Sally Simpkin's Lament (Poem For A Thursday)

 

Sally Simpkin's Lament

"Oh! What is that comes gliding in,

And quite in middling haste?

It is the picture of my Jones,

And painted to the waist.

It is not painted to the life,

For where's the trousers blue?

Oh Jones, my dear! Oh dear! my Jones,

What is become of you?"

"Oh! Sally dear, it is too true,--

The half that you remark,

Is come to say my other half

Is bit off by a shark!

Oh! Sally, sharks do things by halves,

Yet most completely do!

A bite in one places seems enough,

But I've been bit in two.

You know I once was all your own,

But now a shark must share!

But let that pass--for now to you

I'm neither here nor there.

Alas! Death has a strange divorce

Effected in the sea.

It has divided me from you,

And even me from me.

Don't fear my ghost will walk o' nights

To haunt as people say;

My ghost can't walk, for oh! my legs

Are many leagues away!

Lord! Think, when I am swimming round

And looking where the boat is,

A shark just snaps away a half

Without a quarter's notice!

One half is here, the other half

Is near Columbia placed:

Oh, Sally! I have got the whole

Atlantic for my waist.

But now adieu--a long adieu!

I've solved Death's awful riddle.

I would say more, but I am doomed

To break off in the middle!"

-Thomas Hood

I no longer have any clue where I first came across this poem--it doesn't seem to be in any book I have--but nevertheless it sticks in my head...

Thomas Hood lived from 1799 to 1845 and that's his portrait up there from the National Portrait Gallery. Is there just possibly a hint of a smile on his face?