Offensive to a loyal ear;

But not one sermon, you may swear.'

He knew an hundred pleasing stories, With all the turns of Whigs and Tories: Was cheerful to his dying day,

And friends would let him have his way.]
As for his works in verse or prose,
I own myself no judge of those;

Now can I tell what critics thought them,
But this I know-all people bought them,
As with a moral view designed

To please and to reform mankind:

And, if he often missed his aim,
The world must own it to their shame,
The praise is his, and theirs the blame.
He gave the little wealth he had,
To build a house for fools and mad;
To show, by one satiric touch,
No nation wanted it so much.
That kingdom he hath left his debtor,
I wish it soon may have a better:
And since you dread no farther lashes,
Methinks you may forgive his ashes.

HARLEY, the nation's great support,
Returning home one day from court,
(His mind with public cares possessed,
All Europe's business in his breast),
Observed a parson near Whitehall
Cheap'ning old authors on a stall.
The priest was pretty well in case,
And showed some humour in his face;
Looked with an easy, careless mien,
A perfect stranger to the spleen;
Of size that might a pulpit fill,
But more inclining to sit still.
My lord (who, if a man may say 't,
Loves mischief better than his meat)
Was now disposed to crack a jest ;
And bid friend Lewis go in quest-
(This Lewis is a cunning shaver,
And very much in Harley's favour)
In quest who might this parson be,
What was his name, of what degree;
If possible, to learn his story,
And whether he were Whig or Tory.
Lewis his patron's humour knows,
Away upon his errand goes,
And quickly did the matter sift;
Found out that it was Doctor Swift;
A clergyman of special note

For shunning those of his own coat;
Which made his brethren of the gown
Take care at times to run him down:
[No libertine, nor over-nice,
Addicted to no sort of vice,]

Went where he pleased, said what he thought,
Not rich, but owed no man a groat;

[In state opinions à-la-mode,

He hated Wh-rt-n like a toad;

Had given the Faction many a wound,
And libelled all the Junto round;]
Kept company with men of wit,
Who often fathered what he writ.
[His works were hawked in every street,
But seldom rose above a shect:]

Of late indeed the paper-stamp
Did very much his genius cramp;
And, since he could not spend his fire,
He now intended to retire.

Said Harley, 'I desire to know
From his own mouth if this be so;
Step to the Doctor straight, and say,
I'd have him dine with me to-day."
Swift seemed to wonder what he meant,
Nor would believe my lord had sent:
So never offered once to stir;
But coldly said, 'Your servant, Sir !'
'Does he refuse me?' Harley cried.
'He does, with insolence and pride.'
Some few days after, Harley spies
The Doctor fastened by the eyes
At Charing Cross among the rout,
Where painted monsters are hung out:
He pulled the string, and stopped his coach,
Beckoning the Doctor to approach.

Swift, who could neither fly nor hide,
Came sneaking to the chariot-side,
And offered many a lame excuse:
He never meant the least abuse-
'My lord the honour you designed-
Extremely proud-but I had dined.
I'm sure I never should neglect—
No man alive has more respect.'
'Well, I shall think of that no more
If you'll be sure to come at four.'

The Doctor now obeys the summons,
Likes both his company and commons;
Displays his talents, sits till ten;
Next day invited, comes again;
Soon grown domestic, seldom fails
Either at morning or at meals:
Came early, and departed late;
In short, the gudgeon took the bait.
My lord would carry on the jest,
And down to Windsor take his guest.
Swift much admires the place and air,
And longs to be a Canon there;

90

In summer round the park to ride,
In winter never to reside.

'A Canon! that's a place too mean;
No, Doctor, you shall be a Dean;
Two dozen Canons round your stall,
90 And you the tyrant o'er them all:
You need but cross the Irish seas,
To live in plenty, power, and ease.'
Poor Swift departs; and, what is worse,
With borrowed money in his purse;
Travels at least a hundred leagues,
And suffers numberless fatigues.
Suppose him now a Dean complete,
Demurely lolling in his seat;

The silver verge, with decent pride, 100 Stuck underneath his cushion-side;

Suppose him gone through all vexations,
Patents, instalments, abjurations,

First-fruits, and tenths, and chapter-treats;
Dues, payments, fees, demands, and cheats-
(The wicked laity's contriving,

To hinder clergymen from thriving).
Now, all the Doctor's money spent,
His tenants wrong him in his rent;
The farmers, spitefully combined,
110 Force him to take his tithes in kind:
And Parvisol discounts arrears
By bills for taxes and repairs.

Poor Swift, with all his losses vexed,
Not knowing where to turn him next,
Above a thousand pounds in debt,
Takes horse, and in a mighty fret,
Rides day and night at such a rate,
He soon arrives at Harley's gate;
But was so dirty, pale, and thin,
Old Read would hardly let him in.

Said Harley, 'Welcome, Reverend Dean!
What makes your worship look so lean?
Why, sure you won't appear in town
In that old wig and rusty gown?
I doubt your heart is set on pelf,
So much that you neglect yourself.
What! I suppose, now stocks are high,
You've some good purchase in your eye?
Or is your money out at use?'

'Truce, good my lord, I beg a truce,' The Doctor in a passion cried, 'Your raillery is misapplied; Experience I have dearly bought; You know I am not worth a groat; But you resolved to have your jest, And 'twas a folly to contest.

Then, since you now have done your worst, Pray leave me where you found me first.'

My father left a park to me,

But it is wild and barren,

A garden too with scarce a tree, And waster than a warren:

Yet say the neighbours when they call,
It is not bad but good land,
And in it is the germ of all

That grows within the woodland.

O had I lived when song was great
In days of old Amphion,
And ta'en my fiddle to the gate,
Nor cared for seed or scion!
And had I lived when song was great,
And legs of trees were limber,
And ta'en my fiddle to the gate,
And fiddled in the timber!

'Tis said he had a tuneful tongue,

Such happy intonation,

Wherever he sat down and sung He left a small plantation;

Wherever in a lonely grove
He set up his forlorn pipes,
The gouty oak began to move,
And flounder into hornpipes.

The mountain stirred its bushy crown,
And, as tradition teaches,
Young ashes pirouetted down
Coquetting with young beeches;
And briony-vine and ivy-wreath
Ran forward to his rhyming,
And from the valleys underneath
Came little copses climbing.

The linden broke her ranks and rent

The woodbine wreaths that bind her,
And down the middle, buzz! she went
With all her bees behind her:
The poplars, in long order due,
With cypress promenaded,

The shock-head willows two and two
By rivers gallopaded.

Came wet-shot alder from the wave,

Came yews, a dismal coterie;
Each plucked his one foot from the grave,
Poussetting with a sloe-tree:

Old elms came breaking from the vine,
The vine streamed out to follow,
And, sweating rosin, plumped the pine
From many a cloudy hollow.

And wasn't it a sight to see,

When, ere his song was ended, Like some great landslip, tree by tree, The country-side descended; And shepherds from the mountain-eaves Looked down, half-pleased, half-frightened, As dashed about the drunken leaves

The random sunshine lightened!

O, nature first was fresh to men,
And wanton without measure;
So youthful and so flexile then,

You moved her at your pleasure.
Twang out, my fiddle! shake the twigs!
And make her dance attendance;
Blow, flute, and stir the stiff-set sprigs,
And scirrhous roots and tendons.

"Tis vain! in such a brassy age
I could not move a thistle;
The very sparrows in the hedge
Scarce answer to my whistle;
Or at the most, when three-parts-sick
With strumming and with scraping,
A jackass heehaws from the rick,
The passive oxen gaping.

But what is that I hear? a sound

Like sleepy counsel pleading; O Lord!-'tis in my neighbour's ground, The modern Muses reading. They read Botanic Treatises,

And Works on Gardening thro' there,
And Methods of transplanting trees
To look as if they grew there.

The withered Misses! how they prose
O'er books of travelled seamen,
And show you slips of all that grows
From England to Van Diemen.
They read in arbours clipt and cut,
And alleys, faded places,
By squares of tropic summer shut
And warmed in crystal cases.

But these, tho' fed with careful dirt,
Are neither green nor sappy;
Half-conscious of the garden squirt,
The spindlings look unhappy.
Better to me the meanest weed

That blows upon its mountain,
The vilest herb that runs to seed

Beside its native fountain.

And I must work thro' months of toil,
And years of cultivation,

Upon my proper patch of soil

To grow my own plantation.
I'll take the showers as they fall,
I will not vex my bosom:
Enough if at the end of all
A little garden blossom.

Then a phantom colony smouldered on the refluent estuary;

Lastly yonder yester-even, suddenly giddily tottering

There was one who watched and told medown their statue of Victory fell.

Lo their precious Roman bantling, lo the colony Cámulodúne,

Shall we teach it a Roman lesson? shall we

care to be pitiful?

Shall we deal with it as an infant? shall we dandle it amorously?]

'Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant!

While I roved about the forest, long and bitterly meditating,

30 There I heard them in the darkness, at the mystical ceremony,

40

Loosely robed in flying raiment, sang the terrible prophetesses,

"Fear not, isle of blowing woodland, isle of

silvery parapets!

Tho' the Roman eagle shadow thee, tho' the gathering enemy narrow thee, Thou shalt wax and he shall dwindle, thou shalt be the mighty one yet! Thine the liberty, thine the glory, thine the deeds to be celebrated,

Thine the myriad-rolling ocean, light and shadow illimitable,

Thine the lands of lasting summer, manyblossoming Paradises,

Thine the North and thine the South and thine the battle-thunder of God."

So they chanted: how shall Britain light upon auguries happier?

So they chanted in the darkness, and there cometh a victory now.

'Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant!

Me the wife of rich Prasútagus, me the lover of liberty,

Me they seized and me they tortured, me they lashed and humiliated! .

See they sit, they hide their faces, miserable in ignominy!

Wherefore in me burns an anger, not by blood to be satiated.

Lo the palaces and the temple, lo the colony Cámulodúne!

There they ruled, and thence they wasted all the flourishing territory.

Thither at their will they haled the yellowringleted Britoness

Bloodily, bloodily fall the battle-axe, unexhausted, inexorable.

Shout Icenian, Catieuchlanian, shout Coritanian, Trinobant,

Till the victim hear within and yearn to hurry precipitously

Like the leaf in a roaring whirlwind, like the smoke in a hurricane whirled.

Lo the colony, there they rioted in the city of Cúnobelíne!

There they drank in cups of emerald, there at tables of ebony lay,

Rolling on their purple couches in their tender effeminacy.

There they dwelt and there they rioted; there -there-they dwell no more.

Burst the gates, and burn the palaces, break the works of the statuary,

Take the hoary Roman head and shatter it, hold it abominable.

Up my Britons, on my chariot, on my chargers, trample them under us!'

IO

BURY the Great Duke

With an empire's lamentation,

Let us bury the Great Duke

To the noise of the mourning of a mighty

nation,

Mourning when their leaders fall,

Warriors carry the warrior's pall,
And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall.

[Where shall we lay the man whom we deplore?
Here, in streaming London's central roar.
Let the sound of those he wrought for,
And the feet of those he fought for,
Echo round his bones for evermore.]

Lead out the pageant: sad and slow,
As fits an universal woe,

Let the long long procession go,

And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow, And let the mournful martial music blow; The last great Englishman is low.

Mourn, for to us he seems the last,
Remembering all his greatness in the Past.
No more in soldier fashion will he greet
With lifted hand the gazer in the street.
O friends, our chief state-oracle is mute:
Mourn for the man of long-enduring blood,
The statesman-warrior, moderate, resolute,
Whole in himself, a common good.
Mourn for the man of amplest influence,
Yet clearest of ambitious crime,
Our greatest yet with least pretence,
Great in council and great in war,
Foremost captain of his time,

"Who is he that cometh, like an honoured guest, With banner and with music, with soldier and with priest,

With a nation weeping, and breaking on my rest?'

Mighty Seaman, this is he

Was great by land as thou by sea.

Thine island loves thee well, thou famous man,
The greatest sailor since our world began.
Now, to the roll of muffled drums,
To thee the greatest soldier comes;
For this is he

Was great by land as thou by sea;
His foes were thine; he kept us free;
O give him welcome, this is he
Worthy of our gorgeous rites,
And worthy to be laid by thee;
For this is England's greatest son,
He that gained a hundred fights,
Nor ever lost an English gun;
This is he that far away
Against the myriads of Assaye
Clashed with his fiery few and won;
And underneath another sun,
Warring on a later day,
Round affrighted Lisbon drew
The treble works, the vast designs
Of his laboured rampart-lines,
Where he greatly stood at bay,
Whence he issued forth anew,
And ever great and greater grew,
Beating from the wasted vines
Back to France her banded swarms.
Back to France with countless blows,
Till o'er the hills her eagles flew
Beyond the Pyrenean pines,
Followed up in valley and glen
With blare of bugle, clamour of men,
Roll of cannon and clash of arms,
And England pouring on her foes.
Such a war had such a close.
Again their ravening eagle rose

In anger, wheeled on Europe-shadowing wings,
And barking for the thrones of kings;
Till one that sought but Duty's iron crown
On that loud sabbath shook the spoiler down;
A day of onsets of despair!
Dashed on every rocky square

Their surging charges foamed themselves away; Last, the Prussian trumpet blew;

Thro' the long-tormented air

Heaven flashed a sudden jubilant ray,

And down we swept and charged and overthrew.
So great a soldier taught us there,
What long-enduring hearts could do
In that world-earthquake, Waterloo!
Mighty Seaman, tender and true,

And pure as he from taint of craven guile,
O saviour of the silver-coasted isle,
O shaker of the Baltic and the Nile,
If aught of things that here befall
Touch a spirit among things divine,
If love of country move thee there at all,
Be glad, because his bones are laid by thine!
And thro' the centuries let a people's voice
In full acclaim,

A people's voice,

The proof and echo of all human fame,
A people's voice, when they rejoice
At civic revel and pomp and game,
Attest their great commander's claim
With honour, honour, honour, honour to him,
Eternal honour to his name.

Remember him who led your hosts;

He bad you guard the sacred coasts.

Your cannons moulder on the seaward wall;
His voice is silent in your council-hall
For ever; and whatever tempests lour
For ever silent; even if they broke
In thunder, silent; yet remember all

He spoke among you, and the Man who spoke;
Who never sold the truth to serve the hour,
Nor paltered with Eternal God for power;
Who let the turbid streams of rumour flow
Thro' either babbling world of high and low;
Whose life was work, whose language rife
With rugged maxims hewn from life;
Who never spoke against a foe;
Whose eighty winters freeze with one rebuke
All great self-seekers trampling on the right:
Truth-teller was our England's Alfred named;
Truth-lover was our English Duke;
Whatever record leap to light
He never shall be shamed.

Lo, the leader in these glorious wars
Now to glorious burial slowly borne,
Followed by the brave of other lands,
He, on whom from both her open hands
Lavish Honour showered all her stars,
And affluent Fortune emptied all her horn.
Yea, let all good things await
Him who cares not to be great,

But as he saves or serves the state.

Not once or twice in our rough island-story,
The path of duty was the way to glory:
He that walks it, only thirsting

For the right, and learns to deaden
Love of self, before his journey closes,