THE TREE. Fair Tree! for thy delightful shade Till storms have worn themselves away, And no return be made by me? No! let this wish upon me wait, And still to flourish be thy fate, A NOCTURNAL REVERIE. In such a night, when every louder wind Or from some tree, framed for the owl's delight, Whence spring the woodbind and the bramble-rose, When through the gloom more venerable shows While sunburned hills their swarthy looks conceal, of Wordworth When curlews cry beneath the village-walls, And no fierce light disturbs, whilst it reveals; Joys in the inferior world, and thinks it like her own; Till morning breaks and all's confused again; FROM AN ODE TO THE SPLEEN.' Falsely the mortal part we blame Nor clogged the active soul, disposed to fly No armèd sweets, until thy reign, Till some offensive scent thy powers appease, VOL. III. IN ANSWER TO MR. POPE. Disarmed with so genteel an air, And shock the sex no more. We rule the world our life's whole race, First slaves to every tempting face, You of one Orpheus sure have read, But he, poor soul, thought all was well, Soon punished his offence; And as the Hebrus rolled his skull, And harp besmeared with blood, They, clashing as the waves grew full, Still harmonised the flood. But you our follies gently treat, And spin so fine the thread, You need not fear his awkward fate Our admiration you command For all that's gone before, What next we look for at your hand Yet soothe the ladies, I advise,— As me, too, pride has wrought,— D JONATHAN SWIFT. [JONATHAN SWIFT was born in Hoey's court, Dublin, on the 30th of November 1667. Belonging to a Yorkshire family and directly descended from a vicar in Herefordshire, one of whose younger sons, the poet's father, married a Leicestershire lady, he was of unmixed English blood. A posthumous child, left in indigent circumstances, he was sent to school at Kilkenny, and then to Trinity College, Dublin, by the charity of his uncle Godwin, who died in 1688. Swift seems to have neglected the studies requisite to his degree, and having been plucked at his first examination only obtained, on a second trial, Feb. 1686, 'speciali gratia.' On the outbreak of the war, 1688, he fled to England, and found his way from Chester on foot to his mother's residence. She obtained for him the patronage of Sir William Temple, to whose wife she was related, and he remained at Moor Park for eleven years in the capacity of secretary to that accomplished statesman, at a salary of £20 a year. This residence, interrupted by a short absence during which he held an Irish country living in the diocese of Connor, brought him into the frequent society of Hester Johnson (Stella), an inmate of the same house, and reputed daughter of Sir William's steward. In 1692 Swift went to Oxford, and was admitted there to a Master's degree. On occasion of this visit he produced his first verses--an indifferent rendering of Horace (Odes ii. 18), followed a little later by his Pindaric Odes. A more substantial result of his studies in his master's library was The Battle of the Books. In 1694 he took Deacon's, and in 1695 Priest's orders. Ere his death in 1699 Sir William had from the king a promise of promotion for his client-a promise afterwards forgotten. In 1700 Swift accompanied Lord Berkeley to Ireland as chaplain, and obtained the living of Laracor in the county of Meath, at an income of £200 a year, which by the addition of the Prebend of Dunlavin was increased to £350. Initiated into the intrigues of party, he first came before the public as a champion of the Whigs, in his pamphlet entitled A Discourse on the contests and dissensions of Athens and Rome (1701). In 1704 appeared the Tale of a Tub, perhaps the wittiest of controversial works, and in 1708 the papers ridiculing the astrologer Partridge, under the signature of Isaac Bickerstaff. In 1710, with a change of opinion, quickened by chagrin at patronage deferred, Swift passed to the side of the Tories and became their most effective literary champion. His Conduct of the Allies |