Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.
Thomas Hood 1799–1845From “Miss Kilmansegg and Her Precious Leg.” I. Her Death
Hood-Tho’T
How often mortality stands on the brink
Of its grave without any misgiving:
And yet in this slippery world of strife,
In the stir of human bustle so rife,
There are daily sounds to tell us that Life
Is dying, and Death is living!
Bright as they are with hope and joy,
How their souls would sadden instanter,
To remember that one of those wedding bells,
Which ring so merrily through the dells,
Is the same that knells
Our last farewells,
Only broken into a canter!
How little the wretched Countess thought,
When at night she unloos’d her sandal,
That the Fates had woven her burial cloth,
And that Death, in the shape of a Death’s Head Moth,
Was fluttering round her candle!
For the hours she had gone so wearily through
At the end of a day of trial,
How little she saw in her pride of prime
The dart of Death in the Hand of Time—
That hand which mov’d on the dial!
How little her swollen eye was aware
That the Shadow which follow’d was double!
Or when she clos’d her chamber door,
It was shutting out, and for evermore,
The world—and its worldly trouble.
Her jewels, after one glance of pride,
They were solemn bequests to Vanity;
Or when her robes she began to doff
That she stood so near to the putting off
Of the flesh that clothes humanity.
How little she thought, as the smoke took flight,
That her day was done—and merged in a night
Of dreams and durations uncertain,
Or along with her own,
That a Hand of Bone
Was closing mortality’s curtain!
And youth is hopeful, and Fate is kind
In concealing the day of sorrow;
And enough is the present tense of toil,
For this world is to all a stiffish soil,
And the mind flies back with a glad recoil
From the debts not due till to-morrow.
And bids its daily cares good-bye,
Along with its daily clothing?
Just as the felon condemn’d to die,
With a very natural loathing,
Leaving the Sheriff to dream of ropes,
From his gloomy cell in a vision elopes
To caper on sunny greens and slopes,
Instead of the dance upon nothing.
While Death still nearer and nearer crept,
Like the Thane who smote the sleeping;
But her mind was busy with early joys,
Her golden treasures and golden toys,
That flash’d a bright
And golden light
Under lids still red with weeping.
Her coral of gold, and the golden mug!
Her godfather’s golden presents!
The golden service she had at her meals,
The golden watch, and chain, and seals,
The golden scissors, and thread, and reels,
And her golden fishes and pheasants!
And the Golden Legends she heard from her nurse,
Of the Mayor in his gilded carriage,
And London streets that were pav’d with gold,
And the Golden Eggs that were laid of old,
With each golden thing
To the golden ring
At her own auriferous Marriage!
Through her golden dream appear’d to run,
Though the night that roar’d without was one
To terrify seamen or gypsies,
While the moon, as if in malicious mirth,
Kept peeping down at the ruffled earth,
As though she enjoy’d the tempest’s birth,
In revenge of her old eclipses.
For the soul of the Sleeper was under a spell
That time had lately embitter’d:
The Count, as once at her foot he knelt—
That foot which now he wanted to melt!
But—hush!—’t was a stir at her pillow she felt,
And some object before her glitter’d.
And up she started, and tried to scream,—
But, ev’n in the moment she started,
Down came the limb with a frightful smash,
And, lost in the universal flash
That her eyeballs made at so mortal a crash,
The Spark, Call’d Vital, departed!
For gold she had liv’d, and she died for gold,
By a golden weapon—not oaken;
In the morning they found her all alone—
Stiff, and bloody, and cold as stone—
But her Leg, the Golden leg, was gone,
And the “Golden Bowl was broken!”
At the Golden Lion the Inquest met—
Its foreman a carver and gilder,
And the Jury debated from twelve till there
What the Verdict ought to be,
And they brought it in as Felo-de-Se,
“Because her own Leg had kill’d her!”