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

OUR village, that’s to say not Miss Mitford’s village, but our village of Bullock Smithy,
Is come into by an avenue of trees, three oak pollards, two elders, and a withy;
And in the middle, there’s a green of about not exceeding an acre and a half;
It’s common to all, and fed off by nineteen cows, six ponies, three horses, five asses, two foals, seven pigs, and a calf!
Besides a pond in the middle, as is held by a similar sort of common law lease,
And contains twenty ducks, six drakes, three ganders, two dead dogs, four drown’d kittens, and twelve geese.
Of course the green’s cropt very close, and does famous for bowling when the little village boys play at cricket;
Only some horse, or pig, or cow, or great jackass is sure to come and stand right before the wicket.
There’s fifty-five private houses, let alone barns and workshops, and pig-sties, and poultry huts, and such-like sheds;
With plenty of public-houses—two Foxes, one Green Man, three Bunch of Grapes, one Crown, and six King’s Heads.
The Green Man is reckon’d the best, as the only one that for love or money can raise
A postilion, a blue jacket, two deplorable lame white horses, and a ramshackled “neat post-chaise.”
There’s one parish church for all the people, whatsoever may be their ranks in life or their degrees,
Except one very damp, small, dark, freezing-cold, little Methodist chapel of Ease;
And close by the church-yard, there’s a stone-mason’s yard, that when the time is seasonable
Will furnish with afflictions sore and marble urns and cherubims very low and reasonable.
There’s a cage, comfortable enough; I’ve been in it with Old Jack Jeffrey and Tom Pike;
For the Green Man next door will send you in ale, gin, or any thing else you like.
I can’t speak of the stocks, as nothing remains of them but the upright post;
But the pound is kept in repairs for the sake of Cob’s horse, as is always there almost.
There’s a smithy of course, where that queer sort of a chap in his way, Old Joe Bradley,
Perpetually hammers and stammers, for he stutters and shoes horses very badly.
There’s a shop of all sorts, that sells every thing, kept by the widow of Mr. Task;
But when you go there it’s ten to one she’s out of every thing you ask.
You’ll know her house by the swarm of boys, like flies, about the old sugary cask.
There are six empty houses, and not so well paper’d inside as out,
For bill-stickers won’t beware, but sticks notices of sales and election placards all about.
That’s the Doctor’s with a green door, where the garden pots in the windows is seen;
A weakly monthly rose that don’t blow, and a dead geranium, and a tea-plant with five black leaves and one green.
As for hollyoaks at the cottage doors, and honeysuckles and jasmines, you may go and whistle;
But the Tailor’s front garden grow two cabbages, a dock, a ha’porth of pennyroyal, two dandelions, and a thistle.
There are three small orchards—Mr. Busby’s the schoolmaster’s is the chief—
With two pear-trees that don’t bear; one plum and an apple, that every year is stripp’d by a thief.
There’s another small day-school too, kept by the respectable Mrs. Gaby;
A select establishment, for six little boys and one big, and four little girls and a baby.
There’s a rectory, with pointed gables and strange old chimneys that never smokes,
For the rector don’t live on his living like other Christian sort of folks;
There’s a barber’s once a week well filled with rough black-bearded shock-headed churls,
And a window with two feminine men’s heads, and two masculine ladies in false curls;
There’s a butcher’s and a carpenter’s and a plumber’s and a small green-grocer’s, and a baker
But he won’t bake on a Sunday, and there’s a sexton that’s a coal-merchant besides, and an undertaker;
And a toy-shop, but not a whole one, for a village can’t compare with the London shops;
One window sells drums, dolls, kites, carts, bats, Clout’s balls, and the other sells malt and hops.
And Mrs. Brown, in domestic economy not to be a bit behind her betters,
Lets her house to a milliner, a watchmaker, a rat-catcher, a cobbler, lives in it herself, and it’s the post-office for letters.
Now I’ve gone through all the village—ay, from end to end, save and except one more house,
But I haven’t come to that—and I hope I never shall—and that’s the Village Poor-House!

PAIR’D NOT MATCH’D.

OF wedded bliss
Bards sing amiss,
I cannot make a song of it;
For I am small,
My wife is tall,
And that’s the short and long of it.

When we debate
It is my fate
To always have the wrong of it;
For I am small,
And she is tall,
And that’s the short and long of it!

And when I speak
My voice is weak,
But hers—she makes a gong of it!
For I am small,
And she is tall,
And that’s the short and long of it!

She has, in brief,
Command in Chief,
And I’m but Aide-de-camp of it;
For I am small,
And she is tall,
And that’s the short and long of it!

She gives to me
The weakest tea,
And takes the whole Souchong of it;
For I am small,
And she is tall,
And that’s the short and long of it!

She’ll sometimes grip
My buggy whip,
And make me feel the thong of it;
For I am small
And she is tall,
And that’s the short and long of it!

Against my life
She’ll take a knife,
Or fork, and dart the prong of it;
For I am small,
And she is tall,
And that’s the short and long of it!

I sometimes think
I’ll take to drink,
And hector when I’m strong of it;
For I am small,
And she is tall,
And that’s the short and long of it!

O, if the bell
Would ring her knell,
I’d make a gay ding-dong of it;
For I am small,
And she is tall,
And that’s the short and long of it!

THE BOY AT THE NORE.

LITTLE BOY AT THE NORE LOQUITOR.

I’m the tight little Boy at the Nore,
In a sort of sea negus I dwells;
Half and half ’twixt saltwater and Port,
I’m reckon’d the first of the swells—
I’m the Boy at the Nore!

I lives with my toes to the flounders,
And watches through long days and nights;
Yet, cruelly eager, men look—
To catch the first glimpse of my lights—
I’m the Boy at the Nore.

I never gets cold in the head,
So my life on salt water is sweet,—
I think I owes much of my health
To being well used to wet feet—
As the Boy at the Nore.

There’s one thing, I’m never in debt:
Nay!—I liquidates more than I oughtor;[3]
So the man to beat Cits as goes by,
In keeping the head above water,
Is the Boy at the Nore.

I’ve seen a good deal of distress,
Lots of Breakers in Ocean’s Gazette;
They should do as I do—rise o’er all;
Aye, a good floating capital get,
Like the Boy at the Nore!

I’m a’ter the sailor’s own heart,
And cheers him, in deep water rolling;
And the friend of all friends to Jack Junk,
Ben Backstay, Tom Pipes, and Tom Bowling,
Is the Boy at the Nore!

Could I e’er but grow up, I’d be off
For a week to make love with my wheedles;
If the tight little boy at the Nore
Could but catch a nice girl at the Needles,
We’d have two at the Nore!

They thinks little of sizes on water,
On big waves the tiny one skulks,—
While the river has Men of War on it—
Yes—the Thames is oppressed with Great Hulks,
And the Boy’s at the Nore!

But I’ve done—for the water is heaving
Round my body, as though it would sink it!
And I’ve been so long pitching and tossing,
That sea-sick—you’d hardly now think it—
Is the Boy at the Nore!

THE SUPPER SUPERSTITION.

A PATHETIC BALLAD.

“The ship we pump’d till we could see
Old England from the tops;
When down she went with all our hands,
Right in the Channel’s Chops.

VII.

“Just give a look in Norey’s chart,
The very place it tells;
I think it says twelve fathom deep,
Clay bottom, mixed with shells.

VIII.

“Well, there we are till ‘hands aloft,’
We have at last a call;
The pug I had for brother Jim,
Kate’s parrot too, and all.

IX.

“But oh, my spirit cannot rest,
In Davy Jones’s sod,
Till I’ve appear’d to you and said,—
Don’t sup on that ‘ere Cod!

“You live on land, and little think
What passes in the sea;
Last Sunday week, at 2 P.M.
That Cod was picking me!

XI.

“Those oysters too, that look so plump,
And seem so nicely done,
They put my corpse in many shells,
Instead of only one.

XII.

“O, do not eat those oysters then,
And do not touch the shrimps;
When I was in my briny grave,
They suck’d my blood like imps!

XIII.

“Don’t eat what brutes would never eat,
The brutes I used to pat,
They’ll know the smell they used to smell;
Just try the dog and cat!”

XIV.

The Spirit fled—they wept his fate,
And cried, Alack, alack!
At last up started brother Jim,
“Let’s try if Jack was Jack!”

XV.

They call’d the Dog, they call’d the Cat,
And little Kitten too,
And down they put the Cod and sauce,
To see what brutes would do.

XVI.

Old Tray lick’d all the oysters up,
Puss never stood at crimps,
But munch’d the Cod—and little Kit
Quite feasted on the shrimps!

XVII.

The thing was odd, and minus Cod
And sauce, they stood like posts;
O, prudent folks, for fear of hoax,
Put no belief in Ghosts!

THE BROKEN DISH.

WHAT’S life but full of care and doubt,
With all its fine humanities,
With parasols we walk about,
Long pigtails and such vanities.

We plant pomegranate trees and things
And go in gardens sporting,
With toys and fans of peacocks’ wings,
To painted ladies courting.

We gather flowers of every hue,
And fish in boats for fishes,
Build summer-houses painted blue,—
But life’s as frail as dishes.

Walking about their groves of trees,
Blue bridges and blue rivers,
How little thought them two Chinese
They’d both be smash’d to shivers.

LITERARY AND LITERAL.

THE March of Mind upon its mighty stilts,
(A spirit by no means to fasten mocks on,)
In travelling through Berks, Beds, Notts, and Wilts,
Hants—Bucks, Herts, Oxon,

Got up a thing our ancestors ne’er thought on,
A thing that, only in our proper youth,
We should have chuckled at—in sober truth,
A Conversazione at Hog’s Norton!

A place whose native dialect, somehow,
Has always by an adage been affronted,
And that it is all gutturals, is now
Taken for grunted.

Conceive the snoring of a greedy swine,
The slobbering of a hungry Ursine Sloth—
If you have ever heard such creature dine—
And—for Hog’s Norton, make a mix of both!—

O shades of Shakspeare! Chaucer! Spenser!
Milton! Pope! Gray! Warton!
O Colman! Kenny! Planche! Poole! Peake!
Pocock! Reynolds! Morton!
O Grey! Peel! Sadler! Wilberforce! Burdett!
Hume! Wilmot Horton!
Think of your prose and verse, and worse—delivered in
Hog’s Norton!—

The founder of Hog’s Norton Athenæum
Framed her society
With some variety
From Mr. Roscoe’s Liverpool museum;
Not a mere pic-nic, for the mind’s repast,
But tempting to the solid knife-and-forker,
It held its sessions in the house that last
Had killed a porker.
It chanced one Friday,
One Farmer Grayley stuck a very big hog,
A perfect Gog or Magog of a pig-hog,
Which made of course a literary high day,—
Not that our Farmer was a man to go
With literary taste—so far from suiting ’em,
When he heard mention of Professor Crowe,
Or Lalla-Rookh, he always was for shooting ’em!
In fact in letters he was quite a log,
With him great Bacon
Was literally taken.
And Hogg—the Poet—nothing but a Hog!
As to all others on the list of Fame,
Although they were discuss’d and mention’d daily,
He only recognised one classic name,
And thought that she had hung herself—Miss Baillie!

To balance this, our Farmer’s only daughter
Had a great taste for the Castalian water—
A Wordsworth worshipper—a Southey wooer,—
(Though men that deal in water-colour cakes
May disbelieve the fact—yet nothing’s truer)
She got the bluer
The more she dipped and dabbled in the Lakes.
The secret truth is, Hope, the old deceiver,
At future Authorship was apt to hint,
Producing what some call the Type-us Fever,
Which means a burning to be seen in print.

Of learning’s laurels—Miss Joanna Baillie—
Of Mrs. Hemans—Mrs. Wilson—daily
Dreamt Anne Priscilla Isabella Grayley;
And Fancy hinting that she had the better
Of L.E.L. by one initial letter,
She thought the world would quite enraptur’d see

“Love Lays and Lyrics

BY

A P I G.”

Accordingly, with very great propriety,
She joined the H. N. B. and double S.,
That is,—Hog’s Norton Blue Stocking Society;
And saving when her Pa his pigs prohibited,
Contributed
Her pork and poetry towards the mess.
This feast, we said, one Friday was the case,
When farmer Grayley—from Macbeth to quote—
Screwing his courage to the “sticking place,”
Stuck a large knife into a grunter’s throat;—
A kind of murder that the law’s rebuke
Seldom condemns by shake of its peruke,
Showing the little sympathy of big-wigs
With pig-wigs!

The swine—poor wretch!—with nobody to speak for it,
And beg its life, resolved to have a squeak for it;
So—like the fabled swan—died singing out,
And, thus, there issued from the farmer’s yard
A note that notified without a card,
An invitation to the evening rout.

And when the time came duly,—“At the close of
The day,” as Beattie has it, “when the ham—”
Bacon and pork were ready to dispose of,
And pettitoes and chit’lings too, to cram,—
Walked in the H. N. B. and double S.’s,
All in appropriate and swinish dresses,
For lo! it is a fact, and not a joke,
Although the Muse might fairly jest upon it,
They came—each “Pig-faced Lady,” in that bonnet
We call a poke.

The Members all assembled thus, a rare woman
At pork and poetry was chosen chairwoman;—
In fact, the bluest of the Blues, Miss Ikey,
Whose whole pronunciation was so piggy,
She always named the authoress of “Psyche”—
As Mrs. Tiggey!

And now arose a question of some moment,—
What author for a lecture was the richer,
Bacon or Hogg? there were no votes for Beaumont,
But some for Flitcher;
While others, with a more sagacious reasoning,
Proposed another work,
And thought their pork
Would prove more relishing from Thomson’s Season-ing!

But practised in Shakspearian readings daily,—
O! Miss Macaulay! Shakspeare at Hog’s Norton!—
Miss Anne Priscilla Isabella Grayley
Selected him that evening to snort on.
In short, to make our story not a big tale,
Just fancy her exerting
Her talents, and converting
The Winter’s Tale to something like a pig-tale!
Her sister auditory
All sitting round, with grave and learned faces,
Were very plauditory,
Of course, and clapped her at the proper places.

Till fanned at once by fortune and the Muse,
She thought herself the blessedest of Blues.
But Happiness, alas! has blights of ill,
And Pleasure’s bubbles in the air explode;—
There is no travelling through life but still
The heart will meet with breakers on the road!

With that peculiar voice
Heard only from Hog’s Norton throats and noses,
Miss G., with Perdita, was making choice
Of buds and blossoms for her summer posies,
When coming to that line, where Proserpine
Lets fall her flowers from the wain of Dis;
Imagine this—
Uprose on his hind legs old Farmer Grayley,
Grunting this question for the club’s digestion,
“Do Dis’s Waggon go from the Ould Bäaley?”

THE SUB-MARINE.

IT was a brave and jolly wight,
His cheek was baked and brown,
For he had been in many climes
With captains of renown,
And fought with those who fought so well
At Nile and Camperdown.

His coat it was a soldier coat,
Of red with yellow faced,
But (merman-like) he look’d marine
All downward from the waist;
His trowsers were so wide and blue,
And quite in sailor taste!

He put the rummer to his lips,
And drank a jolly draught;
He raised the rummer many times—
And ever as he quaff’d,
The more he drank the more the ship
Seem’d pitching fore and aft!

The ship seem’d pitching fore and aft,
As in a heavy squall;
It gave a lurch and down he went,
Head-foremost in his fall!
Three times he did not rise, alas!
He never rose at all!

But down he went, right down at once
Like any stone he dived,
He could not see, or hear, or feel—
Of senses all deprived!
At last he gave a look around
To see where he arrived!

And all that he could see was green,
Sea-green on every hand!
And then he tried to sound beneath,
And all he felt was sand!
There he was fain to lie, for he
Could neither sit nor stand!

And lo! above his head there bent
A strange and staring lass;
One hand was in her yellow hair,
The other held a glass;
A mermaid she must surely be
If ever mermaid was!

Her fish-like mouth was open’d wide,
Her eyes were blue and pale,
Her dress was of the ocean green,
When ruffled by a gale;
Thought he “beneath that petticoat
She hides a salmon-tail!”

She look’d as siren ought to look,
A sharp and bitter shrew,
To sing deceiving lullabies
For mariners to rue,—
But when he saw her lips apart,
It chill’d him through and through!

With either hand he stopp’d his ears
Against her evil cry;
Alas, alas, for all his care,
His doom it seem’d to die,
Her voice went ringing through his head
It was so sharp and high!

He thrust his fingers farther in
At each unwilling ear,
But still in very spite of all,
The words were plain and clear;
“I can’t stand here the whole day long,
To hold your glass of beer!”

With open’d mouth and open’d eyes,
Up rose the Sub-marine,
And gave a stare to find the sands
And deeps where he had been:
There was no siren with her glass
No waters ocean-green!

The wet deception from his eyes
Kept fading more and more,
He only saw the bar-maid stand
With pouting lip before—
The small green parlour of the Ship,
And little sanded floor.

THE LAMENT OF TOBY,

THE LEARNED PIG.

O HEAVY day! O day of woe!
To misery a poster,
Why was I ever farrow’d—why
Not spitted for a roaster?

In this world, pigs, as well as men,
Must dance to fortune’s fiddlings,
But must I give the classics up,
For barley-meal and middlings?

Of what avail that I could spell
And read, just like my betters,
If I must come to this at last,
To litters, not to letters?

O, why are pigs made scholars of?
It baffles my discerning,
What griskens, fry, and chitterlings
Can have to do with learning.

Alas! my learning once drew cash,
But public fame’s unstable,
So I must turn a pig again,
And fatten for the table.

To leave my literary line
My eyes get red and leaky;
But Giblett doesn’t want me blue,
But red and white, and streaky.

Old Mullins used to cultivate
My learning like a gard’ner;
But Giblett only thinks of lard,
And not of Doctor Lardner!

He does not care about my brain
The value of two coppers,
All that he thinks about my head
Is, how I’m off for choppers.

Of all my literary kin
A farewell must be taken,
Good-bye to the poetic Hogg!
The philosophic Bacon!

Day after day my lessons fade,
My intellect gets muddy;
A trough I have, and not a desk,
A sty—and not a study!

Another little month, and then
My progress ends like Bunyan’s;
The seven sages that I loved
Will be chopp’d up with onions!

Then over head and ears in brine
They’ll souse me, like a salmon,
My mathematics turn to brawn,
My logic into gammon.

My Hebrew will all retrograde,
Now I’m put up to fatten;
My Greek, it will all go to grease;
The Dogs will have my Latin!

Farewell to Oxford!—and to Bliss!
To Milman, Crowe, and Glossop,—
I now must be content with chats,
Instead of learned gossip!

Farewell to “Town!” farewell to “Gown!”
I’ve quite outgrown the latter,—
Instead of Trencher-cap my head
Will soon be in a platter!

O why did I at Brazen-Nose
Rout up the roots of knowledge?
A butcher that can’t read will kill
A pig that’s been to college!

For sorrow I could stick myself,
But conscience is a clasher;
A thing that would be rash in man,
In me would be a rasher!

One thing I ask when I am dead,
And past the Stygian ditches—
And that is, let my schoolmaster
Have one of my two flitches:

’Twas he who taught my letters so
I ne’er mistook or miss’d ’em,
Simply by ringing at the nose,
According to Bell’s system.

PAIR’D NOT MATCH’D.

THE BOY AT THE NORE.

LITTLE BOY AT THE NORE LOQUITOR.

THE SUPPER SUPERSTITION.

A PATHETIC BALLAD.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

THE BROKEN DISH.

LITERARY AND LITERAL.

“Love Lays and Lyrics

BY

A P I G.”

THE SUB-MARINE.

THE LAMENT OF TOBY,

THE LEARNED PIG.

MY SON AND HEIR.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.