<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=426337" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>A Panegyric Of The Dean In The Person Of A Lady In The North</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Resolved my gratitude to show,<br>Thrice reverend Dean, for all I owe,<br>Too long I have my thanks delay'd;<br>Your favours left too long unpaid;<br>But now, in all our sex's name,<br>My artless Muse shall sing your fame.<br>Indulgent you to female kind,<br>To all their weaker sides are blind:<br>Nine more such champions as the Dean<br>Would soon restore our ancient reign;<br>How well to win the ladies' hearts,<br>You celebrate their wit and parts!<br>How have I felt my spirits raised,<br>By you so oft, so highly praised!<br>Transform'd by your convincing tongue<br>To witty, beautiful, and young,<br>I hope to quit that awkward shame,<br>Affected by each vulgar dame,<br>To modesty a weak pretence;<br>And soon grow pert on men of sense;<br>To show my face with scornful air;<br>Let others match it if they dare.<br>Impatient to be out of debt,<br>O, may I never once forget<br>The bard who humbly deigns to chuse<br>Me for the subject of his Muse!<br>Behind my back, before my nose,<br>He sounds my praise in verse and prose.<br>My heart with emulation burns,<br>To make you suitable returns;<br>My gratitude the world shall know;<br>And see, the printer's boy below;<br>Ye hawkers all, your voices lift;<br>'A Panegyric on Dean Swift!'<br>And then, to mend the matter still,<br>'By Lady Anne of Market-Hill!'<br>I thus begin: My grateful Muse<br>Salutes the Dean in different views;<br>Dean, butler, usher, jester, tutor;<br>Robert and Darby's coadjutor;<br>And, as you in commission sit,<br>To rule the dairy next to Kit;<br>In each capacity I mean<br>To sing your praise. And first as Dean:<br>Envy must own, you understand your<br>Precedence, and support your grandeur:<br>Nor of your rank will bate an ace,<br>Except to give Dean Daniel place.<br>In you such dignity appears,<br>So suited to your state and years!<br>With ladies what a strict decorum!<br>With what devotion you adore 'em!<br>Treat me with so much complaisance,<br>As fits a princess in romance!<br>By your example and assistance,<br>The fellows learn to know their distance.<br>Sir Arthur, since you set the pattern,<br>No longer calls me snipe and slattern,<br>Nor dares he, though he were a duke,<br>Offend me with the least rebuke.<br>Proceed we to your preaching next!<br>How nice you split the hardest text!<br>How your superior learning shines<br>Above our neighbouring dull divines!<br>At Beggar's Opera not so full pit<br>Is seen as when you mount our pulpit.<br>Consider now your conversation:<br>Regardful of your age and station,<br>You ne'er were known by passion stirr'd<br>To give the least offensive word:<br>But still, whene'er you silence break,<br>Watch every syllable you speak:<br>Your style so clear, and so concise,<br>We never ask to hear you twice.<br>But then a parson so genteel,<br>So nicely clad from head to heel;<br>So fine a gown, a band so clean,<br>As well become St. Patrick's Dean,<br>Such reverential awe express,<br>That cowboys know you by your dress!<br>Then, if our neighbouring friends come here<br>How proud are we when you appear,<br>With such address and graceful port,<br>As clearly shows you bred at court!<br>Now raise your spirits, Mr. Dean,<br>I lead you to a nobler scene.<br>When to the vault you walk in state,<br>In quality of butler's mate;<br>You next to Dennis bear the sway:<br>To you we often trust the key:<br>Nor can he judge with all his art<br>So well, what bottle holds a quart:<br>What pints may best for bottles pass<br>Just to give every man his glass:<br>When proper to produce the best;<br>And what may serve a common guest.<br>With Dennis you did ne'er combine,<br>Not you, to steal your master's wine,<br>Except a bottle now and then,<br>To welcome brother serving-men;<br>But that is with a good design,<br>To drink Sir Arthur's health and mine,<br>Your master's honour to maintain:<br>And get the like returns again.<br>Your usher's post must next be handled:<br>How blest am I by such a man led!<br>Under whose wise and careful guardship<br>I now despise fatigue and hardship,<br>Familiar grown to dirt and wet,<br>Though draggled round, I scorn to fret:<br>From you my chamber damsels learn<br>My broken hose to patch and darn.<br>Now as a jester I accost you;<br>Which never yet one friend has lost you.<br>You judge so nicely to a hair,<br>How far to go, and when to spare;<br>By long experience grown so wise,<br>Of every taste to know the size;<br>There's none so ignorant or weak<br>To take offence at what you speak.<br>Whene'er you joke, 'tis all a case<br>Whether with Dermot, or his grace;<br>With Teague O'Murphy, or an earl;<br>A duchess, or a kitchen girl.<br>With such dexterity you fit<br>Their several talents with your wit,<br>That Moll the chambermaid can smoke,<br>And Gahagan take every joke.<br>I now become your humble suitor<br>To let me praise you as my tutor.<br>Poor I, a savage bred and born,<br>By you instructed every morn,<br>Already have improved so well,<br>That I have almost learnt to spell:<br>The neighbours who come here to dine,<br>Admire to hear me speak so fine.<br>How enviously the ladies look,<br>When they surprise me at my book!<br>And sure as they're alive at night,<br>As soon as gone will show their spight:<br>Good lord! what can my lady mean,<br>Conversing with that rusty Dean!<br>She's grown so nice, and so penurious,<br>With Socrates and Epicurius!<br>How could she sit the livelong day,<br>Yet never ask us once to play?<br>But I admire your patience most;<br>That when I'm duller than a post,<br>Nor can the plainest word pronounce,<br>You neither fume, nor fret, nor flounce;<br>Are so indulgent, and so mild,<br>As if I were a darling child.<br>So gentle is your whole proceeding,<br>That I could spend my life in reading.<br>You merit new employments daily:<br>Our thatcher, ditcher, gardener, baily.<br>And to a genius so extensive<br>No work is grievous or offensive:<br>Whether your fruitful fancy lies<br>To make for pigs convenient styes;<br>Or ponder long with anxious thought<br>To banish rats that haunt our vault:<br>Nor have you grumbled, reverend Dean,<br>To keep our poultry sweet and clean;<br>To sweep the mansion-house they dwell in,<br>And cure the rank unsavoury smelling.<br>Now enter as the dairy handmaid:<br>Such charming butter never man made.<br>Let others with fanatic face<br>Talk of their milk for babes of grace;<br>From tubs their snuffling nonsense utter;<br>Thy milk shall make us tubs of butter.<br>The bishop with his foot may burn it,<br>But with his hand the Dean can churn it.<br>How are the servants overjoy'd<br>To see thy deanship thus employ'd!<br>Instead of poring on a book,<br>Providing butter for the cook!<br>Three morning hours you toss and shake<br>The bottle till your fingers ache;<br>Hard is the toil, nor small the art,<br>The butter from the whey to part:<br>Behold a frothy substance rise;<br>Be cautious or your bottle flies.<br>The butter comes, our fears are ceased;<br>And out you squeeze an ounce at least.<br>Your reverence thus, with like success,<br>(Nor is your skill or labour less,)<br>When bent upon some smart lampoon,<br>Will toss and turn your brain till noon;<br>Which in its jumblings round the skull,<br>Dilates and makes the vessel full:<br>While nothing comes but froth at first,<br>You think your giddy head will burst;<br>But squeezing out four lines in rhyme,<br>Are largely paid for all your time.<br>But you have raised your generous mind<br>To works of more exalted kind.<br>Palladio was not half so skill'd in<br>The grandeur or the art of building.<br>Two temples of magnific size<br>Attract the curious traveller's eyes,<br>That might be envied by the Greeks;<br>Raised up by you in twenty weeks:<br>Here gentle goddess Cloacine<br>Receives all offerings at her shrine.<br>In separate cells, the he's and she's,<br>Here pay their vows on bended knees:<br>For 'tis profane when sexes mingle,<br>And every nymph must enter single;<br>And when she feels an inward motion,<br>Come fill'd with reverence and devotion.<br>The bashful maid, to hide her blush,<br>Shall creep no more behind a bush;<br>Here unobserved she boldly goes,<br>As who should say, to pluck a rose,<br>Ye, who frequent this hallow'd scene,<br>Be not ungrateful to the Dean;<br>But duly, ere you leave your station,<br>Offer to him a pure libation,<br>Or of his own or Smedley's lay,<br>Or billet-doux, or lock of hay:<br>And, O! may all who hither come,<br>Return with unpolluted thumb!<br>Yet, when your lofty domes I praise<br>I sigh to think of ancient days.<br>Permit me then to raise my style,<br>And sweetly moralize a-while.<br>Thee, bounteous goddess Cloacine,<br>To temples why do we confine?<br>Forbid in open air to breathe,<br>Why are thine altars fix'd beneath?<br>When Saturn ruled the skies alone,<br>(That golden age to gold unknown,)<br>This earthly globe, to thee assign'd,<br>Received the gifts of all mankind.<br>Ten thousand altars smoking round,<br>Were built to thee with offerings crown'd;<br>And here thy daily votaries placed<br>Their sacrifice with zeal and haste:<br>The margin of a purling stream<br>Sent up to thee a grateful steam;<br>Though sometimes thou wert pleased to wink,<br>If Naiads swept them from the brink:<br>Or where appointing lovers rove,<br>The shelter of a shady grove;<br>Or offer'd in some flowery vale,<br>Were wafted by a gentle gale,<br>There many a flower abstersive grew,<br>Thy favourite flowers of yellow hue;<br>The crocus and the daffodil,<br>The cowslip soft, and sweet jonquil.<br>But when at last usurping Jove<br>Old Saturn from his empire drove,<br>Then gluttony, with greasy paws<br>Her napkin pinn'd up to her jaws,<br>With watery chops, and wagging chin,<br>Braced like a drum her oily skin;<br>Wedged in a spacious elbow-chair,<br>And on her plate a treble share,<br>As if she ne'er could have enough,<br>Taught harmless man to cram and stuff.<br>She sent her priests in wooden shoes<br>From haughty Gaul to make ragouts;<br>Instead of wholesome bread and cheese,<br>To dress their soups and fricassees;<br>And, for our home-bred British cheer,<br>Botargo, catsup, and caviare.<br>This bloated harpy, sprung from hell,<br>Confined thee, goddess, to a cell:<br>Sprung from her womb that impious line,<br>Contemners of thy rites divine.<br>First, lolling Sloth, in woollen cap,<br>Taking her after-dinner nap:<br>Pale Dropsy, with a sallow face,<br>Her belly burst, and slow her pace:<br>And lordly Gout, wrapt up in fur,<br>And wheezing Asthma, loth to stir:<br>Voluptuous Ease, the child of wealth,<br>Infecting thus our hearts by stealth.<br>None seek thee now in open air,<br>To thee no verdant altars rear;<br>But, in their cells and vaults obscene,<br>Present a sacrifice unclean;<br>From whence unsavoury vapours rose,<br>Offensive to thy nicer nose.<br>Ah! who, in our degenerate days,<br>As nature prompts, his offering pays?<br>Here nature never difference made<br>Between the sceptre and the spade.<br>Ye great ones, why will ye disdain<br>To pay your tribute on the plain?<br>Why will you place in lazy pride<br>Your altars near your couches' side:<br>When from the homeliest earthen ware<br>Are sent up offerings more sincere,<br>Than where the haughty duchess locks<br>Her silver vase in cedar box?<br>Yet some devotion still remains<br>Among our harmless northern swains,<br>Whose offerings, placed in golden ranks,<br>Adorn our crystal rivers' banks;<br>Nor seldom grace the flowery downs,<br>With spiral tops and copple crowns;<br>Or gilding in a sunny morn<br>The humble branches of a thorn.<br>So poets sing, with golden bough<br>The Trojan hero paid his vow.<br>Hither, by luckless error led,<br>The crude consistence oft I tread;<br>Here when my shoes are out of case,<br>Unweeting gild the tarnish'd lace;<br>Here, by the sacred bramble tinged,<br>My petticoat is doubly fringed.<br>Be witness for me, nymph divine,<br>I never robb'd thee with design;<br>Nor will the zealous Hannah pout<br>To wash thy injured offering out.<br>But stop, ambitious Muse, in time,<br>Nor dwell on subjects too sublime.<br>In vain on lofty heels I tread,<br>Aspiring to exalt my head;<br>With hoop expanded wide and light,<br>In vain I 'tempt too high a flight.<br>Me Phoebus in a midnight dream <br>Accosting, said, 'Go shake your cream <br>Be humbly-minded, know your post;<br>Sweeten your tea, and watch your toast.<br>Thee best befits a lowly style;<br>Teach Dennis how to stir the guile;<br>With Peggy Dixon thoughtful sit,<br>Contriving for the pot and spit.<br>Take down thy proudly swelling sails,<br>And rub thy teeth and pare thy nails;<br>At nicely carving show thy wit;<br>But ne'er presume to eat a bit:<br>Turn every way thy watchful eye,<br>And every guest be sure to ply:<br>Let never at your board be known<br>An empty plate, except your own.<br>Be these thy arts; nor higher aim<br>Than what befits a rural dame.<br>'But Cloacina, goddess bright,<br>Sleek——claims her as his right;<br>And Smedley, flower of all divines,<br>Shall sing the Dean in Smedley's lines.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Jonathan+Swift">Jonathan Swift</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=426337" data-title="A Panegyric Of The Dean In The Person Of A Lady In The North de Jonathan Swift" data-description="Resolved my gratitude to show, Thrice reverend Dean, for all I owe, Too long I have my thanks delay'd; Your favours left too long unpaid; But now, in all our sex's name, My artless Muse shall sing your fame. Indulgent you to female kind, To all th..."></div> </div> </div>

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