Thomas Hood (1799–1845): British writer;. The library holds 50 quotes by Thomas Hood, drawn from The Song of the Shirt, The Bridge of Sighs, Her Moral and other works. The 50 below are the most quoted; search the library in the maker for the rest.
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.
Well for the drones of the social hive that there are bees of an industrious turn, willing, for an infinitesimal share of the honey, to undertake the labour of its fabrication.
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.
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.
How widely its agencies vary,—To save, to ruin, to curse, to bless,—As even its minted coins express,
Now stamp’d with the image of Good Queen Bess,
And now of a Bloody Mary.
Some dreams we have are nothing else but dreams,
Unnatural and full of contradictions;
Yet others of our most romantic schemes
Are something more than fictions.
No sun, no moon, no morn, no noon,
No dawn, no dusk, no proper time of day,… No road, no street, no t’ other side the way,… No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no buds.
I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like silence, listening
To silence, for no lonely bird would sing
Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn,
Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn.
“Come, gentle Spring! ethereal mildness, come!”—Oh! Thomson, void of rhyme as well as reason,
How could’st thou thus poor human nature hum?
There’s no such season.
Work, work, work,
Till the brain begins to swim;
Work, work, work,
Till the eyes are heavy and dim;
Seam, and gusset, and band,
Band, and gusset, and seam,
Till over the buttons I fall asleep,
And sew them on in a dream.
Mother of light! how fairly dost thou go
Over those hoary crests, divinely led!
Art thou that huntress of the silver bow
Fabled of old? Or rather dost thou tread
Those cloudy summits thence to gaze below,
Like the wild chamois from her Alpine snow,
Where hunters never climbed—secure from dread?