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Title: Verses On The Sudden Drying Up of St. Patrick's Well
Author: Jonathan Swift [
More Titles by Swift]
[ST. PATRICK'S WELL NEAR TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN. 1726]
By holy zeal inspired, and led by fame,
To thee, once favourite isle, with joy I came;
What time the Goth, the Vandal, and the Hun,
Had my own native Italy[1] o'errun.
Ierne, to the world's remotest parts,
Renown'd for valour, policy, and arts.
Hither from Colchos,[2] with the fleecy ore,
Jason arrived two thousand years before.
Thee, happy island, Pallas call'd her own,
When haughty Britain was a land unknown:[3]
From thee, with pride, the Caledonians trace[4]
The glorious founder of their kingly race:
Thy martial sons, whom now they dare despise,
Did once their land subdue and civilize;
Their dress, their language, and the Scottish name,
Confess the soil from whence the victors came.
Well may they boast that ancient blood which runs
Within their veins, who are thy younger sons.
A conquest and a colony from thee,
The mother-kingdom left her children free;
From thee no mark of slavery they felt:
Not so with thee thy base invaders dealt;
Invited here to vengeful Morrough's aid,[5]
Those whom they could not conquer they betray'd.
Britain, by thee we fell, ungrateful isle!
Not by thy valour, but superior guile:
Britain, with shame, confess this land of mine
First taught thee human knowledge and divine;
My prelates and my students, sent from hence,
Made your sons converts both to God and sense:
Not like the pastors of thy ravenous breed,
Who come to fleece the flocks, and not to feed.
Wretched Ierne! with what grief I see
The fatal changes time has made in thee!
The Christian rites I introduced in vain:
Lo! infidelity return'd again!
Freedom and virtue in thy sons I found,
Who now in vice and slavery are drown'd.
By faith and prayer, this crosier in my hand,
I drove the venom'd serpent from thy land:
The shepherd in his bower might sleep or sing,[6]
Nor dread the adder's tooth, nor scorpion's sting.
With omens oft I strove to warn thy swains,
Omens, the types of thy impending chains.
I sent the magpie from the British soil,
With restless beak thy blooming fruit to spoil;
To din thine ears with unharmonious clack,
And haunt thy holy walls in white and black.
What else are those thou seest in bishop's gear,
Who crop the nurseries of learning here;
Aspiring, greedy, full of senseless prate,
Devour the church, and chatter to the state?
As you grew more degenerate and base,
I sent you millions of the croaking race;
Emblems of insects vile, who spread their spawn
Through all thy land, in armour, fur, and lawn;
A nauseous brood, that fills your senate walls,
And in the chambers of your viceroy crawls!
See, where that new devouring vermin runs,
Sent in my anger from the land of Huns!
With harpy-claws it undermines the ground,
And sudden spreads a numerous offspring round.
Th' amphibious tyrant, with his ravenous band,
Drains all thy lakes of fish, of fruits thy land.
Where is the holy well that bore my name?
Fled to the fountain back, from whence it came!
Fair Freedom's emblem once, which smoothly flows,
And blessings equally on all bestows.
Here, from the neighbouring nursery of arts,[7]
The students, drinking, raised their wit and parts;
Here, for an age and more, improved their vein,
Their Phoebus I, my spring their Hippocrene.
Discouraged youths! now all their hopes must fail,
Condemn'd to country cottages and ale;
To foreign prelates make a slavish court,
And by their sweat procure a mean support;
Or, for the classics, read "The Attorney's Guide;"
Collect excise, or wait upon the tide.
Oh! had I been apostle to the Swiss,
Or hardy Scot, or any land but this;
Combined in arms, they had their foes defied,
And kept their liberty, or bravely died;
Thou still with tyrants in succession curst,
The last invaders trampling on the first;
Nor fondly hope for some reverse of fate,
Virtue herself would now return too late.
Not half thy course of misery is run,
Thy greatest evils yet are scarce begun.
Soon shall thy sons (the time is just at hand)
Be all made captives in their native land;
When for the use of no Hibernian born,
Shall rise one blade of grass, one ear of corn;
When shells and leather shall for money pass,
Nor thy oppressing lords afford thee brass,[8]
But all turn leasers to that mongrel breed,[9]
Who, from thee sprung, yet on thy vitals feed;
Who to yon ravenous isle thy treasures bear,
And waste in luxury thy harvest there;
For pride and ignorance a proverb grown,
The jest of wits, and to the court unknown.
I scorn thy spurious and degenerate line,
And from this hour my patronage resign.
[Footnote 1: Italy was not properly the native place of St. Patrick, but the place of his education, and whence he received his mission; and because he had his new birth there, by poetical license, and by scripture figure, our author calls that country his native Italy.--_Dublin Edition_.]
[Footnote 2: Orpheus, or the ancient author of the Greek poem on the Argonautic expedition, whoever he be, says, that Jason, who manned the ship Argos at Thessaly, sailed to Ireland. And Adrianus Junius says the same thing, in these lines:
"Ilia ego sum Graiis, olim glacialis Ierne
Dicta, et Jasoniae puppis bene cognita nautis."--_Dublin Edition_.]
[Footnote 3: Tacitus, comparing Ireland to Britain, says of the former: "Melius aditus portusque per commercia et negotiatores cogniti."--_Agricola,_ xxiv.--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 4: Fordun, in his Scoti-Chronicon, Hector Boethius, Buchanan, and all the Scottish historians, agree that Fergus, son of Ferquard, King of Ireland, was the first King of Scotland, which country he subdued.--_Scott_.]
[Footnote 5: In the reign of Henry II, 1172, Dermot Macmorrogh, King of Leinster, having been expelled from his kingdom by Roderick, King of Connaught, sought and obtained the assistance of the English for the recovery of his dominions. See Hume's "History of England," vol. i, p. 380.--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 6: There are no snakes, vipers, or toads in Ireland; and even frogs were not known here till about the year 1700. The magpies came a short time before; and the Norway rats since.--_Dublin Edition_. These plagues are all alluded to in this and the subsequent stanzas.--_Scott_.]
[Footnote 7: The University of Dublin, called Trinity College, was founded by Queen Elizabeth in 1591.--_Dublin Edition_.]
[Footnote 8: Wood's ruinous project against the people of Ireland was supported by Sir Robert Walpole in 1724.--_Dublin Edition_.]
[Footnote 9: The absentees, who spent the income of their Irish estates, places, and pensions, in England.--_Dublin Edition_.]
[The end]
Jonathan Swift's poem: Verses On The Sudden Drying Up Of St. Patrick's Well
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