c>^' ^^ ^s<< .^'^ ^< '<^ v^^ .1^' V 0^ ^7—z.yt.'''^^^ ^"^^-t^-^t.^ ^^z-^^^---^ X/;**'^- THE Poetical Works / OF THOxMAS HOOD WITH A ME, NEW YORK: JAIMES MILLER, G47 BROADWAY. 1871. \ By Tran3r?r NIAR 15 19i? '} CONTENTS. YOL. I. Memoir of the Author vii The Pica of the Midsummer Fairies 13 Hero and Leander 53 Lvcus, the Centaur • 83 The Two Peacocks of Bedfont 101 The Two Swans 108 The Dream of Eugene Aram 118 Tlie EhTi Tree , ... 125 The Haunted House 140 The Bridge of Sighs 151 /^he Song of the Shirt 154 The Ladv's Dream 157 The Workhouse Clock 160 The Lay of the Labourer 163 The Lee-Shore 166 The Death-Bed 167 Lines on seeing my Wife and two Children sleeping in the same Chamber 167 To my Daughter on her Birthday 168 To a Child embracing his Mother 169 Stanzas ; 170 To a False Friend 171 The Poet's Portion 171 Song 172 Time, Hope, and Memory 173 Flowers 174 To 175 To 175 To 176 ,V CONTENTS. To m 178 To . Composed at Kotterdam Serenade I'^S Verses iii an Album ISO Ballad 181 Ballad 181 Ballad 182 Ballad 183 The Romance of Cologne 185 The Key ; A Moorish Romance 186 Fair Ines 191 The Departure of Summer 193 Ode: Autumn 197 Autumn 199 Autumn 200 Song : for Music 200 Song 201 Hymn to the Sun 202 To a Cold Beauty 203 Ruth 204 The Sea of Death 204 I Remember, I Remember 206 The Water Lady , 207 The Exile 208 To an Absentee 208 Ode to the Moon 209 The Forsaken , 212 Ode to Melancholy 212 On a Native Singer , 216 Guido and Marina 217 Answer to a Lady 221 ^ SONNETS. To the Ocean 222 Lear 222 Sonnet to a Sonnet 223 False Poets and True 223 To 224 For the 14th of February 225 To a Sleeping Child 225 'Jo .* a Sleeping Child ' 226 *' The world is with me and its many cares." 226 Written in a Volume of Shakspeare 227 'J'o Fancy. 227 To an Enthusiast - [ . ] 228 " It is not death, that ." .* sometime in a sigh." . 229 " By ev'ry sweet tradition of true hearts.". ..'. 229 . CO^! TEXTS. V Pajre On receiving a Gift 230 Silence 230 " The cur?e of Adam, the old curse of all." 231 " Love, dearest Lady, such as I would speak." 2S1 ^liss Kilmanse<rs find her Precious Leg 232 A Tale of a Trumpet 303 The Irish Schoolmaster 326 The Forge 335 The Last Man 348 The Season 355 Love 356 Faithless Sally Brown 357 Faithless Nelly Gray 359 Bianca's Dream 361 The Demon-Ship 370 Spring 375 The Flower 375 The Sea-SpeU 377 A Sailor's Apology for Bow-Legs 381 The Bachelor's Dream 384 The Wee Man '. 386 Etching Moralized 388 Death's Ramble 396 The Progi-ess of Art 398 A Fairy" Tale 401 The Turtles 405 The Desert-Born 410 Love Lane . 421 Domestic Poems 423 Hymeneal Retrospections 423 " The sun was slumbering in the west." 424 A Parental Ode to ray Son, aged three years and t ve months 425 A Serenade 427 A Plain Direction 428 A Table of Errata 432 A Row at the Oxford Arms 435 Equestrian Courtship 442 Au Open Question . 443 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. Br Richard Monckton Milnes. Thomas Hood, himiorist and poet, was born at Llondon in 1798. He was the son of Mr. Hood, bookseller, of the firm of Vernor and Hood, a man of intelligence, and the author of two novels. " Next to being a citizen of the world," writes Thomas Hood in his Literary Reniiniscencen^ " it must be the best thing to be born a citizen of the world's greatest city." The best incident of his boyhood was his instruction by a schoolmaster who appreciated his talents, and, as he says, " made him feel it impossible not to take an interest in learning while he seemed so interested in teaching," Under the care of this " decayed dominie," whom he has so atTectionately recorded, he earned a few guineas—his first literary fee—by revising for the press a new edition of Paul and Virginia. Admitted soon after into the counting-house of a friend of his family, he " turned his stool into a Pegasus on three legs, every foot, of course, being a dactyl or a spondee ; " but the uncongenial pro- fession afiected his health, which was never stiong, and he was transferred to the care of a relation at Dundee. He has graj)hically described his un- conditional rejection by this inhospitable personage, and the circumstances under which he tbund him- self in a strange town without an acquaintance, with the most sympathetic nature, anxous for in- vVu MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. tellectual and moral culture, but without guidance- instruction, or control. This self-dependence, how- be- ever, suited the originality of his character : he came a large and indiscriminate reader, and before lono- contributed humorous and poetical articles to the" provincial newspapers and magazines. As a proof of the seriousness with which he regarded the literary vocation, it may be mentioned that he used to write out his poems in printed characters, believing that that process best enabled him to understand his own peculiarities and faults, and probably unconscious that Coleridge had recom- mended some such method of criticism when he said he thought " print settles it." His modest judgment of his own abilities, how- ever, deterred him from literature as a profession, and on his return to London he applied himself assiduously to the art of engraving, in which he acquired a skill that in after years became a most valuable assistant to his literary labors, and enabled him to illustrate his various humours and fancies by a profusion of quaint devices, which not only repeated to the eye the impressions of the text, but, by suggesting amusing analogies and contrasts, add- ed considerably to the sense and effect of the work. In 1821, Mr. John Scott, the editor of the Lon- don Magazine, was killed in a duel, and that peri- odical passed into the hands of some friends of Mr. Hood, who proposed to him to take a part in its publication. His installation into this congenial post at once introduced him to the best literary society of the time ; and in becoming the associate of such men as Charles Lamb, Cary, De Quincy, Allan Cunningham, Proctor, Talfourd, Hartley Col- eridge, the peasant-poet Clare, and other contribu- tors to that remarkable miscellany, he gradually de- veloped his own intellectual powers, and enjoyed that happy intercourse with superior minds for which his cordial and genial character was so well adapted. MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 15 and -whiph he lias described in lils best manner, in several chapters of Hood's Own. Odes and Ad' dresses, his first work, were written about this time, in conjunction with his brother-in-law, Mr. J. H. Reynolds, the friends of Kent«!; and it is ajireeable to find Sir Walter Srott acknowled^intr the uift of the work with no formal exjiressions of oratifica- tion, but " wishinii the unknowu author jrood health, jrood fbi-tune, and whatever other irood things can best support and encourage his lively vein of in- offensive and humorous satires." Whi/ns and Odd- ities, National Tales, Tijlney HalL a novel, and The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, i'o\\o\ye(\. i In these works the humorous faculty not oidy predominated, but expressed itself with a freshness, originality, and power, which the poetical element could not claim. There was much true poetry in the verse, and much sound sense and keen observation in the prose of these works; but the poetical feeling and lyrical facility of the one, and the more solid qual- ities of the other, seemed best employed Avhen they were subservient to his rapid Avit, and to the in- genious coruscations of his fancy. N This impression was confirmed by the series of the Comic Annual, a kind of publication at that time popular, which Mr. Hood undertook and continued, almost unas- sisted, for several years. Under that somewhat frivolous title he treated all the leading events of the day in a fine spirit of caricature, entirely free from grossness and vulgarity, without a trait of per- sonal malice, and with an under-current of true sympathy and honest purpose that will preserve these papers, like the sketches of Hogarth, long after the events and manners they illustrate have passed from the minds of men. But just as the agreeable jester rose into the earnest satirist, one of the most striking peculianties of his style be- came a more manifest defect. The attention of the . eader was distracted, and his good taste annoyed, — K MEMOIK OF THE AUTHOR. bv the incessant play upon words, of which Hood had written in his own vindication : " However critics may take offence, A double meaning has a double sense." Now it is true that the critic must be unconscious of some of the subtlest charms and nicest delicacies of language, who would exclude from humorous writing all those impressions and surprises which depend on the use of the diverse sense of words. The history, indeed, of many a word lies hid in its equivocal uses ; and it in no way derogates from the dignity of the highest poetry to gain strength and variety from the ingenious application of the same sounds to different senses, any more than from the contrivances of rhythm or the ac- companiment of imitative sounds. But when this habit becomes the characteristic of any wit, it is impossible to prevent it from degenerating into occasional buffoonery, and from supplying a cheap and ready resource, whenever the true vein oi humour becomes thin or rare.