But oh!—­the worst of all your slips
  I did not till this day discover—­
That down in Deptford’s prison ships,
  O Mary! you’ve a hulking lover!

THE COMPASS, WITH VARIATIONS.[31]

    “The Needles have sometimes been fatal to Mariners.”
    Picture of Isle of Wight.

[Footnote 31:  Written when Walter Scott was familiarly known as the “Wizard of the North,” the title which is the key to the present poem.  Scott died in September, 1832, in the interval between the writing and the publishing of the verses, for which Hood makes regretful apology in the Preface to the Comic Annual for 1833, in which they appeared.]

I.

One close of day—­’twas in the Bay
  Of Naples, bay of glory! 
While light was hanging crowns of gold
  On mountains high and hoary,
A gallant bark got under weigh,
  And with her sails my story.

II.

For Leghorn she was bound direct,
  With wine and oil for cargo,
Her crew of men some nine or ten,
  The captain’s name was Jago;
A good and gallant bark she was,
  La Donna (call’d) del Lago.

III.

Bronzed mariners were hers to view,
  With brown cheeks, clear or muddy,
Dark shining eyes, and coal-black hair,
  Meet heads for painter’s study;
But midst their tan there stood one man,
  Whose cheek was fair and ruddy;

IV.

His brow was high, a loftier brow
  Ne’er shone in song or sonnet,
His hair, a little scant, and when
  He doff’d his cap or bonnet,
One saw that Grey had gone beyond
  A premiership upon it!

V.

His eye—­a passenger was he,
  The cabin he had hired it,—­
His eye was gray, and when he look’d
  Around, the prospect fired it,—­
A fine poetic light, as if
  The Appe-Nine inspir’d it.

VI.

His frame was stout, in height about
  Six feet—­well made and portly;
Of dress and manner just to give
  A sketch, but very shortly,
His order seem’d a composite
  Of rustic with the courtly.

VII.

He ate and quaff’d, and joked and laughed,
  And chatted with the seamen,
And often task’d their skill and ask’d,
  “What weather is’t to be, man?”
No demonstration there appeared,
  That he was any demon.

VIII.

No sort of sign there was that he
  Could raise a stormy rumpus,
Like Prospero make breezes blow,
  And rocks and billows thump us,—­
But little we supposed what he
  Could with the needle compass!