IV.

Those sailors, how outlandish The face and form of each!

They deal in foreign gestures, And use a foreign speech; A tongue not learn'd near Isis, Or studied by the Cam, Declares that you're in England, And I'm at Rotterdam.

V.

And now across a market My doubtful way I trace, Where stands a solemn statue, The Genius of the place; And to the great Erasmus I offer my salaam; Who tells me you're in England, But I'm at Rotterdam.

VI.

The coffee-room is open-- I mingle in its crowd,-- The dominos are noisy-- The hookahs raise a cloud; The flavor, none of Fearon's, That mingles with my dram, Reminds me you're in England, And I'm at Rotterdam.

VII.

Then here it goes, a bumper-- The toast it shall be mine, In schiedam, or in sherry, Tokay, or hock of Rhine; It well deserves the brightest, Where sunbeam ever swam-- "The Girl I love in England"

I drink at Rotterdam!

LINES

ON SEEING MY WIFE AND TWO CHILDREN SLEEPING IN THE SAME CHAMBER.[14]

[Footnote 14: Written at Coblenz, where Hood and his family were then settled, in November 1835.]

And has the earth lost its so spacious round, The sky its blue circumference above, That in this little chamber there is found Both earth and heaven--my universe of love!

All that my God can give me, or remove, Here sleeping, save myself, in mimic death.

Sweet that in this small compass I behove To live their living and to breathe their breath!

Almost I wish that, with one common sigh, We might resign all mundane care and strife, And seek together that transcendent sky, Where Father, Mother, Children, Husband, Wife, Together pant in everlasting life!

STANZAS.[15]

[Footnote 15: Assigned by Hood's son to the year 1835, but apparently only on conjecture.]

Is there a bitter pang for love removed, O God! The dead love doth not cost more tears Than the alive, the loving, the beloved-- Not yet, not yet beyond all hopes and fears!

Would I were laid Under the shade Of the calm grave, and the long grass of years,--

That love might die with sorrow:--I am sorrow; And she, that loves me tenderest, doth press Most poison from my cruel lips, and borrow Only new anguish from the old caress; Oh, this world's grief Hath no relief

In being wrung from a great happiness.

Would I had never filled thine eyes with love, For love is only tears: would I had never Breathed such a curse-like blessing as we prove; Now, if "Farewell" _could_ bless thee, I would sever!

Would I were laid Under the shade Of the cold tomb, and the long grass forever!

ODE TO RAE WILSON, ESQ.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE _ATHENaeUM_.

MY DEAR SIR--The following Ode was written anticipating the tone of some strictures on my writings by the gentleman to whom it is addressed. I have not seen his book; but I know by hearsay that some of my verses are characterized as "profaneness and ribaldry"--citing, in proof, the description of a certain sow, from whose jaw a cabbage sprout

"Protruded, as the dove so staunch For peace supports an olive branch."

If the printed works of my Censor had not prepared me for any misapplication of _types_, I should have been surprised by this misapprehension of one of the commonest emblems. In some cases the dove unquestionably stands for the Divine Spirit; but the same bird is also a lay representative of the peace of this world, and, as such, has figured time out of mind in allegorical pictures. The sense in which it was used by me is plain from the context; at least, it would be plain to any one but a fisher for faults, predisposed to carp at some things, to dab at others, and to flounder in all. But I am possibly in error. It is the female swine, perhaps, that is profaned in the eyes of the Oriental tourist. Men find strange ways of marking their intolerance; and the spirit is certainly strong enough, in Mr. W.'s works, to set up a creature as sacred, in sheer opposition to the Mussulman, with whom she is a beast of abomination.

It would only be going the whole sow.--I am, dear Sir, yours very truly, THOS. HOOD.

"Close, close your eyes with holy dread, And weave a circle round him thrice, For he on honey-dew hath fed And drunk the milk of Paradise."--COLERIDGE.

"It's very hard them kind of men Won't let a body be."--_Old Ballad_.

A wanderer, Wilson, from my native land, Remote, O Rae, from godliness and thee, Where rolls between us the eternal sea, Besides some furlongs of a foreign sand,-- Beyond the broadest Scotch of London Wall; Beyond the loudest Saint that has a call; Across the wavy waste between us stretch'd, A friendly missive warns me of a stricture, Wherein my likeness you have darkly etch'd, And though I have not seen the shadow sketch'd, Thus I remark prophetic on the picture.

I guess the features:--in a line to paint Their moral ugliness, I'm not a saint.

Not one of those self-constituted saints, Quacks--not physicians--in the cure of souls, Censors who sniff out mortal taints, And call the devil over his own coals-- Those pseudo Privy Councillors of God, Who write down judgments with a pen hard-nibb'd; Ushers of Beelzebub's Black Rod, Commending sinners, not to ice thick-ribb'd, But endless flames, to scorch them up like flax-- Yet sure of heav'n themselves, as if they'd cribb'd Th' impression of St. Peter's keys in wax!

Of such a character no single trace Exists, I know, in my fictitious face; There wants a certain cast about the eye; A certain lifting of the nose's tip; A certain curling of the nether lip, In scorn of all that is, beneath the sky; In brief it is an aspect deleterious, A face decidedly not serious, A face profane, that would not do at all To make a face at Exeter Hall,-- That Hall where bigots rant, and cant, and pray, And laud each other face to face, Till ev'ry farthing-candle _ray_ Conceives itself a great gas-light of grace.

Well!--be the graceless lineaments confest!

I do enjoy this bounteous beauteous earth; And dote upon a jest "Within the limits of becoming mirth";-- No solemn sanctimonious face I pull, Nor think I'm pious when I'm only bilious-- Nor study in my sanctum supercilious To frame a Sabbath Bill or forge a Bull.

I pray for grace--repent each sinful act-- Peruse, but underneath the rose, my Bible; And love my neighbor far too well, in fact, To call and twit him with a godly tract That's turn'd by application to a libel.

My heart ferments not with the bigot's leaven, All creeds I view with toleration thorough, And have a horror of regarding heaven As anybody's rotten borough.

What else? no part I take in party fray, With troops from Billingsgate's slang-whanging tartars, I fear no Pope--and let great Ernest play At Fox and Goose with Foxs' Martyrs!

I own I laugh at over-righteous men, I own I shake my sides at ranters, And treat sham-Abr'am saints with wicked banters, I even own, that there are times--but then It's when I've got my wine--I say d----canters!

I've no ambition to enact the spy On fellow souls, a Spiritual Pry-- 'Tis said that people ought to guard their noses, Who thrust them into matters none of theirs; And tho' no delicacy discomposes Your Saint, yet I consider faith and pray'rs Amongst the privatest of men's affairs.

I do not hash the Gospel in my books, And thus upon the public mind intrude it, As if I thought, like Otaheitan cooks, No food was fit to eat till I had chewed it.

On Bible stilts I don't affect to stalk; Nor lard with Scripture my familiar talk,-- For man may pious texts repeat, And yet religion have no inward seat; 'Tis not so plain as the old Hill of Howth, A man has got his belly full of meat Because he talks with victuals in his mouth!

Mere verbiage,--it is not worth a carrot!

Why, Socrates--or Plato--where's the odds?-- Once taught a jay to supplicate the Gods, And made a Polly-theist of a Parrot!

A mere professor, spite of all his cant, is Not a whit better than a Mantis,-- An insect, of what clime I can't determine, That lifts its paws most parson-like, and thence, By simple savages--thro' sheer pretence-- Is reckon'd quite a saint amongst the vermin.

But where's the reverence, or where the _nous_, To ride on one's religion thro' the lobby, Whether a stalking-horse or hobby, To show its pious paces to "the house"?