This is just a taste of a mordantly witty much longer poem by the great satirist Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), for my money one of the brighter sparks to illuminate a fairly dull period in English verse. In it he contemplates his demise and looks back with some satisfaction on his combative life. It was written in 1731, so well before his sad last years much troubled by illness and dementia, and his final interment in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, next to his beloved ‘Stella’, the name he gave to his lifelong friend and possible lover Esther Johnson. His epitaph can still be seen there, with its famous words ‘ubi saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit’ (where fierce indignation can no longer injure the heart).

‘But not a traitor could be found’ – this refers to Swift’s involvement in undermining a plan by the English government to grant a monopoly to a certain William Wood to mint copper coins for use in Ireland. Swift was against this plan, fearing that it savoured of corruption and would lead to debasement of the coinage, and attacked it in a series of pseudonymous pamphlets, the ‘Drapier’s Letters’, in which he posed as a shopkeeper, a draper. In retaliation the government offered a sizeable reward to anyone exposing the true identity of the author, but Swift was a hero to the people of Ireland and there were no takers.

From ‘Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift’

He never courted men in station,
Nor persons held in admiration;
Of no man’s greatness was afraid,
Because he sought for no man’s aid.
Though trusted long in great affairs
He gave himself no haughty airs:
Without regarding private ends,
Spent all his credit for his friends;
And only chose the wise and good;
No flatt’rers; no allies in blood:
But succour’d virtue in distress,
And seldom fail’d of good success;
As numbers in their hearts must own,
Who, but for him, had been unknown.
    ‘With princes kept a due decorum,
But never stood in awe before ’em.
He follow’d David’s lesson just:
‘In princes never put thy trust’;
And, would you make him truly sour,
Provoke him with a slave in pow’r.
The Irish senate if you nam’d,
With what impatience he declaim’d!
Fair Liberty was all his cry,
For her he stood prepar’d to die;
For her he boldly stood alone;
For her he oft expos’d his own.
Two kingdoms, just as faction led,
Had set a price upon his head;
But not a traitor could be found
To sell him for six hundred pound.

Jonathan Swift