Thomas Hood
Thomas Hood
Thomas Hoodwas an English poet, author and humourist, best known for poems such as "The Bridge of Sighs" and "The Song of the Shirt". Hood wrote regularly for The London Magazine, the Athenaeum, and Punch. He later published a magazine largely consisting of his own works. Hood, never robust, lapsed into invalidism by the age of 41 and died at the age of 45. William Michael Rossetti in 1903 called him "the finest English poet" between the generations of Shelley...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth23 May 1799
leave second
For here I leave my second leg, / And the Forty-second Foot.
came house sun window
I remember, I remember, / The house where I was born, / The little window where the sun / Came peeping in at morn.
death happened
His death which happened in his berth, / At forty-odd befell: / They went and told the sexton, and / The sexton toll'd the bell.
catch crooked dropped heed king nor pins queen sea
If you were queen of bloaters / And I were king of soles, / The sea we'd wag our fins in. / Nor heed the crooked pins in / The water, dropped by boaters / To catch our heedless joles.
happiness
There is even a happiness - that makes the heart afraid.
dying fears hopes sleeping
Our very hopes belied our fears, / Our fears our hopes belied - / We thought her dying when she slept, / And sleeping when she died!
country except mind polite signifies
I don't set up for being a cosmopolite, which to any mind signifies being polite to every country except your own
behind burn great leave letters men oft ought pages remind
Lives" of great men oft remind us as we o'er their pages turn, That we too may leave behind us - Letters that we ought to burn
critic gives modern thoughts
What is a modern poet's fate?/ To write his thoughts upon a slate;/ The critic spits on what is done,/ Gives it a wipe" - and all is gone.
bright gold hard
Gold! Gold! Gold! Bright and yellow, hard and cold.
pleasures
For one of the pleasures of having a rout, / Is the pleasure of having it over.
hollow marry voice
A hollow voice is all I have / But this I tell you plain, / Marry come up! - you marry, Ma'am, / And I'll come up again.
three-things novelty clamor
There are three things which the public will always clamor for, sooner or later: namely, novelty, novelty, novelty.
birthday years bliss
So mayst thou live, dear! many years, In all the bliss that life endears