Thomas Hood (1799-1845)

No!

Negation as Structure

Notice how every line begins with 'No'. This is a deliberate poetic technique creating rhythmic intensity and emotional claustrophobia.

No sun—no moon!
No morn—no noon—
No dawn—no dusk—no proper time of day—
No sky—no earthly view—
No distance looking blue—
No road—no street—no "t'other side the way"—
No end to any Row—
No indications where the crescents go—
No top to any steeple—
No recognition of familiar people—
No courtesies for showing 'em—
No knowing 'em—
No travelling at all—no locomotion,
No inkling of the way—no notion—
"No go"—by land or ocean—

Colloquial Slang

'No go' is period slang meaning something impossible or defeated. Hood uses contemporary language to enhance the poem's despair.

No mail—no post—
No news from any foreign coast—
No park—no ring—no afternoon gentility—
No company—no nobility—
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member—
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,

November as Metaphor

The month becomes a total state of bleakness—not just a season, but a complete existential condition of emptiness.

November!
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Rhetoric of Negation

Thomas Hood transforms November from a mere calendar page into an existential experience through systematic negation. By repeatedly using 'No', he creates a linguistic landscape of absolute absence—no light, no movement, no connection, no life.

The poem's structure is its meaning: each 'No' strips away another layer of sensory experience, leaving a void that feels both psychological and meteorological. This is not just description, but an emotional mapping of depression and winter's psychological toll.

Poetic Innovation

[CONTEXT: Early 19th-century poetry often used ornate language.] Hood radically departs from romantic conventions by using repetition and negation as his primary poetic devices. The poem reads like an incantation, each 'No' building a sense of increasing constriction.

Notice how the poem moves from cosmic ('No sun—no moon') to social ('No courtesies') to sensory ('No warmth, no cheerfulness'), creating a total breakdown of experience that culminates in the single word 'November!'—which becomes less a month and more a state of total existential shutdown.