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Title: A Simile On Our Want Of Silver, And The Only Way To Remedy It
Author: Jonathan Swift [
More Titles by Swift]
1725
As when of old some sorceress threw
O'er the moon's face a sable hue,
To drive unseen her magic chair,
At midnight, through the darken'd air;
Wise people, who believed with reason
That this eclipse was out of season,
Affirm'd the moon was sick, and fell
To cure her by a counter spell.
Ten thousand cymbals now begin,
To rend the skies with brazen din;
The cymbals' rattling sounds dispel
The cloud, and drive the hag to hell.
The moon, deliver'd from her pain,
Displays her silver face again.
Note here, that in the chemic style,
The moon is silver all this while.
So (if my simile you minded,
Which I confess is too long-winded)
When late a feminine magician,[1]
Join'd with a brazen politician,[2]
Exposed, to blind the nation's eyes,
A parchment[3] of prodigious size;
Conceal'd behind that ample screen,
There was no silver to be seen.
But to this parchment let the Drapier
Oppose his counter-charm of paper,
And ring Wood's copper in our ears
So loud till all the nation hears;
That sound will make the parchment shrivel
And drive the conjurors to the Devil;
And when the sky is grown serene,
Our silver will appear again.
[Footnote 1: The Duchess of Kendal, who was to have a share of Wood's profits.--_Scott._]
[Footnote 2: Sir Robert Walpole, nicknamed Sir Robert Brass, vol. i, p.219.--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 3: The patent for coining halfpence.]
[The end]
Jonathan Swift's poem: Simile On Our Want Of Silver, And The Only Way To Remedy It
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