’ve seen a thousand horrid shapes begot of fierce extremes
Of fever; and most frightful things have haunted in my dreams—
Hyenas—cats—blood-loving bats and apes with hateful stare—
Pernicious snakes, and shaggy bulls—the lion, and she-bear—
Strong enemies, with Judas looks, of treachery and spite—
Detested features, hardly dimm’d and banish’d by the light!
Pale-sheeted ghosts, with gory locks, upstarting from their tombs—
All phantasies and images that flit in midnight glooms—
Hags, goblins, demons, lemures, have made me all aghast,—
But nothing like that Grimly One who stood beside the mast!

His cheek was black—his brow was black—his eyes and hair as dark:
His hand was black, and where it touch’d, it left a sable mark;
His throat was black, his vest the same, and when I look’d beneath,
His breast was black—all, all was black, except his grinning teeth.
His sooty crew were like in hue, as black as Afric slaves!
Oh, horror! e’en the ship was black that plough’d the inky waves!

“Alas!” I cried, “for love of truth and blessed mercy’s sake,
Where am I? in what dreadful ship? upon what dreadful lake?
What shape is that, so very grim, and black as any coal?
It is Mahound, the Evil One, and he has gained my soul!
Oh, mother dear! my tender nurse! dear meadows that beguil’d
My happy days, when I was yet a little sinless child,—
My mother dear—my native fields, I never more shall see:
I’m sailing in the Devil’s Ship, upon the Devil’s Sea!”

Loud laugh’d that Sable Mariner, and loudly in return
His sooty crew sent forth a laugh that rang from stem to stern—
A dozen pair of grimly cheeks were crumpled on the nonce—
As many sets of grinning teeth came shining out at once:
A dozen gloomy shapes at once enjoy’d the merry fit,
With shriek and yell, and oaths as well, like Demons of the Pit.
They crow’d their fill, and then the Chief made answer for the whole;—
“Our skins,” said he, “are black ye see, because we carry coal;
You’ll find your mother sure enough, and see your native fields—
For this here ship has pick’d you up—the Mary Ann of Shields!”

The arm that used to take your arm
Is took to Dr. Vyse;
And both my legs are gone to walk
The hospital at Guy’s.

I vow’d that you should have my hand,
But fate gives us denial;
You’ll find it there, at Doctor Bell’s,
In spirits and a phial.

As for my feet, the little feet
You used to call so pretty,
There’s one, I know, in Bedford Row,
The t’other’s in the city.

I can’t tell where my head is gone,
But Dr. Carpuc can:
As for my trunk, it’s all pack’d up
To go by Pickford’s van.

I wish you’d go to Mr. P.
And save me such a ride;
I don’t half like the outside place,
They’ve took for my inside.

The cock it crows—I must be gone!
My William, we must part!
But I’ll be your’s in death, altho’
Sir Astley has my heart.

Don’t go to weep upon my grave,
And think that there I be;
They haven’t left an atom there
Of my anatomie.

WELL!—--Monsieur Brunel,
How prospers now thy mighty undertaking,
To join by a hollow way the Bankside friends
Of Rotherhithe, and Wapping,—
Never be stopping,
But poking, groping, in the dark keep making
An archway, underneath the Dabs and Gudgeons,
For Collier men and pitchy old Curmudgeons,
To cross the water in inverse proportion,
Walk under steam-boats under the keel’s ridge,
To keep down all extortion,
And without sculls to diddle London Bridge!
In a fresh hunt, a new Great Bore to worry,
Thou didst to earth thy human terriers follow,
Hopeful at last from Middlesex to Surrey,
To give us the “View hollow.”
In short it was thy aim, right north and south,
To put a pipe into old Thames’s mouth;
Alas! half-way thou hadst proceeded, when
Old Thames, through roof, not water-proof,
Came, like “a tide in the affairs of men;”
And with a mighty stormy kind of roar,
Reproachful of thy wrong,
Burst out in that old song
Of Incledon’s, beginning “Cease, rude Bore”—
Sad is it, worthy of one’s tears,
Just when one seems the most successful,
To find one’s self o’er head and ears
In difficulties most distressful!
Other great speculations have been nursed,
Till want of proceeds laid them on a shelf;
But thy concern was at the worst,
When it began to liquidate itself!
But now Dame Fortune has her false face hidden,
And languishes thy Tunnel,—so to paint,
Under a slow incurable complaint,
Bed-ridden!

Why, when thus Thames—bed-bother’d—why repine!
Do try a spare bed at the Serpentine!
Yet let none think thee daz’d, or craz’d, or stupid;
And sunk beneath thy own and Thames’s craft;
Let them not style thee some Mechanic Cupid
Pining and pouting o’er a broken shaft!
I’ll tell thee with thy tunnel what to do;
Light up thy boxes, build a bin or two,
The wine does better than such water trades:
Stick up a sign—the sign of the Bore’s Head;
I’ve drawn it ready for thee in black lead,
And make thy cellar subterrane,—Thy Shades?

TO whom the Twelve Months, that have recently pass’d,
Were as harsh as a prejudiced jury,—
Still, fill to the Future! and join in our chime,
The regrets of remembrance to cozen,
And having obtained a New Trial of Time,
Shout in hopes of a kindlier dozen!
Hip! Hip! and Hurrah!

TO Waterloo, with sad ado,
And many a sigh and groan,
Amongst the dead, came Patty Head,
To look for Peter Stone.

“O prithee tell, good sentinel,
If I shall find him here?
I’m come to weep upon his corse,
My Ninety-Second dear!

“Into our town a sergeant came
With ribands all so fine,
A-flaunting in his cap—alas,
His bow enlisted mine!

“They taught him how to turn his toes,
And stand as stiff as starch;
I thought that it was love and May,
But it was love and March!

“A sorry March indeed to leave
The friends he might have kep’,—
No March of Intellect it was,
But quite a foolish step.

“O prithee tell, good sentinel,
If hereabout he lies?
I want a corpse with reddish hair,
And very sweet blue eyes.”

Her sorrow on the sentinel
Appear’d to deeply strike:—
“Walk in,” he said, “among the dead,
And pick out which you like.”

And soon she pick’d out Peter Stone,
Half turn’d into a corse;
A cannon was his bolster, and
His mattrass was a horse.

“O Peter Stone, O Peter Stone,
Lord, here has been a skrimmage!
What have they done to your poor breast,
That used to hold my image?”

“O Patty Head, O Patty Head,
You’re come to my last kissing,
Before I’m set in the Gazette
As wounded, dead, and missing!

“Alas! a splinter of a shell
Right in my stomach sticks;
French mortars don’t agree so well
With stomachs as French bricks.

“This very night a merry dance
At Brussels was to be;—
Instead of opening a ball,
A ball has opened me.

“Its billet every bullet has,
And well it does fulfil it;—
I wish mine hadn’t come so straight,
But been a ‘crooked billet.’

“And then there came a cuirassier
And cut me on the chest;—
He had no pity in his heart,
For he had steel’d his breast.

“Next thing a lancer, with his lance,
Began to thrust away;
I call’d for quarter, but, alas!
It was not Quarter-day.

“He ran his spear right through my arm,
Just here above the joint:—
O Patty dear, it was no joke,
Although it had a point.

“With loss of blood I fainted off,
As dead as women do—
But soon by charging over me,
The Coldstream brought me to.

With kicks and cuts, and batts and blows,
I throb and ache all over;
I’m quite convinc’d the field of Mars
Is not a field of clover!

“O why did I a soldier turn
For any royal Guelph?
I might have been a butcher, and
In business for myself!

“O why did I the bounty take
(And here he gasp’d for breath)
My shillingsworth of ‘list is nail’d
Upon the door of death!

“Without a coffin I shall lie
And sleep my sleep eternal:
Not ev’n a shell—my only chance
Of being made a Kernel!

“O Patty dear, our wedding bells
Will never ring at Chester!
Here I must lie in Honour’s bed,
That isn’t worth a tester!

“Farewell, my regimental mates,
With whom I used to dress!
My corps is changed, and I am now
In quite another mess.

“Farewell, my Patty dear, I have
No dying consolations,
Except, when I am dead, you’ll go
And see th’ Illuminations.”

THOSE who much read advertisements and bills
Must have seen puffs of Cockle’s Pills,
Call’d Anti-bilious—
Which some Physicians sneer at, supercilious,
But which we are assured, if timely taken,
May save your liver and bacon;
Whether or not they really give one ease,
I, who have never tried,
Will not decide;
But no two things in union go like these—
Viz.—Quacks and Pills—save Ducks and Pease.
Now Mrs. W. was getting sallow,
Her lilies not of the white kind, but yellow,
And friends portended was preparing for
A human Pâté Périgord;
She was, indeed, so very far from well,
Her Son, in filial fear, procured a box
Of those said pellets to resist Bile’s shocks,
And—tho’ upon the ear it strangely knocks—
To save her by a Cockle from a shell!
But Mrs. W., just like Macbeth,
Who very vehemently bids us “throw
Bark to the Bow-wows,” hated physic so,
It seem’d to share “the bitterness of Death:”
Rhubarb—Magnesia—Jalap, and the kind—
Senna—Steel—Assa-fœtida, and Squills—
Powder or Draught—but least her throat inclined
To give a course to Boluses or Pills;
No—not to save her life, in lung or lobe,
For all her lights’ or all her liver’s sake,
Would her convulsive thorax undertake,
Only one little uncelestial globe!
’Tis not to wonder at, in such a case,
If she put by the pill-box in a place
For linen rather than for drugs intended—
Yet for the credit of the pills let’s say
After they thus were stow’d away,
Some of the linen mended;
But Mrs. W. by disease’s dint.
Kept getting still more yellow in her tint,
When lo! her second son, like elder brother,
Marking the hue on the parental gills,
Brought a new charge of Anti-tumeric Pills,
To bleach the jaundiced visage of his Mother—
Who took them—in her cupboard—like the other.

“Deeper and deeper, still,” of course,
The fatal colour daily grew in force;
Till daughter W. newly come from Rome,
Acting the self-same filial, pillial, part,
To cure Mamma, another dose brought home
Of Cockle’s;—not the Cockles of her heart!
These going where the others went before,
Of course she had a very pretty store;
And then—some hue of health her cheek adorning,
The Medicine so good must be,
They brought her dose on dose, when she
Gave to the up-stairs cupboard, “night and morning.”
Till wanting room at last, for other stocks,
Out of the window one fine day she pitch’d
The pillage of each box, and quite enrich’d
The feed of Mister Burrell’s hens and cocks,—
A little Barber of a by-gone day,
Over the way,
Whose stock in trade, to keep the least of shops,
Was one great head of Kemble,—that is, John,
Staring in plaster, with a Brutus on,
And twenty little Bantam fowls—with crops.
Little Dame W. thought when through the sash
She gave the physic wings,
To find the very things
So good for bile, so bad for chicken rash,
For thoughtless cock, and unreflecting pullet!
But while they gather’d up the nauseous nubbles,
Each peck’d itself into a peck of troubles,
And brought the hand of Death upon its gullet.
They might as well have addled been, or ratted,
For long before the night—ah woe betide
The Pills! each suicidal Bantam died
Unfatted!

Think of poor Burrell’s shock,
Of Nature’s debt to see his hens all payers,
And laid in death as Everlasting Layers,
With Bantam’s small Ex-Emperor, the Cock,
In ruffled plumage and funereal hackle,
Giving, undone by Cockle, a last Cackle!
To see as stiff as stone, his un’live stock,
It really was enough to move his block.
Down on the floor he dash’d, with horror big,
Mr. Beh’s third wife’s mother’s coachman’s wig;
And with a tragic stare like his own Kemble,
Burst out with natural emphasis enough,
And voice that grief made tremble,
Into that very speech of sad Macduff—
“What!—all my pretty chickens and their dam,
At one fell swoop!—
Just when I’d bought a coop
To see the poor lamented creatures cram!

After a little of this mood,
And brooding over the departed brood,
With razor he began to ope each craw,
Already turning black, as black as coals;
When lo! the undigested cause he saw—
“Pison’d by goles!”

To Mrs. W.’s luck a contradiction,
Her window still stood open to conviction;
And by short course of circumstantial labour,
He fixed the guilt upon his adverse neighbour;—
Lord! how he rail’d at her: declaring now,
He’d bring an action ere next Term of Hilary,
Then, in another moment, swore a vow,
He’d make her do pill-penance in the pillory!
She, meanwhile distant from the dimmest dream
Of combating with guilt, yard-arm or arm-yard,
Lapp’d in a paradise of tea and cream;
When up ran Betty with a dismal scream—
“Here’s Mr. Burrell, ma’am, with all his farm-yard!”
Straight in he came, unbowing and unbending,
With all the warmth that iron and a barber
Can harbour;
To dress the head and front of her offending,
The fuming phial of his wrath uncorking;
In short, he made her pay him altogether,
In hard cash, very hard, for ev’ry feather,
Charging of course, each Bantam as a Dorking;
Nothing could move him, nothing made him supple,
So the sad dame unpocketing her loss,
Had nothing left but to sit hands across,
And see her poultry “going down ten couple.”

Now birds by poison slain,
As venom’d dart from Indian’s hollow cane,
Are edible; and Mrs. W.’s thrift,—
She had a thrifty vein—
Destined one pair for supper to make shift,—
Supper as usual at the hour of ten:
But ten o’clock arrived and quickly pass’d,
Eleven—twelve—and one o’clock at last,
Without a sign of supper even then!
At length the speed of cookery to quicken,
Betty was call’d, and with reluctant feet,
Came up at a white heat—
“Well, never I see chicken like them chickens!
My saucepans, they have been a pretty while in ’em!
Enough to stew them, if it comes to that,
To flesh and bones, and perfect rags; but drat
Those Anti-biling Pills! there is no bile in ’em!”

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