The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume 1 | Page 5

his lampoon entitled "The
Windsor Prophecy." But Swift seldom allowed prudence to restrain his
wit and humour, and admits of himself that he "had too much satire in
his vein"; and that "a genius in the reverend gown must ever keep its
owner down"; and says further:

Humour and mirth had place in all he writ;
He reconciled divinity and
wit.
But that was what his enemies could not do.
Whatever the excellences and defects of the poems, Swift has erected,
not only by his works, but by his benevolence and his charities, a
monumentum aere perennius, and his writings in prose and verse will
continue to afford instruction and delight when the malevolence of
Jeffrey, the misrepresentations of Macaulay, and the sneers and false
statements of Thackeray shall have been forgotten.
POEMS OF JONATHAN SWIFT
ODE TO DOCTOR WILLIAM SANCROFT[1]
LATE LORD
BISHOP OF CANTERBURY
WRITTEN IN MAY, 1689,
AT THE DESIRE OF THE LATE
LORD BISHOP OF ELY
I
Truth is eternal, and the Son of Heaven,
Bright effluence of th'immortal ray,
Chief cherub, and chief lamp, of
that high sacred Seven,
Which guard the throne by night, and are its
light by day;
First of God's darling attributes,
Thou daily seest him face to face,

Nor does thy essence fix'd depend on giddy circumstance
Of time or place,
Two foolish guides in every sublunary dance;

How shall we find Thee then in dark disputes?
How shall we search
Thee in a battle gain'd,
Or a weak argument by force maintain'd?
In
dagger contests, and th'artillery of words,
(For swords are madmen's
tongues, and tongues are madmen's swords,)

Contrived to tire all patience out,
And not to satisfy the doubt?
II
But where is even thy Image on our earth?
For of the person much I
fear,
Since Heaven will claim its residence, as well as birth,
And
God himself has said, He shall not find it here.
For this inferior world
is but Heaven's dusky shade,
By dark reverted rays from its reflection
made;
Whence the weak shapes wild and imperfect pass,
Like
sunbeams shot at too far distance from a glass;
Which all the mimic forms express,
Though in strange uncouth
postures, and uncomely dress;
So when Cartesian artists try
To solve appearances of sight
In its
reception to the eye,
And catch the living landscape through a scanty
light,
The figures all inverted show,
And colours of a faded hue;
Here a
pale shape with upward footstep treads,
And men seem walking on
their heads;
There whole herds suspended lie,
Ready to tumble
down into the sky;
Such are the ways ill-guided mortals go
To
judge of things above by things below.
Disjointing shapes as in the
fairy land of dreams,
Or images that sink in streams;
No wonder,
then, we talk amiss
Of truth, and what, or where it is;
Say, Muse,
for thou, if any, know'st,
Since the bright essence fled, where haunts
the reverend ghost?
III
If all that our weak knowledge titles virtue, be
(High Truth) the best
resemblance of exalted Thee,
If a mind fix'd to combat fate
With those two powerful swords,
submission and humility,

Sounds truly good, or truly great;
Ill may I live, if the good Sancroft,
in his holy rest,
In the divinity of retreat,
Be not the brightest pattern earth can show

Of heaven-born Truth below;
But foolish man still judges what is
best
In his own balance, false and light,
Following opinion, dark
and blind,
That vagrant leader of the mind,
Till honesty and
conscience are clear out of sight.
IV
And some, to be large ciphers in a state,
Pleased with an empty
swelling to be counted great,
Make their minds travel o'er infinity of
space,
Rapt through the wide expanse of thought,
And oft in
contradiction's vortex caught,
To keep that worthless clod, the body,
in one place;
Errors like this did old astronomers misguide,
Led
blindly on by gross philosophy and pride,
Who, like hard masters, taught the sun
Through many a heedless
sphere to run,
Many an eccentric and unthrifty motion make,
And
thousand incoherent journeys take,
Whilst all th'advantage by it got,

Was but to light earth's inconsiderable spot.
The herd beneath, who
see the weathercock of state
Hung loosely on the church's pinnacle,

Believe it firm, because perhaps the day is mild and still; But when
they find it turn with the first blast of fate,
By gazing upward giddy grow,
And think the church itself does so;

Thus fools, for being strong and num'rous known,
Suppose the truth,
like all the world, their own;
And holy Sancroft's motion quite
irregular appears,
Because 'tis opposite to theirs.
V
In vain then would the Muse the multitude advise,
Whose peevish

knowledge thus perversely lies
In gath'ring follies from the wise;

Rather put on thy anger and thy spite,
And some kind power for once
dispense
Through the dark mass, the dawn of so much sense,
To
make them understand, and feel me when I write;
The muse and I no
more revenge desire,
Each line shall stab, shall blast, like daggers and
like fire; Ah, Britain, land of angels! which of all thy sins,
(Say,
hapless isle, although
It is a bloody list we know,)
Has given thee
up a dwelling-place