Thread: Thomas Hood
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Unread 06-21-2005, 08:49 AM
Hugh Clary Hugh Clary is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: Albuquerque, NM, USA
Posts: 233
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>I wonder how L12 is scanned.

These lines are actually the last stanza(s) of a much larger work entitled Miss Kilmansegg, which, for those with much too much time on their hands, can be read in its entirety at Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/6/5/15652/15652-8.txt


(Do a Find for HER MORAL.)

Some of the lines are different in that copy, and there are two stanzas, wherein the three-beat lines are indented, making the last stanza 4-4-3, 4-4-4-3.


Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Bright and yellow, hard and cold,
Molten, graven, hammer'd and roll'd;
Heavy to get, and light to hold;
Hoarded, barter'd, bought, and sold,
Stolen, borrow'd, squander'd, doled:
Spurn'd by the young, but hugg'd by the old
To the very verge of the churchyard mould;
Price of many a crime untold;

Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold:
Good or bad a thousand-fold!
How widely its agencies vary--
To save--to ruin--to curse--to bless--
As even its minted coins express,
Now stamp'd with the image of Good Queen Bess,
And now of a Bloody Mary.


These also match those in my copy of Hood's Poetical Works, along with the indentations, but the book only has one stanza to further complicate matters, sigh. Why Hood thought a single-syllable foot exists is yet less clear. Probably got if from Tennyson's Break, break, break, I'll hypothecate.

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