Which, howsoever they display
Their glory from the god of day,
Their noblest use is to abate

His dangerous excess of heat,

To shield the infant fruits and flowers,
And bless the earth with genial showers.
Now change the scene; a nobler care
Demands him in a higher sphere :*
Distress of nations calls him hence,
Permitted so by Providence;
For models, made to mend our kind,
To no one clime should be confin'd;
And Manly Virtue, like the sun,
His course of glorious toils should run:
Alike diffusing in his flight

Congenial joy, and life, and light.
Pale Envy sickens, Error flies,
And Discord in his presence dies;
Oppression hides with guilty dread,
And Merit rears her drooping head;
The arts revive, the vallies sing,
And winter softens into spring:

The wondering world, where'er he moves,
With new delight looks up and loves;
One sex consenting to admire,
Nor less the other to desire;
While he, though seated on a throne,
Confines his love to one alone;
The rest condemn'd with rival voice
Repining, do applaud his choice.

Fame now reports, the Western Isle,

Is made his mansion for a while,

* Lord Carteret had the honour of mediating peace for Sweden with Denmark and with the Czar. H.

Whose anxious natives, night and day,
(Happy beneath his righteous sway)
Weary the gods with ceaseless prayer,
To bless him, and to keep him there;
And claim it as a debt from Fate,
Too lately found, to lose him late.

VERSES ON THE UPRIGHT JUDGE,

WHO CONDEMNED THE DRAPIER'S

PRINTER.

THE church I hate, and have good reason ;
For there my grandsire cut his weasand :
He cut his weasand at the altar;
I keep my gullet for the halter.

ON THE SAME.

IN church your grandsire cut his throat

To do the job, too long he tarry'd:
He should have had my hearty vote,
To cut his throat before he marry'd.

VOL. XVI,

2

ON

ON THE SAME.

(THE JUDGE SPEAKS.)

I'M not the grandson of that ass* Quin ;
Nor can you prove it, Mr. Pasquin.
My grand-dame had gallants by twenties,
And bore my mother by a 'prentice.

This when my grandsire knew, they tell us he
In Christ church cut his throat for jealousy.
And, since the alderman was mad you say,
Then I must be so too, ex traduce.

RIDDLE S.

BY DR. SWIFT AND HIS FRIENDS.

WRITTEN IN OR ABOUT THE YEAR 1724.

1. ON A PEN.

IN youth exalted high in air,
Or bathing in the waters fair,
Nature to form me took delight,
And clad my body all in white.
My person tall, and slender waist,
On either side with fringes grac'd;

* An alderman. F

Till me that tyrant man espy'd,

And dragg'd me from my mother's side:
No wonder now I look so thin;

The tyrant stript me to the skin :
My skin he flay'd, my hair he cropt:
At head and foot my body lopt :

And then, with heart more hard than stone,
He pick'd my marrow from the bone.
To vex me more, he took a freak

To slit my tongue, and make me speak :
But, that which wonderful appears,
I speak to eyes, and not to ears.
He oft employs me in disguise,"
And makes me tell a thousand lies:
To me he chiefly gives in trust
To please his malice or his lust.
From me no secret he can hide ;
I see his vanity and pride:
And my delight is to expose
His follies to his greatest foes.
All languages I can command,
Yet not a word I understand.
Without my aid, the best divine
In learning would not know a line:
The lawyer must forget his pleading;
The scholar could not show his reading.
Nay; man my master is my slave;
I give command to kill or save,
Can grant ten thousand pounds a year;
And make a beggar's brat a peer.
But, while I thus my life relate,

I only hasten on my fate.

My tongue is black, my mouth is furr'd,
I hardly now can force a word.

I die unpitied and forgot,

And on some dunghill left to rot.

II. ON GOLD.

ALL-ruling tyrant of the earth,
To vilest slaves I owe my birth.
How is the greatest monarch blest,
When in my gawdy livery drest!
No haughty nymph has power to run
From me; or my embraces shun.
Stabb'd to the heart, condemn'd to flame,
My constancy is still the same.
The favourite messenger of Jove,
And Lemnian God, consulting strove
To make me glorious to the sight
Of mortals, and the Gods delight.
Soon would their altars' flame expire,
If I refus'd to lend them fire.

III

By fate exalted high in place,
Lo, here I stand with double face;
Superior none on earth I find;
But see below me all mankind.
Yet, as it oft attends the great,
I almost sink with my own weight.

At