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Poetical Works of Thomas Hood

Thomas Hood

This is a collection of Thomas Hood's poems. Hood was an eminent British poet, regarded in particular for his humorous poetry, as well as his weird and fantastic poems. As William Michael Rossetti writes in his biographical sketch of Hood, "A man of such a faculty and such a habit of work could scarcely, in all instances, keep himself within the bounds of good taste - a term which people are far too ready to introduce into serious discussions, for the purpose of casting disparagement upon some work which transcends the ordinary standards of appreciation, but a term nevertheless which has its important meaning and its true place. Hood is too often like a man grinning awry, or interlarding serious and beautiful discourse with a nod, a wink, or a leer, neither requisite nor convenient as auxiliaries to his speech: and to do either of these things is to fail in perfect taste. Sometimes, not very often, we are allowed to reach the close of a poem of his without having our attention jogged and called off by a single interpolation of this kind; and then we feel unalloyed—what we constantly feel also even under the contrary conditions—how exquisite a poetic sense and how choice a cunning of hand were his. On the whole, we can pronounce Hood the finest English poet between the generation of Shelley and the generation of Tennyson." - Summary by Carolin