Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A NEW SONG FROM THE POLISH by THOMAS HOOD

Poet Analysis

First Line: COME, MESSMATES, ATTEND TO A WARNING
Last Line: YOU'LL MEET ON RETURNING TO PORT!
COME, messmates, attend to a warning,
From one who has gone through the whole;
And you'll never set sail, some fine morning,
To seek any sort of a Pole.
It's not for the ice-bergs and freezing,
Or dangers you'll have for to court,
It's the shocks very hard and unpleasing
You'll meet on returning to port.

It's joyful to sail up the Channel,
And think of your girls and your wives,
Of the warming-pans, Wallsend and flannel,
To comfort the rest of your lives!
But Lord! you will look like a ninny
To find, when to shore you have got,
That Old England is turned into Guinea,
It feels so confoundedly hot!

The next thing is coming, in Wapping,
The houses you lived at before,
And you find there is no sort of stopping
Without open windows and door!
Then Poll, if dispos'd to be cruel,
Or has got some one else in her grace,
She just chucks on a shovel of fuel,
And drives you smack out of the place.

There's Tomkin's, that took for to grapple
With Methody Tracks at the Pole,
Is half crazy he can't go to chapel,
It's so like Calcutta's Black Hole!
And Block, tho' he's not a deceiver,
But knows what to marriage belongs,
His own wife he's obleeg'd for to leave her,
Because of her poker and tongs.

Myself, tho' I'm able at present
To bear with one friend at a time,
And my wife, if she makes herself pleasant,
At first I was plagued with the clime.
Like powder I flew from hot cinders,
And whistled for winds fore and aft,
While I set between two open winders
A-courting a cold thorough-draught!

The first time in bed I was shoven,
The moment I pillow'd my head,
Oh! I thought I had crept in an oven,
A-baking with all of the bread!
I soon left the blankets behind me,
And ran for a cooler retreat; --
But next morning the Justices fin'd me
For taking a snooze in the street!

Now, there was a chance for a feller!
No roof I could sleep under twice;
Till a Fishmonger let me a cellar,
Of course with the use of the ice.
But still, like old hermits in stories,
I found it a dullish concarn;
With no creature, but maids and John Dories,
To listen to spinning a yarn!

Then wanting to see Black-Ey'd Susan,
I went to the Surrey with Sal;
And what next? -- in the part most amusin',
I fainted away like a gal!
Well, there I was stretched without motion,
No smells and no fans would suffice,
Till my natur at last gave a notion
To grab at a gentleman's ice!

Then, Messmates, attend to a warning
From one who has gone through the whole,
And you'll never set sail, some fine morning,
To seek any sort of a Pole.
It's not for the ice-bergs and freezing,
Or dangers you'll have for to court;
It's the shocks, very hard and unpleasing,
You'll meet on returning to port!



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