Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, POETRY, PROSE, AND WORSE, by THOMAS HOOD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

POETRY, PROSE, AND WORSE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: O turkey! How mild are thy manners
Last Line: We want a poetical tone!
Subject(s): Turkish Literature


OTURKEY! how mild are thy manners,
Whose greatest and highest of men
Are all proud to be rhymers and scanners,
And wield the poetical pen!

The Sultan rejects -- he refuses --
Gives orders to bowstring his man;
But he still will coquet with the Muses,
And make it a song if he can.

The victim cut shorter for treason,
Though conscious himself of no crime,
Must submit and believe there is reason
Whose sentence is turned into rhyme!

He bows to the metrical firman,
As dulcet as song of the South,
And his head, like self-satisfied German,
Rolls off with its pipe in its mouth.

A tax would the Lord of the Crescent?
He levies it still in a lay,
And is p'rhaps the sole Bard at this present
Whose Poems are certain to pay.

State edicts unpleasant to swallow
He soothes with the charms of the Muse,
And begs rays of his brother Apollo
To gild bitter pills for the Jews.

When Jealousy sets him in motion
The fair one on whom he looks black,
He sews up with a sonnet to Ocean,
And sends her to drown in her sack.

His gifts, they are posies latent
With sequins roll'd up in a purse,
And in making Bashaws, by the patent
Their tails are all "done into verse."

He sprinkles with lilies and roses
The path of each politic plan,
And with eyes of Gazelles discomposes
The beards of the solemn Divan.

The Czar he defies in a sonnet,
And then a fit nag to endorse
With his Pegasus, jingling upon it,
Reviews all his Mussulman horse.

He sends a short verse, ere he slumbers,
Express unto Meer Ali Beg,
Who returns in poetical numbers
The thousands that die of the plague.

He writes to the Bey of a city
In tropes of heroical sound,
And is told in a pastoral ditty
The place is burnt down to the ground.

He sends a stern summons, but flow'ry,
To Melex Pasha, for some wrong,
Who describes the dark eyes of his houri,
And throws off his yoke with a song.

His Vizier presents him a trophy,
Still, Mars to Calliope weds --
With an amorous hymn to St. Sophy
A hundred of pickled Greek heads.

Each skull with a turban upon it
By royal example is led:
Even Mesrour the Mute has a Sonnet
To Silence composed in his head.

Ev'n Hassan while plying his hammer
To punish short weight to the poor,
With a stanza attempts to enamour
The ear that he nails to a door.

O! would that we copied from Turkey
In this little Isle of our own,
Where the times are so muddy and murky,
We want a poetical tone!

Suppose that the Throne in addresses --
For verse there is plenty of scope --
In alluding to native distresses,
Just quoted the "Pleasures of Hope."

Methinks 'twould enliven and chirp us,
So dreary and dull is the time,
Just to keep a State Poet on purpose
To put the King's speeches in rhyme.

When bringing new measures before us,
As bills for the Sabbath or poor
Let both Houses just chaunt them in chorus,
And p'rhaps they would get an encore.

No stanzas invite to pay taxes
In notes like the notes of the south,
But we're dunn'd by a fellow what axes
With prose and a pen in his mouth.

Suppose -- as no payers are eager --
Hard times and a struggle to live --
That he sung at our doors like a beggar
For what one thought proper to give?

Our law is of all things the dryest
That earth in its compass can show!
Of poetical efforts its highest
The rhyming its Doe with its Roe.

No documents tender and silky
Are writ such as poets would pen,
When a beadle is sent after Wilkie, *
Or bailiffs to very shy men.

The warrants that put in distresses
When rates have been owing too long,
Should appear in poetical dresses,
Ere goods be sold off for a song.

Suppose that -- Law making its choices
Of Bishop, Hawes, Rodwell, or Cooke, --
They were all set as glees for four voices,
To sing all offenders to book?

Our criminals code's as untender,
All prose in its legal despatch,
And no constables seize an offender
While pleasantly singing a catch.

They haul him along like a heifer,
And tell him "My covey, you'll swing!"
Not a hint that the wanton young zephyr
Will fan his shoe-soles with her wing.

The trial has nothing that's rosy
To soften the prisoner's pap,
And Judge Park appears dreadfully prosy
Whilst dooming to death in his cap.

Would culprits go into hysterics,
Their spirits more likely elope,
If the jury consulted in lyrics,
The judge made a line of the rope?

When men must be hung for a warning,
How sweet if the law would incline
In the place of the "Eight in the morning,"
To let them indulge in the nine!

How pleasant if ask'd upon juries
By Muses, thus mild as the doves,
In the place of the Fates and the Furies
That call us from home and our loves!

Our warfare is deadly and horrid,
Its bald bulletins are in prose,
And with gore made revoltingly florid,
Nor tinted with couleur de rose.

How pleasant in army despatches
In reading of red battle-plains,
To alight on some pastoral snatches,
To sweeten the blood and the brains!

How sweet to be drawn for the locals
By songs setting valour a-gog!
Or be press'd to turn tar by sea-vocals
Inviting -- with "Nothing like Grog!"

To tenants but shortish at present,
When Michaelmas comes with its day,
O! a landlord's effusion were pleasant
That talk'd of the flowers in May!

How sweet if the bill that rehearses
The debt we've incurr'd in the year,
But enrich'd, as a copy of verses,
The gem, or a new souvenir!

O! would that we copied from Turkey
In this little Isle of our own!
For the times are so moody and murky,
We want a poetical tone!





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