Poems of Thomas Hood In Two Volumes Author:Thomas Hood General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1854 Original Publisher: Little Brown and Co. Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where yo... more »u can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: SPRING. A NEW VERSION. Sam. " The air bites shrewdly -- it is very cold. Bar. 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 ? 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 Wows as if they came From Spring the Fighter. Her praises, then, let hardy poets sing, And be her tuneful laureates and upholders, Who do not feel as if they had a Spring Pour'd down their shoulders! Lei others eulogize 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-blossom sthat 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 eastern 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 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 if in May itself I lack A peg for laudatory verse to ...« less