Craniology Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABCDDAAEEAAFFGG HHIIAAAAJKLLMMNN OONNPPGGAAGGAAFFAAAA AANNNNNNQRGGSSPPTUVV LLNNAAGG AAAAGGRGLLGG GGLLNNRRLLGGNNBBWWRR SS'Tis strange how like a very dunce | A |
Man with his bumps upon his sconce | A |
Has lived so long and yet no knowledge he | B |
Has had till lately of Phrenology | C |
A science that by simple dint of | D |
Head combing he should find a hint of | D |
When scratching o'er those little poll hills | A |
The faculties throw up like mole hills | A |
A science that in very spite | E |
Of all his teeth ne'er came to light | E |
For though he knew his skull had grinders | A |
Still there turned up no organ finders | A |
Still sages wrote and ages fled | F |
And no man's head came in his head | F |
Not even the pate of Erra Pater | G |
Knew aught about its pia mater | G |
- | |
At last great Dr Gall bestirs him | H |
I don't know but it might be Spurzheim | H |
Tho' native of a dull and slow land | I |
And makes partition of our Poll land | I |
At our Acquisitiveness guesses | A |
And all those necessary nesses | A |
Indicative of human habits | A |
All burrowing in the head like rabbits | A |
Thus Veneration he made known | J |
Had got a lodging at the Crown | K |
And Music see Deville's example | L |
A set of chambers in the Temple | L |
That Language taught the tongues close by | M |
And took in pupils thro' the eye | M |
Close by his neighbor Computation | N |
Who taught the eyebrows numeration | N |
- | |
The science thus to speak in fit | O |
Terms having struggled from its nit | O |
Was seized on by a swarm of Scotchmen | N |
Those scientifical hotch potch men | N |
Who have at least a penny dip | P |
And wallop in all doctorship | P |
Just as in making broth they smatter | G |
By bobbing twenty things in water | G |
These men I say made quick appliance | A |
And close to phrenologic science | A |
For of all learned themes whatever | G |
That schools and colleges deliver | G |
There's none they love so near the bodles | A |
As analysing their own noddles | A |
Thus in a trice each northern blockhead | F |
Had got his fingers in his shock head | F |
And of his bumps was babbling yet worse | A |
Than poor Miss Capulet's dry wet nurse | A |
Till having been sufficient rangers | A |
Of their own heads they took to strangers' | A |
And found in Presbyterians' polls | A |
The things they hated in their souls | A |
For Presbyterians hear with passion | N |
Of organs joined with veneration | N |
No kind there was of human pumpkin | N |
But at its bumps it had a bumpkin | N |
Down to the very lowest gullion | N |
And oiliest skull of oily scullion | N |
No great man died but this they did do | Q |
They begged his cranium of his widow | R |
No murderer died by law disaster | G |
But they took off his sconce in plaster | G |
For thereon they could show depending | S |
The head and front of his offending | S |
How that his philanthropic bump | P |
Was mastered by a baser lump | P |
For every bump these wags insist | T |
Has its direct antagonist | U |
Each striving stoutly to prevail | V |
Like horses knotted tail to tail | V |
And many a stiff and sturdy battle | L |
Occurs between these adverse cattle | L |
The secret cause beyond all question | N |
Of aches ascribed to indigestion | N |
Whereas 'tis but two knobby rivals | A |
Tugging together like sheer devils | A |
Till one gets mastery good or sinister | G |
And comes in like a new prime minister | G |
- | |
Each bias in some master node is | A |
What takes M'Adam where a road is | A |
To hammer little pebbles less | A |
His organ of Destructiveness | A |
What makes great Joseph so encumber | G |
Debate a lumping lump of Number | G |
Or Malthas rail at babies so | R |
The smallness of his Philopro | G |
What severs man and wife a simple | L |
Defect of the Adhesive pimple | L |
Or makes weak women go astray | G |
Their bumps are more in fault than they | G |
- | |
These facts being found and set in order | G |
By grave M D 's beyond the Border | G |
To make them for some months eternal | L |
Were entered monthly in a journal | L |
That many a northern sage still writes in | N |
And throws his little Northern Lights in | N |
And proves and proves about the phrenos | R |
A great deal more than I or he knows | R |
How Music suffers par exemple | L |
By wearing tight hats round the temple | L |
What ills great boxers have to fear | G |
From blisters put behind the ear | G |
And how a porter's Veneration | N |
Is hurt by porter's occupation | N |
Whether shillelaghs in reality | B |
May deaden Individuality | B |
Or tongs and poker be creative | W |
Of alterations in th' Amative | W |
If falls from scaffolds make us less | R |
Inclined to all Constructiveness | R |
With more such matters all applying | S |
To heads and therefore head ifying | S |
Thomas Hood
(1)
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