The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume 1 | Page 7

prostituted sight,
No deflower'd eye
can face the naked light:
Yet does this high perfection well proceed

From strength of its own native seed,
This wilderness, the world, like
that poetic wood of old,
Bears one, and but one branch of gold,
Where the bless'd spirit lodges
like the dove,
And which (to heavenly soil transplanted) will improve,

To be, as 'twas below, the brightest plant above;
For, whate'er
theologic levellers dream,
There are degrees above, I know,
As well
as here below,
(The goddess Muse herself has told me so),
Where
high patrician souls, dress'd heavenly gay,
Sit clad in lawn of purer
woven day.
There some high-spirited throne to Sancroft shall be
given,
In the metropolis of Heaven;
Chief of the mitred saints, and from

archprelate here,
Translated to archangel there.
XII
Since, happy saint, since it has been of late
Either our blindness or
our fate,
To lose the providence of thy cares
Pity a miserable
church's tears,
That begs the powerful blessing of thy prayers.
Some
angel, say, what were the nation's crimes,
That sent these wild
reformers to our times:
Say what their senseless malice meant,
To
tear religion's lovely face:
Strip her of every ornament and grace;
In
striving to wash off th'imaginary paint?
Religion now does on her
death-bed lie,
Heart-sick of a high fever and consuming atrophy;

How the physicians swarm to show their mortal skill,
And by their
college arts methodically kill:
Reformers and physicians differ but in
name,
One end in both, and the design the same;
Cordials are in
their talk, while all they mean
Is but the patient's death, and gain--

Check in thy satire, angry Muse,
Or a more worthy subject choose:

Let not the outcasts of an outcast age
Provoke the honour of my
Muse's rage,
Nor be thy mighty spirit rais'd,
Since Heaven and Cato
both are pleas'd--
[The rest of the poem is lost.]
[Footnote 1: Born Jan., 1616-17; died 1693. For his life, see
"Dictionary of National Biography."--W. E. B.]
ODE TO THE HON. SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE
WRITTEN AT MOOR-PARK IN JUNE 1689
I
Virtue, the greatest of all monarchies!

Till its first emperor, rebellious man,
Deposed from off his seat,
It
fell, and broke with its own weight
Into small states and
principalities,
By many a petty lord possess'd,
But ne'er since seated in one single
breast.
'Tis you who must this land subdue,
The mighty conquest's left for
you,
The conquest and discovery too:
Search out this Utopian
ground,
Virtue's Terra Incognita,
Where none ever led the way,

Nor ever since but in descriptions found;
Like the philosopher's stone,
With rules to search it, yet obtain'd by
none.
II
We have too long been led astray;
Too long have our misguided souls
been taught
With rules from musty morals brought,
'Tis you must put us in the
way;
Let us (for shame!) no more be fed
With antique relics of the
dead,
The gleanings of philosophy;
Philosophy, the lumber of the
schools,
The roguery of alchymy;
And we, the bubbled fools,

Spend all our present life, in hopes of golden rules.
III
But what does our proud ignorance Learning call?
We oddly Plato's paradox make good,
Our knowledge is but mere
remembrance all;
Remembrance is our treasure and our food;

Nature's fair table-book, our tender souls,
We scrawl all o'er with old
and empty rules,
Stale memorandums of the schools:
For learning's mighty treasures

look
Into that deep grave, a book;
Think that she there does all her
treasures hide,
And that her troubled ghost still haunts there since she
died; Confine her walks to colleges and schools;
Her priests, her train, and followers, show
As if they all were spectres
too!
They purchase knowledge at th'expense
Of common breeding,
common sense,
And grow at once scholars and fools;
Affect
ill-manner'd pedantry,
Rudeness, ill-nature, incivility,
And, sick with dregs and knowledge grown,
Which greedily they
swallow down,
Still cast it up, and nauseate company.
IV
Curst be the wretch! nay, doubly curst!
(If it may lawful be
To
curse our greatest enemy,)
Who learn'd himself that heresy first,

(Which since has seized on all the rest,)
That knowledge forfeits all
humanity;
Taught us, like Spaniards, to be proud and poor,
And
fling our scraps before our door!
Thrice happy you have 'scaped this
general pest;
Those mighty epithets, learned, good, and great,

Which we ne'er join'd before, but in romances meet,
We find in you
at last united grown.
You cannot be compared to one:
I must, like him that painted Venus'
face,
Borrow from every one a grace;
Virgil and Epicurus will not
do,
Their courting a retreat like you,
Unless I put in Caesar's learning too:
Your happy frame at once controls
This great triumvirate of souls.
V
Let not old Rome boast Fabius' fate;
He sav'd his country by delays,
But you by peace.[1]
You bought it

at a cheaper rate;
Nor has it left the usual bloody scar,
To show it cost its price in war;
War, that mad game the world so
loves to play,
And for it does so dearly pay;
For, though with loss, or victory, a
while
Fortune the gamesters does beguile,
Yet at the last the box sweeps all
away.
VI
Only the laurel got by peace
No thunder e'er can blast:
Th'artillery
of the skies
Shoots to the earth and dies:
And ever green and
flourishing