Thomas Hood

The man who cloaked his bitterness within

This winding-sheet of puns and pleasantries,

God never gave to look with common eyes

Upon a world of anguish and of sin:

His brother was the branded man of Lynn;

And there are woven with his jollities

The nameless and eternal tragedies

That render hope and hopelessness akin.

We laugh, and crown him; but anon we feel

A 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.