THOMAS HOOD

1799-1845

ONE of the uncrowned kings; the Heir bred, like Victor Hugo's L'Homme qui Rit, to suppose that he was a clown! If only he had known that his work in life was pure poetry— that he was a poet born! Till he died he never took rank as a poet. Scarcely would he have recognized himself as one. Although throughout his life he wrote poems, most of them received with favour, some with applause, they came as separate phenomena. His profession continued to be that of wit and humorist. The productions themselves, many as they were, did not muster together, and acclaim him for their chief and captain. Not until he had passed away, after a life of grinding care and poverty, were his graver poems, which in general reflect his adversities in their gloom, given to the world in a collected form. The utmost their editor hoped for them then was, that in any future recital of the names of writers who have contributed to the Stock of genuine English poetry, Thomas Hood might find honourable mention'.

6

The commendation is altogether too apologetic. It is pitched in a key far too low to satisfy Hood's sincere admirers. Poets and poems are divisible into two primary classes. There are those that the kingdom of poetry, though it is willing to admit them, could do without, and those that it could not. Whatever Hood's particular rank in the indispensable order, it is to this that he belongs. As I glance over the two volumes which comprise the body of his verse, serious and humorous, I am constantly lighting

upon pieces which it would be impossible to omit without the creation of a painful, visible gap in literature.

The Song of the Shirt is in possession of a niche which could not otherwise be filled :

'Oh! but to breathe the breath
Of the cowslip and primrose sweet—
With the sky above my head,
And the grass beneath my feet.
For only one short hour

To feel as I used to feel,

Before I knew the woes of want
And the walk that costs a meal!

Oh! but for one short hour!

A respite however brief!

No blessed leisure for Love or Hope,
But only time for Grief!

A little weeping would ease my heart,
But in their briny bed

My tears must stop, for every drop
Hinders needle and thread!' 1

A second would stand painfully empty without, to occupy it, the Dream of Eugene Aram ;-the whole, down to the abrupt shuddering close:

That very night, while gentle sleep

The urchin eye-lids kiss'd,

Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn,

Through the cold and heavy mist;

And Eugene Aram walk'd between,
With gyves upon his wrist.2

Yet another place he has permanently appropriated by his haunting Haunted House-murder-haunted-with its rusty stains,

Obscurely spotted to the door, and thence
With mazy doubles to the grated casement-
Oh what a tale they told of fear intense,
Of horror and amazement !

What human creature in the dead of night

Had coursed like hunted hare that cruel distance ?
Had sought the door, the window, in his flight,

Striving for dear existence ?

3

I do not claim on his behalf a monopoly of capacity for measuring against one another the powers of Earth and Hell; but I know of none but Burns who equals him in the reconciliation, for the purpose, of the tragic and the comic. Mark the trooping of monsters to avenge the attack of the Brocken forgemen upon Hell's lord :

Awful coveys of terrible things,

With forked tongues and venomous stings,
On hagweed, broomsticks, and leathern wings,
Are hovering round the Hut!

Shapes, that within the focus bright

Of the Forge, are like shadows and blots;
But, farther off, in the shades of night,
Clothed with their own phosphoric light,
Are seen in the darkest spots.

Sounds! that fill the air with noises,
Strange and indescribable voices,

From Hags, in a diabolical clatter-
Cats that spit curses, and apes that chatter
Scraps of cabalistical matter-

Owls that screech, and dogs that yell—
Skeleton hounds that will never be fatter-
All the domestic tribes of Hell,
Shrieking for flesh to tear and tatter,
Bones to shatter,

And limbs to scatter,

And who it is that must furnish the latter
Those blue-looking men know well! 4

As I know of few things in poetry more grotesquely terrible than the burning of Satan to a cinder, so I feel the singularity of Hood's gift for eliciting the poetry of everyday life. How dainty is the pathos employed on a common death-bed !

We watch'd her breathing thro' the night,

Her breathing soft and low,

As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.

So silently we seem'd to speak,
So slowly moved about,

As we had lent her half our powers
To eke her living out.

Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied-
We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.

For when the morn came dim and sad,
And chill with early showers,
Her quiet eyelids closed-she had
Another morn than ours.5

Perfect every line. We owe more gratitude for this investiture of simple death-such as it is not beyond the least of us to aspire to-with a quiet beauty, than for dithyrambs over a Conqueror's bier. That indeed is among Hood's merits, which he shares with the princes of song, that, though he can rise to the heights, he sees the beauty of plain things. A child's embrace of its mother is as ordinary as dying; and see how much it too suggests to him!

Love thy mother, little one!

Kiss and clasp her neck again ;-
Hereafter she may have a son

Will kiss and clasp her neck in vain.
Love thy mother, little one!

Gaze upon her living eyes,

And mirror back her love for thee ;-
Hereafter thou may'st shudder sighs
To meet them when they cannot see.
Gaze upon her living eyes!

Press her lips the while they glow
With love that they have often told ;-
Hereafter thou mayst press in woe,

And kiss them till thine own are cold.

Press her lips the while they glow! 6

Really there is nothing, it might be thought, in his recollections of his boyhood, with which it was worth troubling the world; perhaps, even himself; and yet the sweetness for us all!

I remember, I remember,

The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon,
Nor brought too long a day,
But now,
I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away!

I remember, I remember,
The roses, red and white,
The violets, and the lily-cups,
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set

The laburnum on his birthday,—
The tree is living yet!

I remember, I remember,

Where I was used to swing,

And thought the air must rush as fresh

To swallows on the wing;

My spirit flew in feathers then,

That is so heavy now,

And summer pools could hardly cool

The fever on my brow!

I remember, I remember,

The fir-trees dark and nigh;

I used to think their slender tops

Were close against the sky;