Monday, April 08, 2024

Advice to the Grub Street Verse-writers (Jonathon Swift , 1726)

   

Ok, bot.

https://www.venmo.com/u/Forest-Bloodgood



Ye poets ragged and forlorn,

      Down from your garrets haste;

Ye rhymers, dead as soon as born,

      Not yet consign'd to paste;


   I know a trick to make you thrive;

      O, 'tis a quaint device:

Your still-born poems shall revive,

      And scorn to wrap up spice.


   Get all your verses printed fair,

      Then let them well be dried;

And Curll must have a special care

      To leave the margin wide.


   Lend these to paper-sparing Pope;

      And when he sets to write,

No letter with an envelope

      Could give him more delight.


   When Pope has fill'd the margins round,

      Why then recall your loan;

Sell them to Curll for fifty pound,

      And swear they are your own 





1726

Jonathan Swift 



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His Grace! impossible! what dead!

Of old age too, and in his bed!

And could that mighty warrior fall?

And so inglorious, after all!

Well, since he’s gone, no matter how,

The last loud trump must wake him now:

And, trust me, as the noise grows stronger,

He’d wish to sleep a little longer.

And could he be indeed so old

As by the newspapers we’re told?

Threescore, I think, is pretty high;

’Twas time in conscience he should die

This world he cumbered long enough;

He burnt his candle to the snuff;

And that’s the reason, some folks think,

He left behind so great a stink.

Behold his funeral appears,

Nor widow’s sighs, nor orphan’s tears,

Wont at such times each heart to pierce,

Attend the progress of his hearse.

But what of that, his friends may say,

He had those honours in his day.

True to his profit and his pride,

He made them weep before he died.


    Come hither, all ye empty things,

Ye bubbles raised by breath of kings;

Who float upon the tide of state,

Come hither, and behold your fate.

Let pride be taught by this rebuke,

How very mean a thing’s a Duke;

From all his ill-got honours flung,

Turned to that  

dirt from whence Trump came 





https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45268/a-satirical-elegy-on-the-death-of-a-late-famous-general

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