Children of the Night

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.