Thomas Hood
British writer; (1799-1845)
Thomas Hood (May 23, 1799 – May 3, 1845) was an English humorist and poet.
Quotes
edit1820s
edit- His death which happened in his berth,
At forty-odd befell:
They went and told the sexton, and
The sexton tolled the bell.- Faithless Sally Brown, st. 17 (1826).
- 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, st. 1 (1827).
- I remember, I remember
The fir-trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm farther off from Heaven
Than when I was a boy.- I Remember, I Remember, st. 4.
- And there is ev'n a happiness
That makes the heart afraid!- Ode to Melancholy, st. 6 (1827).
- There's not a string attuned to mirth
But has its chord in melancholy.- Ode to Melancholy, st. 8.
- But evil is wrought by want of thought,
As well as want of heart.- The Lady's Dream, st. 16 (1827).
- I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like Silence, listening
To silence.- Ode. Autmn, st. 1 (1827).
- Straight down the Crooked Lane,
And all round the Square.- A Plain Direction, st. 1.
1830s
edit- Never go to France
Unless you know the lingo,
If you do, like me,
You will repent, by jingo.- French and English, st. 1 (1839).
- For my part, getting up seems not so easy
By half as lying.- Morning Meditations (1839).
- A man that's fond precociously of stirring,
Must be a spoon.- Morning Meditations (1839), St. 10.
- No sun—no moon—no morn—no noon,
No dawn—no dusk—no proper time of day,
No warmth—no cheerfulness—no healthful ease,
No road, no street, no t' other side the way,
No comfortable feel in any member—
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
November!- No!.
1840s
edit- Seem'd washing his hands with invisible soap
In imperceptible water.- Miss Kilmansegg and Her Precious Leg. Her Christening, st. 10 (1841-1843).
- Oh bed! oh bed! delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head.
- He lies like a hedgehog rolled up the wrong way,
Tormenting himself with his prickles.- Miss Kilmansegg and Her Precious Leg. Her Dream (Part the Third, 1840).
- One more Unfortunate,
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death!
Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashion'd so slenderly
Young, and so fair!- The Bridge of Sighs (1844), st. 1-2.
- Alas! for the rarity
Of Christian charity
Under the sun!- The Bridge of Sighs (1844), st. 9.
- Even God's providence
Seeming estranged.- The Bridge of Sighs (1844).
- What joy have I in June's return?
My feet are parched—my eyeballs burn,
I scent no flowery gust;
But faint the flagging Zephyr springs,
With dry Macadam on its wings,
And turns me "dust to dust."- Ode Imitated from Horace (1844), st. 2.
The Song of the Shirt (1843)
edit- With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread—
Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch
She sang the “Song of the Shirt.”- St. 1.
- Sewing at once a double thread,
A shroud as well as a shirt.
- No blessed leisure for love or hope,
But only time for grief.
- My tears must stop, for every drop
Hinders needle and thread.
- Work! work! work!
While the cock is crowing aloof!
And work—work—work,
Till the stars shine through the roof!- St. 2.
- Oh, Men, with Sisters dear!
Oh, Men, with Mothers and Wives!
It is not linen you're wearing out,
But human creatures' lives!- St. 4.
- Oh, God! that bread should be so dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap!- St. 5.
The Dream of Eugene Aram
edit- '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.
- And lo! the universal air
Seemed lit with ghastly flame;
Ten thousand thousand dreadful eyes
Were looking down in blame.
- My head was like an ardent coal,
My heart as solid ice;
My wretched, wretched soul, I knew,
Was at the Devil's price:
A dozen times I groaned: the dead
Had never groaned but twice!
- That very night while gentle sleep
The urchin's eyelids kissed,
Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn,
Through the cold and heavy mist;
And Eugene Aram walked between,
With gyves upon his wrist.
Quotes reported in other works
edit- There is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,—
In the cold grave, under the deep, deep sea,
Or in the wide desert where no life is found.- Sonnet, Silence; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- We watched her breathing through the night,
Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.- The Death-Bed; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied;
We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.- The Death-Bed; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- She stood breast-high amid the corn
Clasped by the golden light of morn,
Like the sweetheart of the sun,
Who many a glowing kiss had won.- Ruth; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- Thus she stood amid the stooks,
Praising God with sweetest looks.- Ruth; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- When he is forsaken,
Withered and shaken,
What can an old man do but die?- Spring it is cheery; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- Oh would I were dead now,
Or up in my bed now,
To cover my head now,
And have a good cry!- A Table of Errata; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- There's a double beauty whenever a swan
Swims on a lake with her double thereon.- Her Honeymoon; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- Home-made dishes that drive one from home.
- Her Honeymoon; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Bright and yellow, hard and cold.- Her Moral; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old
To the very verge of the churchyard mould.- Her Moral; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- How widely its agencies vary,—
To save, to ruin, to curse, to bless,—
As even its minted coins express,
Now stamped with the image of Good Queen Bess,
And now of a Bloody Mary.- Her Moral; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- Another tumble! That's his precious nose!
- Parental Ode to my infant Son; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- Boughs are daily rifled
By the gusty thieves,
And the book of Nature
Getteth short of leaves.- The Season; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- A wife who preaches in her gown,
And lectures in her night-dress.- The Surplice Question; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- Peace and rest at length have come
All the day's long toil is past,
And each heart is whispering, "Home,
Home at last."- Home at last; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- Ben Battle was a soldier bold,
And used to war's alarms;
But a cannon-ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms.- Faithless Nellie Gray; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- Pity it is to slay the meanest thing.
- Plea of the Midsummer Fairies; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- 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.- Ode to Rae Wilson; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- Each cloud-capt mountain is a holy altar;
An organ breathes in every grove;
And the full heart 's a Psalter,
Rich in deep hymn of gratitude and love.- Ode to Rae Wilson; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- That fierce thing
They call a conscience. - Lamia, Scene vii; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- That fierce thing
- 'Tis strange how like a very dunce,
Man, with his bumps upon his sconce,
Has lived so long, and yet no knowledge he
Has had, till lately, of Phrenology—
A science that by simple dint of
Head-combing he should find a hint of,
When scratching o'er those little pole-hills
The faculties throw up like mole hills.- Thomas Hood, Craniology, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 597.
Quotes about Thomas Hood
edit- The things we liked most of course were the things that more or less selected or symbolized our own feelings of conditions and life in general. For example, I recall that we liked Thomas Hood's "The Sound of the ship" Now, nothing could come closer to the way we felt than that particular poem. We also read and managed an interest in that other one, "The Bridge of Sighs" also by Thomas Hood. Later, we found "The Masque of Anarchy" by Shelley, and of course in addition to that there were the Jewish poets, like Rosenfeld and Edelshtat. They were magnificent in their writing, in their poetry depicting the life of the people in the shop.
- Pauline Newman (labor activist), Interview (1965) in Jewish Radicals: A Documentary Reader
