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

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 to fiends?
Sin and the plague ever abound?In governments too easy, and too fruitful ground;
Evils which a too gentle king,?Too flourishing a spring,?And too warm summers bring:?Our British soil is over rank, and breeds?Among the noblest flowers a thousand pois'nous weeds,?And every stinking weed so lofty grows,?As if 'twould overshade the Royal Rose;?The Royal Rose, the glory of our morn,
But, ah!