The Works of Thomas Hood (Volume 8 ); Comic and Serious, in Prose and Verse with All the Original Illustrations

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1872 Excerpt: ... 1842. Continued. This volume commences with further contributions to the New Monthly for this year; including in verse, Spring--The Turtles--The Elm Tree --More Hullah-baloo, and The Season--and in prose, Diabolical Suggestions -- Boz in America -- Shakespeare, and Student Life in Germany. SPEING. A NEW VEBSION. Bam. The air bites shrewdly--it is very cold. Bor. It is a nipping and an eager air.--Hamlet. Come, gentle Spring! ethereal mildness come! Oh! Thomson, void of rhyme as well as reason, How couldst thou thus poor human nature hum 1 There's no such season. The Spring! I shrink and shudder at her name! For why, I find her breath a bitter blighter! And suffer from her blows as if they came From Spring the Fighter. Her praises, then, let hardy poets sing, V And be her tuneful laureates and upholders, Who do not feel as if they had a Spring Pour'd down their shoulders! Let others eulogise her floral shows, From me they cannot win a single stanza, I know her blooms are in full blow--and so's The Influenza. Her cowslips, stocks, and lilies of the vale, Her honey-blossoms that you hear the bees at, Her pansies, daffodils, and primrose pale, Are things I sneeze at! Fair is the vernal quarter of the year! And fair its early buddings and its blowings--But just suppose Consumption's seeds appear With other sowings! For me, I find, when eastor n winds are high, A frigid, not a genial inspiration; Nor can, like Iron-Chested Chubb, defy An inflammation. Smitten by breezes from the land of plague, To me all vernal luxuries are fables, Oh! where's the Spring in a rheumatic leg, Stiff as a table's i I limp in agony, --I wheeze and cough; And quake with Ague, that Great Agitator; Nor dream, before July, of leaving off My respirator. What wonder i...