the lamps will e'er be "learn'd"
Where six months' "midnight oil" is burn'd
Or Letters must confer
With people that have never conn'd
An A, B, C, but live beyond
The _Sound of Lancaster_!

XXXI.

O come away at any rate--
Well hast thou earn'd a downier state--
With all thy hardy peers--
Good lack, thou must be glad to smell dock,
And rub thy feet with opodeldock,
After such frosty years.

XXXII.

Mayhap, some gentle dame at last,
Smit by the perils thou hast pass'd.
However coy before,
Shall bid thee now set up thy rest
In that _Brest Harbor_, woman's breast,
And tempt the Fates no more!

ODE TO W. KITCHENER, M.D.[25]

AUTHOR OF "THE COOK'S ORACLE," "OBSERVATIONS ON VOCAL MUSIC," "THE
ART OF INVIGORATING AND PROLONGING LIFE," "PRACTICAL OBSERVATIONS
ON TELESCOPES, OPERA-GLASSES, AND SPECTACLES," "THE HOUSEKEEPER'S
LEDGER," AND "THE PLEASURE OF MAKING A WILL."

"I rule the roast, as Milton says! "--_Caleb Quotem_.

[Footnote 25: Hood, for obvious purposes, slightly departs from the
true spelling of Dr. Kitchiner's name. He was an M. D. of Glasgow, who,
having been left a handsome fortune by his father, abandoned the active
practice of his profession, and devoted himself to science, notably to
that of optics, as well as to gastronomy, being himself eminent as a
gourmet. He was the author of a once famous Cookery Book, _The Cook's
Oracle_; and an improved kitchen range still bears his name.]

Oh! multifarious man!
Thou Wondrous, Admirable Kitchen Crichton!
Born to enlighten
The laws of Optics, Peptics, Music, Cooking--
Master of the Piano--and the Pan--
As busy with the kitchen as the skies!
Now looking
At some rich stew thro' Galileo's eyes,--
Or boiling eggs--timed to a metronome--
As much at home
In spectacles as in mere isinglass--
In the art of frying brown--as a digression
On music and poetical expression,
Whereas, how few of all our cooks, alas!
Could tell Calliope from "Callipee!"
How few there be
Could leave the lowest for the highest stories, (Observatories,)
And turn, like thee, Diana's calculator,
However _cook's_ synonymous with _Kater_!
Alas! still let me say,
How few could lay
The carving knife beside the tuning fork,
Like the proverbial _Jack_ ready for any work!

II.

Oh, to behold thy features in thy book!
Thy proper head and shoulders in a plate,
How it would look!
With one rai