The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 423 pages of information about The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume 2.

The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 423 pages of information about The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume 2.

[Footnote 7:  My lady’s waiting-maid.]

[Footnote 8:  Montezuma or Mutezuma, the last Emperor of Mexico and the richest, taken prisoner by Hernando Cortes, about 1511, who also obtained possession of the whole empire.  Hakluyt’s “Navigations,” etc., vols. viii, ix.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 9:  The butler.]

[Footnote 10:  The housekeeper.]

[Footnote 11:  The agent.]

ROBIN AND HARRY.[1] 1730

Robin to beggars with a curse,
Throws the last shilling in his purse;
And when the coachman comes for pay,
The rogue must call another day. 
  Grave Harry, when the poor are pressing
Gives them a penny and God’s blessing;
But always careful of the main,
With twopence left, walks home in rain. 
  Robin from noon to night will prate,
Run out in tongue, as in estate;
And, ere a twelvemonth and a day,
Will not have one new thing to say. 
Much talking is not Harry’s vice;
He need not tell a story twice: 
And, if he always be so thrifty,
His fund may last to five-and-fifty. 
  It so fell out that cautious Harry,
As soldiers use, for love must marry,
And, with his dame, the ocean cross’d;
(All for Love, or the World well Lost!) [2]
Repairs a cabin gone to ruin,
Just big enough to shelter two in;
And in his house, if anybody come,
Will make them welcome to his modicum
Where Goody Julia milks the cows,
And boils potatoes for her spouse;
Or darns his hose, or mends his breeches,
While Harry’s fencing up his ditches. 
  Robin, who ne’er his mind could fix,
To live without a coach-and-six,
To patch his broken fortunes, found
A mistress worth five thousand pound;
Swears he could get her in an hour,
If gaffer Harry would endow her;
And sell, to pacify his wrath,
A birth-right for a mess of broth. 
  Young Harry, as all Europe knows,
Was long the quintessence of beaux;
But, when espoused, he ran the fate
That must attend the married state;
From gold brocade and shining armour,
Was metamorphosed to a farmer;
His grazier’s coat with dirt besmear’d;
Nor twice a-week will shave his beard. 
  Old Robin, all his youth a sloven,
At fifty-two, when he grew loving,
Clad in a coat of paduasoy,
A flaxen wig, and waistcoat gay,
Powder’d from shoulder down to flank,
In courtly style addresses Frank;
Twice ten years older than his wife,
Is doom’d to be a beau for life;
Supplying those defects by dress,
Which I must leave the world to guess.

[Footnote 1:  A lively account of these two gentlemen occurs in Dr. King’s Anecdotes of his Own Times, p. 137 et seq., who confirms the peculiarities which Swift has enumerated in the text.—­Scott.]

[Footnote 2:  The title of Dryden’s Play, founded on the story of Antony and Cleopatra.—­W.  E. B.]

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The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume 2 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.