The Song of the Shirt

“The Song of the Shirt” was written by English author, editor, poet, and humorist Thomas Hood. The poem was originally published in an 1843 Christmas edition of the popular Victorian magazine Punch. Written around the end of Victorian England’s Industrial Revolution, “The Song of the Shirt” participates in one of the period’s most popular literary genres: socially conscious poems of protest. As a poem of protest, “The Song of the Shirt” draws attention to the poor living conditions of the working class through its battered protagonist—the Seamstress—and petitions its rich audience to take note of and improve the lot of their lower-class citizens.

As a grim and imploring poem to the rich, “The Song of the Shirt” marked a shift in Hood’s writing career. As a professional writer, Hood commercially wrote in a number of different genres and media. Much of Hood’s writing career—and subsequent popularity—entailed writing morbidly comedic poems featuring such grotesque topics as bodily dismemberment, suicide, and murder.

However, it was the socially conscious poetry written near the end of Hood’s life that ultimately became his legacy. Hood’s contemporary and famed novelist William Makepeace Thackeray praised “The Song of the Shirt” as “the finest lyric ever written” (“Thomas Hood, Early Victorian Christian Social Criticism, and the Hoodian Hero,” Robert D. Butterworth, p. 440), and modernist writers W. H. Auden and William Michael Rossetti both regarded Hood’s later poems as some of the best of his generation.

Poet Biography

From an early age, Thomas Hood engaged in publishing. He was born into a publishing family as the son of a London bookseller in 1799, but when his father died in 1811, Hood and his mother left London and relocated to Islington. In Islington, Hood had his first job as an editor, revising a new edition of the 1788 novel Paul and Virginia; he also began to study engraving. He found work in a counting house, but the job soon agitated his lifelong poor health. In hopes of recovering, Hood moved to Dundee, Scotland to live with relatives. Here, he first began to dabble in writing poetry. In 1818, the 19-year-old Hood, working now as an engraver, returned to London.

Back in the city of his childhood, Hood quickly found work commercially writing for various publications. He edited for the London Magazine from 1821-23 and published a number of both serious and comic poems. During this time, Hood also befriended fellow writer and poet John Hamilton Reynolds and the two collaborated on the anonymously published Odes and Addresses to Great People (1825)—a collection of mostly comic verse about celebrities of Hood’s time. The collection was immediately successful. Hood began to establish his reputation as a writer of amusing and lighthearted entertainment, although this first collection also included Hood’s first poem of social protest, “An Address to the Steam Washing Company,” which highlighted the plight of poor laundresses put out of business. Shortly after the publication of his first collection, Hood married Jane Reynolds: John Hamilton Reynolds’s sister.

The following years cemented Hood’s status as a professional comic writer. By 1827, he published two series of Whims & Oddities, in Prose and Verse (1826, 1827) and two volumes of National Tales (1827), a collection of short stories and novellas, as well as the quintessentially Hoodian poem “Faithless Nelly Gray” (1826)—a darkly witty exercise in puns and humor about an amputee whose lover rejects him. Hood’s first significant attempt at non-comic poetry—The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, Hero and Leander, Lycus the Centaur, and Other Poems (1827), a collection of verse heavily inspired by Hood’s contemporary John Keats—failed to achieve either the popular or critical success of Hood’s prior work. Since his livelihood depended on writing commercial successes, Hood “never again published a wholly serious volume nor attempted the Keatsian manner” (“Keats and Hood,” Alvin Whitley, Keats-Shelly Journal, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1956), p. 47), until the final 18 months of his life.

After his failed poetry collection, Hood published the comic poem “Epping Hunt” (1829) and in 1829, became editor of an annual literary magazine called The Gem. He further acquired fame as the compiler and primary author of a series of annual volumes known as The Comic Annuals, which ran from 1830-39. With these annuals, Hood became increasingly known for his pun-filled and humorous commentary on current social events. During that time, Hood published his only novel Tylney Hall in three volumes in 1834. However, in the midst of all these writing appointments, money troubles and a recurrence of ill health—mostly caused by hemorrhaging in the lungs—forced Hood abroad. He moved to Belgium and Germany in 1835 and did not return to London until 1840. Still in financial trouble and weakened from sickness, Hood accepted a 50-pound donation from The Royal Literary Fund to take care of his family.

Back in London and still suffering various ailments, Hood began publishing some of his most successful work. The lengthy poem Miss Kilmansegg and Her Precious Leg (1840-41) was the most critically celebrated poem of Hood’s career and, like his previous darkly comic verse, delighted in scenes of treachery, grotesque violence, and bodily mutilation. Hood published “The Song of the Shirt” in the 1843 Christmas edition of Punch—a popular magazine that, in its early days, regularly criticized the abuses of the Victorian social order and class system. “The Song of the Shirt” was instantly well-received and became Hood’s most widely read and reprinted work, likely prompting him to again explore the poem’s complaints against the treatment of London’s poor in his final writings.

In 1844, frustrated by various financial controversies with publishers, Hood decided to form his own magazine: Hood’s Magazine and Comic Miscellany (1844-48). Within a few months, however, he became dangerously ill and other writers, including long-time friend and novelist Charles Dickens, had to write for and contribute money to the magazine to save it.

Although Hood never recovered from this final bout with illness, he also produced some of his most enduring poetry from his sick bed. The poems “The Lay of the Laborer” (1844) and “The Bridge of Sighs” (1844) in particular enjoyed significant popularity at their time and continue to among literary critics to this day. Like “The Song of the Shirt,” both poems illustrate the suffering of London’s marginalized poor—from unemployed farmers to fallen women.

Hood died of a severe lingering illness on May 3, 1845, at only 45. The Royal Literary Fund donated 75 pounds to Hood’s family in recognition of his notable writing talent. Hood’s friend Charles Dickens similarly acknowledged his talent, eulogizing Hood as a man of “prodigious force and genius as a poet” (“Hood and Dickens: Some New Letters,” Alvin Whitley, Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 4 (1951), p. 390).

Poem Text

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 pitch

She 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 O! to be a slave

   Along with the barbarous Turk,

Where woman has never a soul to save,

   If this is Christian work!

   "Work—work—work,

Till the brain begins to swim;

   Work—work—work,

Till the eyes are heavy and dim!

Seam, and gusset, and band,                   

   Band, and gusset, and seam,

Till over the buttons I fall asleep,

   And sew them on in a dream!

   "O, men, with sisters dear!

   O, men, with mothers and wives!

It is not linen you're wearing out,

   But human creatures' lives!

      Stitch—stitch—stitch,

   In poverty, hunger and dirt,     

Sewing at once, with a double thread,

   A Shroud as well as a Shirt.

   "But why do I talk of death?

   That phantom of grisly bone,

I hardly fear his terrible shape,

   It seems so like my own—

It seems so like my own,

   Because of the fasts I keep;

Oh, God! that bread should be so dear.

   And flesh and blood so cheap!

   "Work—work—work!

   My labour never flags;

And what are its wages? A bed of straw,

   A crust of bread—and rags.

That shattered roof—this naked floor—

   A table—a broken chair—

And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank

   For sometimes falling there!

   "Work—work—work!

   From weary chime to chime,  

Work—work—work,

   As prisoners work for crime!

Band, and gusset, and seam,

   Seam, and gusset, and band,

Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumbed,

   As well as the weary hand.

   "Work—work—work,

In the dull December light,

   And work—work—work,

When the weather is warm and bright—        

While underneath the eaves

   The brooding swallows cling

As if to show me their sunny backs

   And twit me with the spring.

   "O! but to breathe the breath

Of the cowslip and primrose sweet—

   With the sky above my head,

And the grass beneath my feet;

For only one short hour

   To feel as I used to feel,           

Before I knew the woes of want

   And the walk that costs a meal!

   "O! but for one short hour!

   A respite however brief!

No blessed leisure for Love or hope,

   But only time for grief!

A little weeping would ease my heart,

   But in their briny bed

My tears must stop, for every drop

   Hinders needle and thread!"

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 pitch,—

Would that its tone could reach the Rich!—

   She sang this "Song of the Shirt!"

Hood, Thomas. “The Song of the Shirt.” 1843. Poets.org.

Summary

The first stanza of “The Song of the Shirt” introduces the poem’s protagonist: the lonely and overworked seamstress. Hood vividly describes her exhaustion, emphasizing her “weary” (Line 1) fingers and “heavy” (Line 2) eyelids. Hood next draws attention to the woman’s poor living conditions and “poverty” (Line 6), her “unwomanly rags” (Line 3), and the “dirt” (Line 6) covering her lodgings. The first stanza also introduces the poem’s repetitive refrain “Stitch! stitch! stitch!” (Line 5), mimicking the constant and repetitive nature of the woman’s sewing. The stanza concludes by setting the stage for the seamstress’s “dolorous” (Line 7) or sorrowful “Song of the Shirt” (Line 8).

In the second stanza, the seamstress begins her song: a list of complaints about the sufferings she endures because of her work. The repetition of “Work! Work! Work!” (Line 9) evokes the never-ending nature of the seamstress’s labor, which lasts from morning until “the stars shine through the roof” (Line 12) at night. Beleaguered and exploited, the seamstress laments that she is little more than a “slave” (Line 13) like the “barbarous Turk” (Line 14) and questions how such cruel work could be considered virtuous or “Christian” (Line 16).

With another refrain of “Work—work—work” (Line 17), the seamstress next describes the process of her labor. Although her brain “begins to swim” (Line 18) and her eyes become “heavy and dim” (Line 20), she persists in weaving “seam, and gusset, and band / Band, and gusset, and seam” (Lines 21-22), repeating the same motions over and over until she passes out with exhaustion and sews on even in her “dream” (Line 24).

Having established the monotonous, tiring nature of her work, the seamstress begins the fourth stanza with a direct request to men, imploring them to imagine their sisters, mothers, and wives (Lines 25-26) in her position to inspire pity. She begs them to consider her sufferings when they are “wearing out” (Line 27) their linen and clothes, as they are also wearing out “human creatures’ lives” (Line 28). With more repetition of the word “stitch” (Line 29), the seamstress again refers to the “poverty, hunger, and dirt” (Line 30) mentioned in Line 6 and laments that she is metaphorically sewing her own “shroud” (Line 32) alongside the shirt.

On the subject of death, the seamstress notes that the “terrible shape” (Line 35) of “that phantom of grisly bone” (Line 34) is familiar to her. The seamstress “hardly” (Line 35) fears this personified death, since her emaciated body has come to resemble his. She contrasts the “dear” (Line 39) value of bread and food compared to her “cheap” (Line 40) worth in society. Although her labor “never flags” (Line 42), the seamstress has little to show for her effort besides a “bed of straw” (Line 43), a “crust of bread” (Line 44), and the previously mentioned “rags” (Line 44). Her roof is “shattered” (Line 45), her walls “blank” (Line 47), and her floor “naked” (Line 45)—adorned with only a table and broken chair (Line 46). The seamstress characterizes her lodgings as dirty, sparse, and lonely.

Once more, the seamstress describes the tasks and amount of time involved in her work. She tediously labors from “weary chime to chime” (Line 50), not unlike a prisoner (Line 52). She again returns to the “band, and gusset, and seam” (Line 54) until her brain is “benumbed” (Line 55) and her hands “weary” (Line 56). She works at all times of the year, both in winter (Line 58) and when the weather is “warm and bright” (Line 60). Even in the spring, the seamstress must slave away, taunted by the singing and “sunny backs” (Line 63) of the much freer swallows outside.

Considering the birds in the spring, the seamstress longs to “breathe” (Line 65) in the scent of flowers and feel the grass “beneath [her] feet” (Line 68)—simple pleasures she “used to feel” (Line 70) before becoming a seamstress. No longer a child who did not know “the woes of want” (Line 71), she can only dream of “one short hour” (Line 69) of freedom, knowing that even an hour break from work could mean one less meal (Line 72). Still longing for that short “respite” (Line 74), the seamstress bemoans her inability to “love or hope” (Line 75); all she can find time for is “grief” (Line 76). Yet even grief is a luxury she cannot afford. While crying might “ease” (Line 77) her heart, tears would “hinder” (Line 80) her ability to see the needle and thread, slowing her work and decreasing her already meager wages.

The 11th and final stanza is largely a refrain of the first. The seamstress’s song is over, and the narrator returns to his description of the seamstress at work in her home. In the final three lines, there is one notable difference between this stanza and the first: The narrator acknowledges that the seamstress is “still” singing her “dolorous” (Line 87) song and interjects their personal wish that the song’s “tone could reach the Rich!” (Line 88) With this unanswered and unresolved hope, Hood ends “The Song of the Shirt.”