ODE TO MELANCHOLY.

Come, let us set our careful breasts, Like Philomel, against the thorn, To aggravate the inward grief, That makes her accents so forlorn; The world has many cruel points, Whereby our bosoms have been torn, And there are dainty themes of grief, In sadness to outlast the morn,-- True honor's dearth, affection's death, Neglectful pride, and cankering scorn, With all the piteous tales that tears Have water'd since the world was born.

The world!--it is a wilderness, Where tears are hung on every tree; For thus my gloomy phantasy Makes all things weep with me!

Come let us sit and watch the sky, And fancy clouds, where no clouds be; Grief is enough to blot the eye, And make heaven black with misery.

Why should birds sing such merry notes, Unless they were more blest than we?

No sorrow ever chokes their throats, Except sweet nightingale; for she Was born to pain our hearts the more With her sad melody.

Why shines the Sun, except that he Makes gloomy nooks for Grief to hide, And pensive shades for Melancholy, When all the earth is bright beside?

Let clay wear smiles, and green grass wave, Mirth shall not win us back again, Whilst man is made of his own grave, And fairest clouds but gilded rain!

I saw my mother in her shroud, Her cheek was cold and very pale; And ever since I've look'd on all As creatures doom'd to fail!

Why do buds ope except to die?

Ay, let us watch the roses wither, And think of our loves' cheeks; And oh! how quickly time doth fly To bring death's winter hither!

Minutes, hours, days, and weeks, Months, years, and ages, shrink to nought; An age past is but a thought!

Ay, let us think of Him awhile That, with a coffin for a boat, Rows daily o'er the Stygian moat, And for our table choose a tomb: There's dark enough in any skull To charge with black a raven plume; And for the saddest funeral thoughts A winding-sheet hath ample room, Where Death, with his keen-pointed style, Hath writ the common doom.

How wide the yew-tree spreads its gloom, And o'er the dead lets fall its dew, As if in tears it wept for them, The many human families That sleep around its stem!

How cold the dead have made these stones, With natural drops kept ever wet!

Lo! here the best--the worst--the world Doth now remember or forget, Are in one common ruin hurl'd, And love and hate are calmly met; The loveliest eyes that ever shone, The fairest hands, and locks of jet.

Is't not enough to vex our souls, And fill our eyes, that we have set Our love upon a rose's leaf, Our hearts upon a violet?

Blue eyes, red cheeks, are frailer yet; And sometimes at their swift decay Beforehand we must fret.

The roses bud and bloom, again; But Love may haunt the grave of Love, And watch the mould in vain.

O clasp me, sweet, whilst thou art mine, And do not take my tears amiss; For tears must flow to wash away A thought that shows so stern as this: Forgive, if somewhile I forget, In woe to come, the present bliss; As frighted Proserpine let fall Her flowers at the sight of Dis, Ev'n so the dark and bright will kiss.

The sunniest things throw sternest shade, And there is ev'n a happiness That makes the heart afraid!

Now let us with a spell invoke The full-orb'd moon to grieve our eyes; Not bright, not bright, but, with a cloud Lapp'd all about her, let her rise All pale and dim, as if from rest The ghost of the late-buried sun Had crept into the skies.

The Moon! she is the source of sighs, The very face to make us sad; If but to think in other times The same calm quiet look she had, As if the world held nothing base, Of vile and mean, of fierce and bad; The same fair light that shone in streams, The fairy lamp that charmed the lad; For so it is, with spent delights She taunts men's brains, and makes them mad.

All things are touch'd with Melancholy, Born of the secret soul's mistrust, To feel her fair ethereal wings Weigh'd down with vile degraded dust; Even the bright extremes of joy Bring on conclusions of disgust, Like the sweet blossoms of the May, Whose fragrance ends in must.

O give her, then, her tribute just, Her sighs and tears, and musings holy; There is no music in the life That sounds with idiot laughter solely; There's not a string attuned to mirth, But has its chord in Melancholy.

SONNET.

By ev'ry sweet tradition of true hearts, Graven by Time, in love with his own lore; By all old martyrdoms and antique smarts, Wherein Love died to be alive the more; Yea, by the sad impression on the shore, Left by the drown'd Leander, to endear That coast for ever, where the billow's roar Moaneth for pity in the Poet's ear; By Hero's faith, and the foreboding tear That quench'd her brand's last twinkle in its fall; By Sappho's leap, and the low rustling fear That sigh'd around her flight; I swear by all, The world shall find such pattern in my act, As if Love's great examples still were lack'd.

SONNET.

TO MY WIFE.

The curse of Adam, the old curse of all, Though I inherit in this feverish life Of worldly toil, vain wishes, and hard strife, And fruitless thought, in Care's eternal thrall, Yet more sweet honey than of bitter gall I taste, through thee, my Eve, my sweet wife.

Then what was Man's lost Paradise!--how rife Of bliss, since love is with him in his fall!

Such as our own pure passion still might frame, Of this fair earth, and its delightful bow'rs, If no fell sorrow, like the serpent, came To trail its venom o'er the sweetest flow'rs;-- But oh! as many and such tears are ours, As only should be shed for guilt and shame!

SONNET.

ON RECEIVING A GIFT.

Look how the golden ocean shines above Its pebbly stones, and magnifies their girth; So does the bright and blessed light of Love Its own things glorify, and raise their worth.

As weeds seem flowers beneath the flattering brine, And stones like gems, and gems as gems indeed, Ev'n so our tokens shine; nay, they outshine Pebbles and pearls, and gems and coral weed; For where be ocean waves but half so clear, So calmly constant, and so kindly warm, As Love's most mild and glowing atmosphere, That hath no dregs to be upturn'd by storm?

Thus, sweet, thy gracious gifts are gifts of price, And more than gold to doting Avarice.

SONNET.

Love, dearest Lady, such as I would speak, Lives not within the humor of the eye;-- Not being but an outward phantasy, That skims the surface of a tinted cheek,-- Else it would wane with beauty, and grow weak, As if the rose made summer,--and so lie Amongst the perishable things that die, Unlike the love which I would give and seek: Whose health is of no hue--to feel decay With cheeks' decay, that have a rosy prime.

Love is its own great loveliness alway, And takes new lustre from the touch of time; Its bough owns no December and no May, But bears its blossom into Winter's clime.

THE DREAM OF EUGENE ARAM.[9]

[Footnote 9: Hood edited _The Gem_, one of the many annuals of that day, for the year 1829. The volume is memorable for having contained his fine poem.

"The remarkable name of Eugene Aram, belonging to a man of unusual talents and acquirements, is unhappily associated with a deed of blood as extraordinary in its details as any recorded in our calendar of crime. In the year 1745, being then an usher and deeply engaged in the study of Chaldee, Hebrew, Arabic, and the Celtic dialects, for the formation of a lexicon, he abruptly turned over a still darker page in human knowledge, and the brow that learning might have made illustrious was stamped ignominious forever with the brand of Cain. To obtain a trifling property he concerted with an accomplice, and with his own hand effected the violent death of one Daniel Clarke, a shoe-maker, of Knaresborough, in Yorkshire.

For fourteen years nearly the secret slept with the victim in the earth of St. Robert's Cave, and the manner of its discovery would appear a striking example of the divine justice even amongst those marvels narrated in that curious old volume alluded to in the _Fortunes of Nigel_, under its quaint title of 'God's Revenge against Murther.'

"The accidental digging up of a skeleton, and the unwary and emphatic declaration of Aram's accomplice that it could not be that of Clarke, betraying a guilty knowledge of the true bones, he was wrought to a confession of their deposit. The learned homicide was seized and arraigned, and a trial of uncommon interest was wound up by a defence as memorable as the tragedy itself for eloquence and ingenuity--too ingenious for innocence, and eloquent enough to do credit even to that long premeditation which the interval between the deed and its discovery had afforded. That this dreary period had not passed without paroxysms of remorse may be inferred from a fact of affecting interest. The late Admiral Burney was a scholar at the school at Lynn in Norfolk when Aram was an usher, subsequent to his crime. The Admiral stated that Aram was beloved by the boys, and that he used to discourse to them of murder, not occasionally, as I have written elsewhere, but constantly, and in somewhat of the spirit ascribed to him in the poem.

"For the more imaginative part of the version I must refer back to one of those unaccountable visions which come upon us like frightful monsters thrown up by storms from the great black deeps of slumber. A lifeless body, in love and relationship the nearest and dearest, was imposed upon my back, with an overwhelming sense of obligation--not of filial piety merely, but some awful responsibility, equally vague and intense, and involving, as it seemed, inexpiable sin, horrors unutterable, torments intolerable--to bury my dead, like Abraham, out of my sight. In vain I attempted, again and again, to obey the mysterious mandate--by some dreadful process the burthen was replaced with a more stupendous weight of injunction, and an apalling conviction of the impossibility of its fulfilment. My mental anguish was indescribable;--the mighty agonies of souls tortured on the supernatural racks of sleep are not to be penned--and if in sketching those that belong to blood-guiltiness I have been at all successful, I owe it mainly to the uninvoked inspiration of that terrible dream."

The introduction of Admiral Burney's name makes it likely that Hood may have owed his first interest in the story to Charles Lamb. The circumstance that the book over which the gentle boy was poring when questioned by the usher was called the _Death of Abel_, is by no means forced or unnatural. Salomon Gessner's prose poem, _Der Tod Abels_, published in 1758, attained an astonishing popularity throughout Europe, and appeared in an English version somewhere about the time of the discovery of Aram's crime.]

I.

'Twas in the prime of summer time, An evening calm and cool, And four-and-twenty happy boys Came bounding out of school: There were some that ran and some that leapt, Like troutlets in a pool.

II.