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Title: To A Lady
Author: Jonathan Swift [
More Titles by Swift]
TO A LADY WHO DESIRED THE AUTHOR TO WRITE SOME VERSES UPON HER IN THE HEROIC STYLE.
After venting all my spite,
Tell me, what have I to write?
Every error I could find
Through the mazes of your mind,
Have my busy Muse employ'd,
Till the company was cloy'd.
Are you positive and fretful,
Heedless, ignorant, forgetful?
Those, and twenty follies more,
I have often told before.
Hearken what my lady says:
Have I nothing then to praise?
Ill it fits you to be witty,
Where a fault should move your pity.
If you think me too conceited,
Or to passion quickly heated;
If my wandering head be less
Set on reading than on dress;
If I always seem too dull t'ye;
I can solve the diffi--culty.
You would teach me to be wise:
Truth and honour how to prize;
How to shine in conversation,
And with credit fill my station;
How to relish notions high;
How to live, and how to die.
But it was decreed by Fate--
Mr. Dean, you come too late.
Well I know, you can discern,
I am now too old to learn:
Follies, from my youth instill'd,
Have my soul entirely fill'd;
In my head and heart they centre,
Nor will let your lessons enter.
Bred a fondling and an heiress;
Drest like any lady mayoress:
Cocker'd by the servants round,
Was too good to touch the ground;
Thought the life of every lady
Should be one continued play-day--
Balls, and masquerades, and shows,
Visits, plays, and powder'd beaux.
Thus you have my case at large,
And may now perform your charge.
Those materials I have furnish'd,
When by you refined and burnish'd,
Must, that all the world may know 'em,
Be reduced into a poem.
But, I beg, suspend a while
That same paltry, burlesque style;
Drop for once your constant rule,
Turning all to ridicule;
Teaching others how to ape you;
Court nor parliament can 'scape you;
Treat the public and your friends
Both alike, while neither mends.
Sing my praise in strain sublime:
Treat me not with dogg'rel rhyme.
'Tis but just, you should produce,
With each fault, each fault's excuse;
Not to publish every trifle,
And my few perfections stifle.
With some gifts at least endow me,
Which my very foes allow me.
Am I spiteful, proud, unjust?
Did I ever break my trust?
Which of all our modern dames
Censures less, or less defames?
In good manners am I faulty?
Can you call me rude or haughty?
Did I e'er my mite withhold
From the impotent and old?
When did ever I omit
Due regard for men of wit?
When have I esteem express'd
For a coxcomb gaily dress'd?
Do I, like the female tribe,
Think it wit to fleer and gibe?
Who with less designing ends
Kindlier entertains her friends;
With good words and countenance sprightly,
Strives to treat them more politely?
Think not cards my chief diversion:
'Tis a wrong, unjust aspersion:
Never knew I any good in 'em,
But to dose my head like laudanum.
We, by play, as men, by drinking,
Pass our nights to drive out thinking.
From my ailments give me leisure,
I shall read and think with pleasure;
Conversation learn to relish,
And with books my mind embellish.
Now, methinks, I hear you cry,
Mr. Dean, you must reply.
Madam, I allow 'tis true:
All these praises are your due.
You, like some acute philosopher,
Every fault have drawn a gloss over;[1]
Placing in the strongest light
All your virtues to my sight.
Though you lead a blameless life,
Are an humble prudent wife,
Answer all domestic ends:
What is this to us your friends?
Though your children by a nod
Stand in awe without a rod;
Though, by your obliging sway,
Servants love you, and obey;
Though you treat us with a smile;
Clear your looks, and smooth your style;
Load our plates from every dish;
This is not the thing we wish.
Colonel ***** may be your debtor;
We expect employment better.
You must learn, if you would gain us,
With good sense to entertain us.
Scholars, when good sense describing,
Call it tasting and imbibing;
Metaphoric meat and drink
Is to understand and think;
We may carve for others thus;
And let others carve for us;
To discourse, and to attend,
Is, to help yourself and friend.
Conversation is but carving;
Carve for all, yourself is starving:
Give no more to every guest,
Than he's able to digest;
Give him always of the prime;
And but little at a time.
Carve to all but just enough:
Let them neither starve nor stuff:
And, that you may have your due,
Let your neighbours carve for you.
This comparison will hold,
Could it well in rhyme be told,
How conversing, listening, thinking,
Justly may resemble drinking;
For a friend a glass you fill,
What is this but to instil?
To conclude this long essay;
Pardon if I disobey,
Nor against my natural vein,
Treat you in heroic strain.
I, as all the parish knows,
Hardly can be grave in prose:
Still to lash, and lashing smile,
Ill befits a lofty style.
From the planet of my birth
I encounter vice with mirth.
Wicked ministers of state
I can easier scorn than hate;
And I find it answers right:
Scorn torments them more than spight.
All the vices of a court
Do but serve to make me sport.
Were I in some foreign realm,
Which all vices overwhelm;
Should a monkey wear a crown,
Must I tremble at his frown?
Could I not, through all his ermine,
'Spy the strutting chattering vermin;
Safely write a smart lampoon,
To expose the brisk baboon?
When my Muse officious ventures
On the nation's representers:
Teaching by what golden rules
Into knaves they turn their fools;
How the helm is ruled by Walpole,
At whose oars, like slaves, they all pull;
Let the vessel split on shelves;
With the freight enrich themselves:
Safe within my little wherry,
All their madness makes me merry:
Like the waterman of Thames,
I row by, and call them names;
Like the ever-laughing sage,[2]
In a jest I spend my rage:
(Though it must be understood,
I would hang them if I could;)
If I can but fill my niche,
I attempt no higher pitch;
Leave to d'Anvers and his mate
Maxims wise to rule the state.
Pulteney deep, accomplish'd St. Johns,
Scourge the villains with a vengeance;
Let me, though the smell be noisome,
Strip their bums; let Caleb[3] hoise 'em;
Then apply Alecto's[4] whip
Till they wriggle, howl, and skip.
Deuce is in you, Mr. Dean:
What can all this passion mean?
Mention courts! you'll ne'er be quiet
On corruptions running riot.
End as it befits your station;
Come to use and application;
Nor with senates keep a fuss.
I submit; and answer thus:
If the machinations brewing,
To complete the public ruin,
Never once could have the power
To affect me half an hour;
Sooner would I write in buskins,
Mournful elegies on Blueskins.[5]
If I laugh at Whig and Tory;
I conclude _a fortiori_,
All your eloquence will scarce
Drive me from my favourite farce.
This I must insist on; for, as
It is well observed by Horace,[6]
Ridicule has greater power
To reform the world than sour.
Horses thus, let jockeys judge else,
Switches better guide than cudgels.
Bastings heavy, dry, obtuse,
Only dulness can produce;
While a little gentle jerking
Sets the spirits all a-working.
Thus, I find it by experiment,
Scolding moves you less than merriment.
I may storm and rage in vain;
It but stupifies your brain.
But with raillery to nettle,
Sets your thoughts upon their mettle;
Gives imagination scope;
Never lets your mind elope;
Drives out brangling and contention.
Brings in reason and invention.
For your sake as well as mine,
I the lofty style decline.
I should make a figure scurvy,
And your head turn topsy-turvy.
I who love to have a fling
Both at senate-house and king:
That they might some better way tread,
To avoid the public hatred;
Thought no method more commodious,
Than to show their vices odious;
Which I chose to make appear,
Not by anger, but by sneer.
As my method of reforming,
Is by laughing, not by storming,
(For my friends have always thought
Tenderness my greatest fault,)
Would you have me change my style?
On your faults no longer smile;
But, to patch up all our quarrels,
Quote you texts from Plutarch's Morals,
Or from Solomon produce
Maxims teaching Wisdom's use?
If I treat you like a crown'd head,
You have cheap enough compounded;
Can you put in higher claims,
Than the owners of St. James?
You are not so great a grievance,
As the hirelings of St. Stephen's.
You are of a lower class
Than my friend Sir Robert Brass.
None of these have mercy found:
I have laugh'd, and lash'd them round.
Have you seen a rocket fly?
You would swear it pierced the sky:
It but reach'd the middle air,
Bursting into pieces there;
Thousand sparkles falling down
Light on many a coxcomb's crown.
See what mirth the sport creates!
Singes hair, but breaks no pates.
Thus, should I attempt to climb,
Treat you in a style sublime,
Such a rocket is my Muse:
Should I lofty numbers choose,
Ere I reach'd Parnassus' top,
I should burst, and bursting drop;
All my fire would fall in scraps,
Give your head some gentle raps;
Only make it smart a while;
Then could I forbear to smile,
When I found the tingling pain
Entering warm your frigid brain;
Make you able upon sight
To decide of wrong and right;
Talk with sense whate'er you please on;
Learn to relish truth and reason!
Thus we both shall gain our prize;
I to laugh, and you grow wise.
[Footnote 1:
"Beside, he was a shrewd Philosopher,
And had read ev'ry Text and Gloss over."
_Hudibras_.]
[Footnote 2: Democritus, the Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the atomic theory.--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 3: Caleb d'Anvers was the name assumed by Nicholas Amhurst, the ostensible editor of the celebrated journal, entitled "The Craftsman," written by Bolingbroke and Pulteney. See "Prose Works," vii, p. 219.--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 4: One of the three Furies--Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera, the avenging deities.--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 5: The famous thief, who, while on his trial at the Old Bailey, stabbed Jonathan Wild. See Fielding's "Life of Jonathan Wild," Book iv, ch. i.--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 6:
"Ridiculum acri
Fortius et melius magnas plerumque secat res."--_Sat_. I, x, 14.]
[The end]
Jonathan Swift's poem: To A Lady
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