April National Poetry Month: An 1850 Typee reference

An early Typee reference in line six, "A dainty, radiant damsel Fayaway.”

I'm not familiar enough with Hood to recognize whether the poem follows a specific one of his or a general style common to several.

 Should the poem have stayed buried?  

D. "A Valentine Vagary—Verbose and Volatile." Boston Statesman. May 11, 1850: 1 col 1.

A VALENTINE VAGARY—VERBOSE AND VOLATILE.—After Hood. 

 

In sainted spirits might above move love.

Your facile eyes gleam like the bright night-light!

And from their fleet beams those would beat retreat,

Who in wild wars regarded not hot shot!

A dainty, radiant damsel Fayaway,

Fine paced as is some airy-dairy Mary

Startling the daisies out where those cows browse,

A star in her Milky-Way, with fair air there,

Catching the creamy streamlets in thin tin!

But, oh, "it is not always May," say they,

Gloom-eyed, grim grief to all may come, some glim

Misery shut one in jaws of whole-soul dole,

Like swallowed Jonah in his whale-jail pale!

But let us not from any morrow borrow sorrow.

Hasty sad folks will sometimes tear their hair:

I will but beg, if ever you do too,

A single glossy soft one gie thee mee!

My "thread of life" to be the wile you'll smile,

But a slim snake, if you frown, bringing sting?

Methinks I see you, lass Louise, seize these

Exorbitant rhymes making, without doubt, pout,

And, with soft hand upon your sleek cheek, seek

To guess who 'tis can write such gruff, rough stuff.

Lily Louise, it does appear queer here,

For peach-cheeked you, I should not fly sky-high,

Radiant as if (were such omelet yet met)

You dined on roseleaves dipt in dew; to you

To put into your — smile, a fit tit-bit.

Indeed, if you in any book took look,

At every turn perhaps you'd spy a higher-flyer:

Yet some there are who will rehearse worse verse

Than these inordinate lines, that tell, pell-mell,

Such a triple tinkling tale as Hood could—good.

Let nature's nobler bards prolong strong song.

Dear mysteries in Mr. E. we see,

Who, peering into the Sphynx's wise eyes, cries

"Has all this wonderful world become hum-drum?"

And hear the voluble, chaste Bryant, riant, pliant,

In solemn beautiful talk to teach us nature's features.

Longfellow too! that musical bulbul

Of mollient mouth which, when it sings things, tings

Richly as if it did but eat sweet-meat.

Their verse would make a valentine shine fine,

But it might give even their brain vain pain,

This Cerberus rhyme, to make much wit fit it.

Incipient angel of a higher sphere! we're here

Celestialized by smiles, or sunk into low woe.

Oh, lilac lipped Louise, if to those who do woo you

Your shrouding No is o'er this twirled world hurled,

And dreariment, death's mate scare blighted day away,

In a black blank of bleak eclipse there's One undone!

February 14th, 1850. D.