The complete poetical works of Thomas Hood

The Moon—who does not love the silver moon,
In all her fantasies and all her phases?
Whether full-orb'd in the nocturnal noon,
Shining in all the dewdrops on the daisies,
To light the tripping Fairies in their mazes,
Whilst stars are winking at the pranks of Puck;
Or huge and red, as on brown sheaves she gazes;
Or new and thin, when coin is turn'd for luck;—
Who will not say that Dian is a Duck?

But, oh! how tender, beautiful, and sweet,
When in her silent round, serene, and clear,
By assignation loving fancies meet,
To recompense the pangs of absence drear!
So Ellen, dreaming of Lorenzo, dear,
But distant from the city mapp'd by Mogg,
Still saw his image in that silver sphere,
Plain as the Man with lantern, bush, and dog,
That used to set our ancestors a-gog.

And so she told him in a pretty letter,
That came to hand exactly as Saint Meg's
Was striking ten—eleven had been better;
For then he might have eaten six more eggs,
And both of the bedevill'd turkey-legs,
With relishes from East, West, North, and South,
Draining, beside, the teapot to the dregs;
Whereas a man, whose heart is in his mouth,
Is rather spoilt for hunger and for drouth.

And so the kidneys, broiling hot, were wasted;
The brawn—it never enter'd in his thought;
The grated Parmesan remain'd untasted;
The potted shrimps were left as they were bought,
The capelings stood as merely good for nought,
The German sausage did not tempt him better,
Whilst Juno, licking her poor lips, was taught
There's neither bone nor skin about a letter,
Gristle, nor scalp, that one can give a setter.

Heav'n bless the man who first devised a mail!
Heav'n bless that public pile which stands concealing
The Goldsmith's front with such a solid veil!
Heav'n bless the Master, and Sir Francis Freeling,

329

The drags, the nags, the leading or the wheeling,
The whips, the guards, the horns, the coats of scarlet,
The boxes, bags, those evening bells a-pealing!
Heav'n bless, in short, each posting thing, and varlet,
That helps a Werter to a sigh from Charlotte.

So felt Lorenzo as he oped the sheet,
Where, first, the darling signature he kiss'd,
And then, recurring to its contents sweet
With thirsty eyes, a phrase I must enlist,
He gulp'd the words to hasten to their gist;
In mortal ecstacy his soul was bound—
When, lo! with features all at once a-twist,
He gave a whistle, wild enough in sound
To summon Faustus's Infernal Hound!

Alas! what little miffs and tiffs in love,
A snubbish word, or pouting look mistaken,
Will loosen screws with sweethearts hand and glove,
Oh! love, rock firm when chimney-pots were shaken,
A pettish breath will into huffs awaken,
To spit like hump-back'd cats, and snarling Towzers!
Till hearts are wreck'd and founder'd, and forsaken,
As ships go to Old Davy, Lord knows how, sirs,
While heav'n is blue enough for Dutchmen's trowsers!

‘The moon's at full, love, and I think of you’—
Who would have thought that such a kind P.S.
Could make a man turn white, then red, then blue,
Then black, and knit his eyebrows and compress
His teeth, as if about to effervesce
Like certain people when they lose at whist!
So look'd the chafed Lorenzo, ne'ertheless,
And, in a trice, the paper he had kiss'd
Was crumpled like a snowball in his fist!

Ah! had he been less versed in scientifics,
More ignorant, in short, of what is what;
He ne'er had flared up in such calorifics;
But he would seek societies, and trot
To Clubs—Mechanics' Institutes—and got
With Birkbeck—Bartley—Combe—George Robins—Rennie,
And other lecturing men. And had he not
That work, of weekly parts, which sells so many,
The Copper-bottomed Magazine—or ‘Penny’?

But, of all learned pools whereon, or in,
Men dive like dabchicks, or like swallows skim,
Some hardly damp'd, some wetted to the skin,
Some drown'd like pigs when they attempt to swim,

330

Astronomy was most Lorenzo's whim,
('Tis studied by a Prince amongst the Burmans);
He loved those heavenly bodies which, the Hymn
Of Addison declares, preach solemn sermons,
While waltzing on their pivots like young Germans.

Night after night, with telescope in hand,
Supposing that the night was fair and clear,
Aloft, on the house-top, he took his stand,
Till he obtained to know each twinkling sphere
Better, I doubt, than Milton's ‘Starry Vere;’
Thus, reading thro' poor Ellen's fond epistle,
He soon espied the flaw—the lapse so sheer
That made him raise his hair in such a bristle,
And like the Boatswain of the Storm-Ship whistle.

‘The moon's at full, love, and I think of thee,’—
‘Indeed! I'm very much her humble debtor,
But not the moon-calf she would have me be,
Zounds! does she fancy that I know no better?’
Herewith, at either corner of the letter
He gave a most ferocious, rending, pull;—
‘O woman! woman! that no vows can fetter,
A moon to stay for three weeks at the full!
By Jove; a very pretty cock-and-bull!

‘The moon at full! 'twas very finely reckon'd!
Why so she wrote me word upon the first—
The twelfth, and now upon the twenty-second—
Full!—yes—it must be full enough to burst!
But let her go—of all vile jilts the worst’—
Here with his thumbs he gave contemptuous snaps,
Anon he blubber'd like the child that's nurs'd,
And then he hit the table frightful raps,
And stamp'd till he had broken both his straps.

‘The moon's at full—and I am in her thought—
No doubt: I do believe it in my soul!’
Here he threw up his head, and gave a snort
Like a young horse first harness'd to a pole:
The moon is full—aye, so is this d---d bowl!’
And, grinning like the sourest of curmudgeons,
Globe—water—fishes—he dash'd down the whole,
Strewing the carpet with the gasping gudgeons;
Men do the strangest things in such love-dudgeons.

‘I fill her thoughts—her memory's vice-gerent?
No, no,—some paltry puppy—three weeks old—
And round as Norval's shield’—thus incoherent
His fancies grew as he went on to scold;

331

So stormy waves are into breakers roll'd,
Work'd up at last to mere chaotic wroth—
This—that—heads—tails—thoughts jumbled uncontroll'd
As onions, turnips, meat, in boiling broth,
By turns bob up, and splutter in the froth.

‘Fool that I was to let a baby face—
A full one—like a hunter's—round and red—
Ass that I am, to give her more a place
Within this heart’—and here he struck his head.
‘'Sdeath are the Almanack-compilers dead?
But no—'tis all an artifice—a trick,
Some newer face—some dandy under-bred—
Well—be it so—of all the sex I'm sick!’
Here Juno wonder'd why she got a kick.

‘“The moon is full”—where's her infernal scrawl?
“And you are in my thought: that silver ray
Will ever your dear image thus recall”—
My image? Mine! She'd barter it away
For Pretty Poll's on an Italian's tray!
Three weeks, full weeks,—it is too plain—too bad—
Too gross and palpable! Oh cursed day!
My senses have not crazed—but if they had—
Such moons would worry a Mad Doctor mad!

‘Oh Nature! wherefore did you frame a lip
So fair for falsehood? Wherefore have you drest
Deceit so angel-like?’ With sudden rip
He tore six new buff buttons from his vest,
And groped with hand impetuous at his breast,
As if some flea from Juno's fleecy curls
Had skipp'd to batten on a human chest,
But no—the hand comes forth, and down it hurls
A lady's miniature beset with pearls.

Yet long upon the floor it did not tarry,
Before another outrage could be plann'd:
Poor Juno, who had learn'd to fetch and carry,
Pick'd up and brought it to her master's hand,
Who seized it, and the mimic feature scann'd;
Yet not with the old loving ardent drouth,
He only saw in that fair face, so bland,
Look how he would at it, east, west, north, south,
A moon, a full one, with eyes, nose, and mouth.

‘I'll go to her,’—herewith his hat he touch'd,
And gave his arm a most heroic brandish;
‘But no—I'll write’—and here a spoon he clutch'd,
And ramm'd it with such fury in the standish,

332

A sable flood, like Niger the outlandish,
Came rushing forth—Oh Antics and Buffoons!
Ye never danced a caper so ran-dan-dish;
He jump'd, thump'd—tore—swore, more than ten dragoons
At all nights, noons, moons, spoons, and pantaloons!

But soon ashamed, or weary, of such dancing,
Without a Collinet's or Weippert's band,
His rampant arms and legs left off their prancing,
And down he sat again, with pen in hand,
Not fiddle-headed, or King's-pattern grand,
But one of Bramah's patent Caligraphics;
And many a sheet it spoil'd before he plann'd
A likely letter. Used to pure seraphics,
Philippics sounded strangely after Sapphics.

Long while he rock'd like Yankee in his chair,
Staring as he would stare the wainscot through,
And then he thrust his fingers in his hair,
And set his crest up like a cockatoo;
And trampled with his hoofs, a mere Yahoo:
At last, with many a tragic frown and start,
He penn'd a billet, very far from doux,
'Twas sour, severe—but think of a man's smart
Writing with lunar caustic on his heart!

The letter done and closed, he lit his taper,
And sealing, as it were, his other mocks,
He stamp'd a grave device upon the paper,
No Cupid toying with his Psyche's locks,
But some stern head of the old Stoic stocks—
Then, fiercely striding through the staring streets,
He dropt the bitter missive in a box,
Beneath the cakes, and tarts, and sugar'd treats,
In Mrs. Smelling's window-full of sweets.

Soon sped the letter—thanks to modern plans,
Our English mails run little in the style
Of those great German wild-beast caravans,
Eil-wagens—tho' they do not ‘go like ile,’—
But take a good twelve minutes to the mile—
On Monday morning, just at ten o'clock,
As Ellen humm'd ‘The Young May Moon’ the while,
Her ear was startled by that double knock
Which thrills the nerves like an electric shock!

Her right hand instantly forgot its cunning,
And down into the street it dropt, or flung,
Right on the hat and wig of Mr. Gunning,
The jug that o'er her ten-week-stocks had hung;

333

Then down the stairs by twos and threes she sprung,
And through the passage like a burglar darted.
Alas! how sanguine are the fond and young—
She little thought, when with the coin she parted,
She paid a sixpence to be broken-hearted!

Too dear at any price—had she but paid
Nothing and taken discount, it was dear;
Yet, worthless as it was, the sweet-lipped maid
Oft kissed the letter in her brief career
Between the lower and the upper sphere,
Where, seated in a study bistre-brown,
She tried to pierce a mystery as clear
As that I saw once puzzling a young clown—
‘Reading Made Easy,’ but turned upside down.

Yet Ellen, like most misses in the land,
Had sipped sky blue, through certain of her teens,
At one of those establishments which stand
In highways, byeways, squares, and village greens;
'Twas called ‘The Grove,’—a name that always means
Two poplars stand like sentries at the gate—
Each window had its close Venetian screens
And Holland blind, to keep in a cool state
The twenty-four Young Ladies of Miss Bate.

But when the screens were left unclosed by chance,
The blinds not down, as if Miss B. were dead,
Each upper window to a passing glance
Revealed a little dimity white bed;
Each lower one a cropp'd or curly head;
And thrice a week, for soul's and health's economies,
Along the road the twenty-four were led,
Like coupled hounds, whipped in by two she-dominies
With faces rather graver than Melpomene's.

And thus their studies they pursued:—On Sunday,
Beef, collects, batter, texts from Dr. Price;
Mutton, French, pancakes, grammar—of a Monday;
Tuesday—hard dumplings, globes, Chapone's Advice;
Wednesday—fancy-work, rice-milk (no spice);
Thursday—pork, dancing, currant-bolsters, reading;
Friday—beef, Mr. Butler, and plain rice;
Saturday—scraps, short lessons and short feeding,
Stocks, back-boards, hash, steel-collars, and good breeding.

From this repertory of female learning,
Came Ellen once a quarter, always fatter!
To gratify the eyes of parents yearning.
'Twas evident in bolsters, beef, and batter,

334

Hard dumplings, and rice-milk, she did not smatter,
But heartily, as Jenkins says, ‘demollidge;’
But as for any learning, not to flatter,
As often happens when girls leave their college,
She had done nothing but grow out of knowledge.

At Long Division sums she had no chance,
And History was quite as bad a balk;
Her French it was too small for Petty France,
And Priscian suffered in her English talk:
Her drawing might be done with cheese or chalk;
As for the globes—the use of the terrestrial
She knew when she went out to take a walk,
Or take a ride; but, touching the celestial,
Her knowledge hardly soared above the bestial.

Nothing she learned of Juno, Pallas, Mars;
Georgium, for what she knew, might stand for Burgo,
Sidus, for Master: then, for northern stars,
The Bear she fancied did in sable fur go,
The Bull was Farmer Giles's bull, and, ergo,
The Ram the same that butted at her brother;
As for the twins, she only guessed that Virgo,
From coming after them, must be their mother;
The Scales weighed soap, tea, figs, like any other.

As ignorant as donkeys in Gallicia,
She thought that Saturn, with his Belt, was but
A private, may be, in the Kent Militia;
That Charles's Wain would stick in a deep rut,
That Venus was a real West-End slut—
Oh, Gods and Goddesses of Greek Theogony!
That Berenice's Hair would curl and cut,
That Cassiopeia's Chair was good Mahogany,
Nicely french-polished,—such was her cosmogony!

Judge, then, how puzzled by the scientifics
Lorenzo's letter came now to dispense;
A lizard, crawling over hieroglyphics,
Knows quite as much of their Egyptian sense;
A sort of London fog, opaque and dense,
Hung over verbs, nouns, genitives, and datives;
In vain she pored and pored, with eyes intense,
As well is known to oyster-operatives,
Mere looking at the shells won't open natives.

Yet mixed with the hard words, so called, she found
Some easy ones that gave her heart the staggers;
Words giving tongue against her, like a hound
At picking out a fault—words speaking daggers.

335

The very letters seemed, in hostile swaggers,
To lash their tails, but not as horses do,
Nor like the tails of spaniels, gentle waggers,
But like the lion's, ere he tears in two
A black, to see if he is black all through.

With open mouth, and eyeballs at full stretch,
She gazed upon the paper sad and sorry,
No sound—no stir—quite petrified, poor wretch!
As when Apollo, in old allegory,
Down-stooping like a falcon, made his quarry
Of Niobe, just turned to Purbeck stone;
In fact, since Cupid grew into a worry,
Judge if a suing lover, let alone
A lawyer, ever wrote in such a tone.

‘Ellen, I will no longer call you mine,
That time is past, and ne'er can come again;
However other lights undimmed may shine,
And undiminishing, one truth is plain,
Which I, alas! have learned,—that love can wane.
The dream is pass'd away, the veil is rent,
Your heart was not intended for my reign;
A sphere so full, I feel, was never meant
With one poor man in it to be content.

‘It must, no doubt, be pleasant beyond measure,
To wander underneath the whispering bough
With Dian, a perpetual round of pleasure.
Nay, fear not,—I absolve of every vow,—
Use,—use your own celestial pleasure now,
Your apogee and perigee arrange.
Herschel might aptly stare and wonder how,
To me that constant disk has nothing strange—
A counterfeit is sometimes hard to change.

‘Oh Ellen! I once little thought to write
Such words unto you, with so hard a pen;
Yet outraged love will change its nature quite,
And turn like tiger hunted to its den—
How Falsehood trips in her deceits on men!
And stands abash'd, discover'd, and forlorn!
Had it been only cusp'd—but gibbous—then
It had gone down—but Faith drew back in scorn,
And would not swallow it—without a horn!

‘I am in occultation,—that is plain:
My culmination's past,—that's quite as clear.
But think not I will suffer your disdain
To hang a lunar rainbow on a tear.

336

Whate'er my pangs, they shall be buried here;
No murmur,—not a sigh,—shall thence exhale:
Smile on,—and for your own peculiar sphere
Choose some eccentric path,—you cannot fail,
And pray stick on a most portentous tail!

‘Farewell! I hope you are in health and gay;
For me, I never felt so well and merry—
As for the bran-new idol of the day,
Monkey or man, I am indifferent—very!
Nor e'en will ask who is the Happy Jerry;
My jealousy is dead, or gone to sleep,
But let me hint that you will want a wherry,
Three weeks' spring-tide, and not a chance of neap,
Your parlours will be flooded six feet deep!

‘Oh Ellen! how delicious was that light
Wherein our plighted shadows used to blend,
Meanwhile the melancholy bird of night—
No more of that—the lover's at an end.
Yet if I may advise you, as a friend,
Before you next pen sentiments so fond,
Study your cycles—I would recommend
Our Airy—and let South be duly conn'd,
And take a dip, I beg, in the great Pond.

‘Farewell again! it is farewell for ever!
Before your lamp of night be lit up thrice,
I shall be sailing, haply, for Swan River,
Jamaica, or the Indian land of rice,
Or Boothia Felix—happy clime of ice!
For Trebizond, or distant Scanderoon,
Ceylon, or Java redolent of spice,
Or settling, neighbour of the Cape baboon,
Or roaming o'er—The Mountains of the Moon!

‘What matters where? my world no longer owns
That dear meridian spot from which I dated
Degrees of distance, hemispheres, and zones,
A globe all blank and barren and belated.
What matters where my future life be fated?
With Lapland hordes, or Koords or Afric peasant,
A squatter in the western woods located,
What matters where? My bias, at the present,
Leans to the country that reveres the Crescent!

‘Farewell! and if for ever, fare thee well!
As wrote another of my fellow-martyrs:
I ask no sexton for his passing-bell,
I do not ask your tear-drops to be starters,

337

However I may die, transfix'd by Tartars,
By Cobras poisoned, by Constrictors strangled,
By shark or cayman snapt above the garters,
By royal tiger or Cape lion mangled,
Or starved to death in the wild woods entangled,

‘Or tortured slowly at an Indian stake,
Or smother'd in the sandy hot simoom,
Or crush'd in Chili by earth's awful quake,
Or baked in lava, a Vesuvian tomb,
Or dirged by syrens and the billows' boom,
Or stiffen'd to a stock mid Alpine snows,
Or stricken by the plague with sudden doom,
Or suck'd by Vampyres to a last repose,
Or self-destroy'd, impatient of my woes:

‘Still fare you well, however I may fare,
A fare perchance to the Lethean shore,
Caught up by rushing whirlwinds in the air,
Or dash'd down cataracts with dreadful roar:
Nay, this warm heart, once yours unto the core,
This hand you should have claim'd in church or minster,
Some cannibal may gnaw’—she read no more—
Prone on the carpet fell the senseless spinster,
Losing herself, as 'twere, in Kidderminster!

Of course of such a fall the shock was great,
In rush'd the father, panting from the shop,
In rush'd the mother, without cap or tête,
Pursued by Betty Housemaid with her mop;
The cook to change her apron did not stop,
The charwoman next scrambled up the stair,—
All help to lift, to haul, to seat, to prop,
And then they stand and smother round the chair,
Exclaiming in a chorus, ‘Give her air!’

One sears her nostrils with a burning feather,
Another rams a phial up her nose;
A third crooks all her finger-joints together,
A fourth rips up her laces and her bows,
While all by turns keep trampling on her toes,
And, when she gasps for breath, they pour in plump
A sudden drench that down her thorax goes,
As if in fetching her—some wits so jump—
She must be fetch'd with water like a pump!

No wonder that thus drench'd, and wrench'd, and gall'd,
As soon as possible, from syncope's fetter
Her senses had the sense to be recall'd,
‘I'm better—that will do—indeed I'm better,’

338

She cried to each importunate besetter;
Meanwhile, escaping from the stir and smother,
The prudent parent seized the lover's letter,
(Daughters should have no secrets with a Mother)
And read it thro' from one end to the other.

From first to last, she never skipp'd a word—
For young Lorenzo of all youths was one
So wise, so good, so moral she averr'd,
So clever, quite above the common run—
She made him sit by her, and call'd him son,
No matrimonial suit, e'en Duke's or Earl's,
So flatter'd her maternal feelings—none!
For mothers always think young men are pearls
Who come and throw themselves before their girls.

And now, at warning signal from her finger,
The servants most reluctantly withdrew,
But list'ning on the stairs contrived to linger;
For Ellen, gazing round with eyes of blue,
At last the features of her parent knew,
And, summoning her breath and vocal pow'rs,
‘Oh, mother!’ she exclaimed—‘Oh, is it true—
Our dear Lorenzo’—the dear name drew show'rs—
‘Ours,’ cried the mother, ‘pray don't call him ours!

‘I never liked him, never, in my days!’
(‘Oh yes—you did’—said Ellen with a sob,)
‘There always was a something in his ways—’
(‘So sweet—so kind,’ said Ellen, with a throb,)
‘His very face was what I call a snob,
And, spite of West-end coats and pantaloons,
He had a sort of air of the swell mob;
I'm sure when he has come of afternoons
To tea, I've often thought—I'll watch my spoons!’

‘The spoons!’ cried Ellen, almost with a scream,
‘Oh cruel—false as cruel—and unjust!
He that once stood so high in your esteem!’
‘He!’ cried the dame, grimacing her disgust,
‘I like him?—yes—as any body must
An infidel that scoffs at God and Devil:
Didn't he bring you Bonaparty's bust?
Lord! when he calls I hardly can be civil—
My favourite was always Mr. Neville.

‘Lorenzo?—I should like, of earthly things,
To see him hanging forty cubits high;
Doesn't he write like Captain Rocks and Swings?
Nay, in this very letter bid you try

339

To make yourself particular, and tie
A tail on—a prodigious tail!—Oh, daughter!
And don't he ask you down his area—fie!
And recommend to cut your being shorter,
With brick-bats round your neck in ponds of water?’

Alas! to think how readers thus may vary
A writer's sense!—What mortal would have thought
Lorenzo's hint about Professors Airy
And Pond to such a likeness could be brought!
Who would have dreamt the simple way he taught
To make a comet of poor Ellen's moon,
Could furnish forth an image so distraught,
As Ellen, walking Regent Street at noon,
Tail'd—like a fat Cape sheep, or a racoon!

And yet, whate'er absurdity the brains
May hatch, it ne'er wants wet-nurses to suckle it;
Or dry ones, like a hen, to take the pains
To lead the nudity abroad, and chuckle it;
No whim so stupid but some fool will buckle it
To jingle bell-like on his empty head,
No mental mud—but some will knead and knuckle it,
And fancy they are making fancy-bread;—
No ass has written, but some ass has read.

No dolts could lead if others did not follow 'em.
No Hahnémann could give decillionth drops,
If any man could not be got to swallow 'em;
But folly never comes to such full stops.
As soon, then, as the Mother made such swaps
Of all Lorenzo's meanings, heads and tails,
The Father seized upon her malaprops—
‘My girl down areas—of a night! 'Ods nails!
I'll stick the scoundrel on his area-rails!

‘I will!—as sure as I was christen'd John!
A girl—well born—and bred,—and school'd at Ditton—
Accomplish'd—handsome—with a tail stuck on!
And chuck'd—Zounds!—chuck'd in horseponds like a kitten;
I wish I had been by when that was written!’—
And doubling to a fist each ample hand,
The empty air he boxed with, a-la-Bitton,
As if in training for a fight, long plann'd,
With Nobody—for love—at No Man's Land!

‘I'll pond—I'll tail him!’—In a voice of thunder
He recommenced his fury and his fuss,
Loud, open-mouth'd, and wedded to his blunder,
Like one of those great guns that end in buss.

340

‘I'll teach him to write ponds and tails to us!’
But while so menacing this-that-and-t'others,
His wife broke in with certain truths, as thus:
‘Men are not women—fathers can't be mothers,—
Females are females’—and a few such others.

So saying, with rough nudges, willy-nilly,
She hustled him outside the chamber-door,
Looking, it must be own'd, a little silly;
And then she did as the Carinthian boor
Serves (Goldsmith says) the traveller that's poor:
Id est, she shut him in the outer space,
With just as much apology—no more—
As Boreas would present in such a case,
For slamming the street door right in your face.

And now, the secrets of the sex thus kept,
What passed in that important tête-à-tete
'Twixt dam and daughter, nobody except
Paul Pry, or his Twin Brother, could narrate—
So turn we to Lorenzo, left of late,
In front of Mrs. Snelling's sugar'd snacks,
In such a very waspish stinging state—
But now at the Old Dragon, stretch'd on racks,
Fretting, and biting down his nails to tacks;

Because that new fast four-inside—the Comet,
Instead of keeping its appointed time,
Had deviated some few minutes from it,
A thing with all astronomers a crime,
And he had studied in that lore sublime;
Nor did his heat get any less or shorter
For pouring upon passion's unslaked lime
A well-grown glass of Cogniac and water,
Mix'd stiff as starch by the Old Dragon's daughter.

At length, ‘Fair Ellen’ sounding with a flourish,
The Comet came all bright, bran new, and smart;
Meanwhile the melody conspired to nourish
The hasty spirit in Lorenzo's heart,
And soon upon the roof he ‘topped his part.’
Which never had a more impatient man on,
Wishing devoutly that the steeds would start
Like lightning greased,—or, as at Ballyshannon
Sublimed, ‘greased lightning shot out of a cannon.’

For, ever since the letter left his hand,
His mind had been in vacillating motion,
Dodge-dodging like a fluster'd crab on land,
That cannot ask its way, and has no notion

341

If right or left leads to the German Ocean—
Hatred and Love by turns enjoy'd monopolies,
Till, like a Doctor following his own potion,
Before a learned pig could spell Acropolis,
He went and booked himself for our metropolis.

‘Oh, for a horse,’ or rather four,—‘with wings!’
For so he put the wish into the plural—
No relish he retained for country things,
He could not join felicity with rural,
His thoughts were all with London and the mural,
Where architects—not paupers—heap and pile stones;
Or with the horses' muscles, called the crural,
How fast they could macadamize the milestones
Which pass'd as tediously as gall or bile stones.

Blind to the picturesque, he ne'er perceived
In Nature one artistical fine stroke;
For instance, how that purple hill relieved
The beggar-woman in the gipsy-poke,
And how the red cow carried off her cloak;
Or how the aged horse, so gaunt and grey,
Threw off a noble mass of beech and oak!
Or, how the tinker's ass, beside the way,
Came boldly out from a white cloud—to bray!

Such things have no delight for worried men,
That travel full of care and anxious smart:
Coachmen and horses, are your artists then;
Just try a team of draughtsmen with the Dart,
Take Shee, for instance, Etty, Jones, and Hart,
Let every neck be put into its noose,
Then tip 'em on the flank to make 'em start,
And see how they will draw!—Four screws let loose
Would make a difference—or I'm a goose!

Nor cared he more about the promised crops,
If oats were looking up, or wheat was laid,
For flies in turnips, or a blight in hops,
Or how the barley prosper'd or decay'd;
In short, no items of the farming trade,
Peas, beans, tares, 'taters, could his mind beguile;
Nor did he answer to the servant maid,
That always asked at every other mile,
‘Where do we change, Sir?’ with her sweetest smile.

Nor more he listened to the Politician,
Who lectured on his left, a formal prig,
Of Belgium's, Greece's, Turkey's sad condition,
Not worth a cheese, an olive, or a fig;

342

Nor yet unto the critic, fierce and big,
Who, holding forth, all lonely, in his glory,
Called one a sad bad Poet—and a Whig,
And one, a first-rate proser—and a Tory;
So critics judge, now, of a song or story.

Nay, when the coachman spoke about the 'Leger,
Of Popsy, Mopsy, Bergamotte, and Civet,
Of breeder, trainer, owner, backer, hedger,
And nags as right, or righter than a trivet,
The theme his crack'd attention could not rivet;
Though leaning forward to the man of whips,
He seem'd to give an ear,—but did not give it,
For Ellen's moon (that saddest of her slips)
Would not be hidden by a ‘new Eclipse.’

If any thought e'er flitted in his head
Belonging to the sphere of Bland and Crocky,
It was to wish the team all thorough-bred,
And every buckle on their backs a jockey:
When spinning down a steep descent, or rocky,
He never watch'd the wheel, and long'd to lock it;
He liked the bolters that set off so cocky:
Nor did it shake a single nerve or shock it,
Because the Comet raced against the Rocket.

Thanks to which rivalry, at last the journey
Finish'd an hour and a quarter under time,
Without a case for surgeon or attorney,
Just as St. James's rang its seventh chime,
And now, descending from his seat sublime,
Behold Lorenzo, weariest of wights,
In that great core of brick, and stone, and lime,
Call'd England's Heart—but which, as seen of nights,
Has rather more th'apperance of its lights.

Away he scudded—elbowing, perforce,
Thro' cads, and lads, and many a Hebrew worrier,
With fruit, knives, pencils,—all dirt cheap of course,
Coachmen, and hawkers, of the Globe and ‘Currier;’
Away!—the cookmaid is not such a skurrier,
When, fit to split her gingham as she goes,
With six just striking on the clock to hurry her,
She strides along with one of her three beaux,
To get well placed at ‘Ashley's’—now Ducrow's.

‘I wonder if her moon is full to-night!’
He mutter'd, jealous as a Spanish Don,
When, lo!—to aggravate that inward spite,
In glancing at a board he spied thereon

343

A play-bill for dramatic folks to con,
In letters such as those may read, who run,
‘“KING JOHN”—oh yes,—I recollect King John!
“My Lord, they say five moons”—five moons!—well done!
I wonder Ellen was content with one!

‘Five moons—all full!—and all at once in heav'n!
She should have lived in that prolific reign!’
Here he arrived in front of number seven,
Th'abode of all his joy and all his pain;
A sudden tremor shot through every vein,
He wish'd he'd come up by the heavy waggon,
And felt an impulse to turn back again,
Oh, that he ne'er had quitted the Old Dragon!
Then came a sort of longing for a flagon.

His tongue and palate seem'd so parch'd with drouth,—
The very knocker fill'd his soul with dread,
As if it had a living lion's mouth,
With teeth so terrible, and tongue so red,
In which he had engaged to put his head.
The bell-pull turn'd his courage into vapour,
As though 'twould cause a shower-bath to shed
Its thousand shocks, to make him sigh and caper—
He look'd askance, and did not like the scraper.

‘What business have I here? (he thought) a dunce
A hopeless passion thus to fan and foster,
Instead of putting out its wick at once;
She's gone—it's very evident I've lost her,—
And to the wanton wind I should have toss'd her—
Pish! I will leave her with her moon, at ease,
To toast and eat it, like a single Gloster,
Or cram some fool with it, as good green cheese,
Or make a honey-moon, if so she please.

‘Yes—here I leave her,’ and as thus he spoke,
He plied the knocker with such needless force,
It almost split the panel of sound oak;
And then he went as wildly through a course
Of ringing, till he made abrupt divorce
Between the bell and its dumbfounded handle;
Whilst up ran Betty, out of breath and hoarse,
And thrust into his face her blown-out candle,
To recognise the author of such scandal.

Who, presto! cloak, and carpet-bag to boot,
Went stumbling, rumbling, up the dark one pair,
With other noise than his whose ‘very foot
Had music in't as he came up the stair:’

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And then with no more manners than a bear,
His hat upon his head, no matter how,
No modest tap his presence to declare,
He bolted in a room, without a bow,
And there sat Ellen, with a marble brow!

Like fond Medora, watching at her window,
Yet not of any Corsair bark in search—
The jutting lodging-house of Mrs. Lindo,
‘The Cheapest House in Town’ of Todd and Sturch,
The private house of Reverend Doctor Birch,
The public-house, closed nightly at eleven,
And then that house of prayer, the parish church,
Some roofs, and chimneys, and a glimpse of heaven,
Made up the whole look-out of Number Seven.

Yet something in the prospect so absorbed her,
She seemed quite drowned and dozing in a dream;
As if her own belov'd full moon still orb'd her,
Lulling her fancy in some lunar scheme,
With lost Lorenzo, may be, for its theme—
Yet when Lorenzo touch'd her on the shoulder,
She started up with an abortive scream,
As if some midnight ghost, from regions colder,
Had come within his bony arms to fold her.

‘Lorenzo!’—‘Ellen!’—then came ‘Sir!’ and ‘Madam!’
They tried to speak, but hammer'd at each word,
As if it were a flint for great Mac Adam;
Such broken English never else was heard,
For like an aspen leaf each nerve was stirr'd,
A chilly tremor thrill'd them through and through,
Their efforts to be stiff were quite absurd,
They shook like jellies made without a due
And proper share of common joiner's glue.

‘Ellen! I'm come—to bid you—fare—farewell’
They thus began to fight their verbal duel;
‘Since some more hap—hap—happy man must dwell—’
‘Alas—Loren—Lorenzo!—cru—cru—cruel!’
For so they split their words like grits for gruel.
At last the Lover, as he long had plann'd,
Drew out that once inestimable jewel,
Her portrait, which was erst so fondly scann'd,
And thrust poor Ellen's face into her hand.

‘There—take it, Madam—take it back I crave,
The face of one—but I must now forget her,
Bestow it on whatever hapless slave
Your art has last enticed into your fetter—

345

And there are your epistles—there! each letter!
I wish no record of your vow's infractions,
Send them to South—or Children—you had better—
They will be novelties—rare benefactions
To shine in Philosophical Transactions!

‘Take them—pray take them—I resign them quite!
And there's the glove you gave me leave to steal—
And there's the handkerchief, so pure and white
Once sanctified by tears, when Miss O'Neill—
But no—you did not—cannot—do not feel
A Juliet's faith, that time could only harden!
Fool that I was, in my mistaken zeal!
I should have led you,—by your leave and pardon—
To Bartley's Orrery, not Covent Garden!

‘And here's the birth-day ring—nor man nor devil
Should once have torn it from my living hand,
Perchance 'twill look as well on Mr. Neville;
And that—and that is all—and now I stand
Absolved of each dissever'd tie and band—
And so farewell, till Time's eternal sickle
Shall reap our lives; in this, or foreign land
Some other may be found for truth to stickle
Almost as fair—and not so false and fickle!’

And there he ceased: as truly it was time,
For of the various themes that left his mouth,
One half surpass'd her intellectual climb:
She knew no more than the old Hill of Howth
About that ‘Children of a larger growth,’
Who notes proceedings of the F. R. S.'s;
Kit North, was just as strange to her as South,
Except the south the weathercock expresses,
Nay, Bartley's Orrery defied her guesses.

Howbeit some notion of his jealous drift
She gather'd from the simple outward fact,
That her own lap contained each slighted gift;
Though quite unconscious of his cause to act
So like Othello, with his face unblack'd;
‘Alas!’ she sobbed, ‘your cruel course I see,
These faded charms no longer can attract;
Your fancy palls, and you would wander free,
And lay your own apostacy on me!

‘I, false!—unjust Lorenzo!—and to you!
Oh, all ye holy gospels that incline
The soul to truth, bear witness I am true!
By all that lives, of earthly or divine—

346

So long as this poor throbbing heart is mine—
I false!—the world shall change its course as soon!
True as the streamlet to the stars that shine—
True as the dial to the sun at noon,
True as the tide to “yonder blessed moon”!’

And as she spoke, she pointed through the window,
Somewhere above the houses' distant tops,
Betwixt the chimney-pots of Mrs. Lindo,
And Todd and Sturch's cheapest of all shops
For ribbons, laces, muslins, silks, and fops;—
Meanwhile, as she upraised her face so Grecian,
And eyes suffused with scintillating drops,
Lorenzo looked, too, o'er the blinds venetian,
To see the sphere so troubled with repletion.

‘The Moon!’ he cried, and an electric spasm
Seem'd all at once his features to distort,
And fix'd his mouth, a dumb and gaping chasm—
His faculties benumb'd and all amort—
At last his voice came, of most shrilly sort,
Just like a sea-gull's wheeling round a rock—
‘Speak!—Ellen!—is your sight indeed so short!
The Moon!—Brute! savage that I am, and block!
The Moon! (O, ye Romantics, what a shock!)
Why, that's the new Illuminated Clock!’

University of Virginia Library

LOVE AND LUNACY