Thomas Hood Quotes
1799–1845 England
Thomas Hood (May 23, 1799 – May 3, 1845) was an English humorist and poet.
Also known as: Hood, Thomas
Random Thomas Hood quote
75 quotes
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)
Oh bed! oh bed! delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head.
O bed! O bed! delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head.
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 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.
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.”
The Song of the Shirt (1843)
The wolfsbane I should dread.
And lo! the universal air
Seemed lit with ghastly flame;
Ten thousand thousand dreadful eyes
Were looking down in blame.
Spontaneously to God should turn the soul,
Like the magnetic needle to the pole;
But what were that intrinsic virtue worth,
Suppose some fellow, with more zeal than knowledge,
Fresh from St. Andrew's College,
Should nail the conscious needle to the north?
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm further off from heaven
Than when I was a boy.
The moon, the moon, so silver and cold,
Her fickle temper has oft been told,
Now shady—now bright and sunny—
But of all the lunar things that change,
The one that shows most fickle and strange,
And takes the most eccentric range,
Is the moon—so called—of honey!
But, alas! alas! for the woman's fate,
Who has from a mob to choose a mate!
'Tis a strange and painful mystery!
But the more the eggs the worse the hatch;
The more the fish, the worse the catch;
The more the sparks the worse the match;
Is a fact in woman's history.
Whoe'er has gone thro' London street,
Has seen a butcher gazing at his meat,
And how he keeps
Gloating upon a sheep's
Or bullock's personals, as if his own;
How he admires his halves
And quarters—and his calves,
As if in truth upon his own legs grown.
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!
Oh, when I was a tiny boy
My days and nights were full of joy.
My mates were blithe and kind!
No wonder that I sometimes sigh
And dash the tear drop from my eye
To cast a look behind!