The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift/Volume 18/To the Rev. Dr. Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's: a Birthday Poem 1736
TO THE REV. DR. SWIFT, DEAN OF ST. PATRICK'S.
A BIRTHDAY POEM. Nov. 30, 1736.
TO you, my true and faithful friend
These tributary lines I send,
Which every year, thou best of deans,
I'll pay as long as life remains;
But did you know one half the pain,
What work, what racking of the brain,
It costs me for a single clause,
How long I'm forced to think and pause;
How long I dwell upon a proem,
To introduce your birthday poem,
How many blotted lines; I know it,
You'd have compassion for the poet.
Now, to describe the way I think,
I take in hand my pen and ink;
I rub my forehead, scratch my head,
Revolving all the rhymes I read.
Each complimental thought sublime,
Reduced by favourite Pope to rhyme,
And those by you to Oxford writ,
With true simplicity and wit.
Yet after all I cannot find
One panegyrick to my mind.
Now I begin to fret and blot,
Something I schemed but quite forgot;
My fancy turns a thousand ways
Through all the several forms of praise,
What elogy may best become
The greatest dean in christendom.
At last I've hit upon a thought ——
Sure this will do —— 'tis good for nought ——
This line I peevishly erase,
And choose another in its place;
Again I try, again commence,
But cannot well express the sense;
The line's too short to hold my meaning;
I'm cramp'd, and cannot bring the dean in.
O for a rhyme to glorious birth!
I've hit upon't —— The rhyme is earth ——,
But how to bring it in, or fit it,
I know not, so I'm forc'd to quit it.
Again I try — I'll sing the man —
Ay do, says Phœbus, if you can:
I wish with all my heart you would not,
Were Horace now alive he could not:
And will you venture to pursue,
What none alive or dead could do?
Pray see, did ever Pope or Gay
Presume to write on his birthday?
Though both were fav'rite bards of mine,
The task they wisely both decline.
With grief I felt his admonition,
And much lamented my condition:
Because I could not be content
Without some grateful compliment,
If not the poet, sure the friend
Must something on your birthday send.
I scratch'd, and rubb'd my head once more:
"Let ev'ry patriot him adore."
Alackaday, there's nothing in't —
Such stuff will never do in print.
Pray, reader, ponder well the sequel,
I hope this epigram will take well.
In others, life is deem'd a vapour,
In Swift, it is a lasting taper,
Whose blaze continually refines,
The more it burns the more it shines.
I read this epigram again,
'Tis much too flat to fit the dean.
Then down I lay some scheme to dream on,
Assisted by some friendly demon.
I slept, and dream'd that I should meet
A birthday poem in the street;
So after all my care and rout,
You see, dear dean, my dream is out.