Hood wrote humorously on many contemporary issues. One of the most important issues in his time was grave robbing and selling of corpses to anatomists (see West Port murders). On this serious and perhaps cruel issue, he wrote humorously thus:
Don’t go to weep upon my grave,
And think that there I be.
They haven’t left an atom there
Of my anatomie
-Thomas Hood"I Remember, I Remember" (poetry)I remember, I rememberThe house where I was born,The little window where the sunCame peeping in at morn;He never came a wink too soonNor brought to long a day;But now, I often wish the nightHad borne my breath away.
I remember, I rememberThe roses, red and white,The violets, and the lily-cupsThose flowers made of light!The lilacs where the robin built,And where my brother setThe laburnum on his birth-day,The tree is living yet!
I remember, I rememberWhere I used to swing,And thought the air must rush as freshTo swallows on the wing;My spirit flew in feathers thenThat is so heavy now,And summer pools could hardly coolThe fever on my brow.
I remember, I rememberThe fir trees dark and high;I used to think their slender topsWere close against the sky:It was childish ignorance,But now 'tis little joyTo know I'm farther off from HeavenThan when I was a boy.
Hood’s most widely known work during his lifetime was a poem entitled "The Song of the Shirt", which was a lament for a poor London seamstress who had been compelled to sell shirts that she had made, the proceeds of which lawfully belonged to her employer, in order to feed her malnourished and ailing child. Hood’s poem appeared in one of the very first editions of
Punch in 1843 and quickly became a public sensation, being turned into a popular song and inspiring social activists in defense of the countless laboring women who lived in abject poverty despite their constant industriousness. Below are two verses of "The Song of the Shirt":
WITH fingers weary and worn,With eyelids heavy and red,A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,Plying her needle and thread--Stitch! stitch! stitch!In poverty, hunger, and dirt,And still with a voice of dolorous pitchShe sang the "Song of the Shirt."
"Work! work! work!While the cock is crowing aloof!And work...work...work,Till the stars shine through the roof!It's Oh! to be a slaveAlong with the barbarous Turk,Where woman has never a soul to save,If this is Christian work!