Thomas Hood

The man who cloaked his bitterness

This winding-sheet of puns and pleasantries,

God never gave to look with common

Upon a world of anguish and of sin:

His brother was the branded man of Lynn;

And there are woven with his

The nameless and eternal

That render hope and hopelessness akin.

We laugh, and crown him; but anon we feelA still chord sorrow-swept, — a weird unrest;

And thin dim shadows home to midnight steal,

As if the very ghost of mirth were dead —As if the joys of time to dreams had fled,

Or sailed away with Ines to the West.