The Virginia Gazette

From the London Magazine, for December,

To the Rev. Doctor Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's

A Birth-Day Poem. Nov. 30, 1736.

To you, my true, and faithful friend,
Here tributary lines I send,
Which ev'ry 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 forc'd to think, and pause,
How long I dwell upon a scheme,
To introduce your birth-day 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 complemental thought, sublime,
Reduc'd by fav'rite 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 schem'd, but quite forgot;
My fancy turns a thousand ways
I thro'all the several forms of praise,
What eulogy 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 chuse 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't, 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, o I'm forc'd to quit it.

Again I try -- I'll sing the man
Ay do, says Phæbus, if you can;
I wish with all my heart you wou'd not,
Were Horace now alive he could not:
And will you venture to pursue,
What none alive or dead cou'd do?
Pray see did ever Pope, or Gay.
Presume to write on his birth-day,
Tho' 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 cou'd not be content
Without some grateful compliment.
If not the poet, sure the friend
Must something on your birth-day send.

I scratch and rubb'd my head once more
Let ev'ry patriot him adore:
Alack-a-day 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 o
Assisted by some friendly demon;
I slept, and dream'd that I should meet
A birth-day poem in the street;
So, after all my care and rout,
You see, dear dean, my dream is out.