Jonathan Swift
Judas
By the just vengeance of incensed skies,
Poor Bishop Judas late repenting dies.
The Jews engaged him with a paltry bribe,
Amounting hardly to a crown a-tribe;
Which though his conscience forced him to restore,
(And parsons tell us, no man can do more,)
Yet, through despair, of God and man accurst,
He lost his bishopric, and hang’d or burst.
Those former ages differ’d much from this;
Judas betray’d his master with a kiss:
But some have kiss’d the gospel fifty times,
Whose perjury’s the least of all their crimes;
Some who can perjure through a two inch-board,
Directions for a Birthday Song
To form a just and finish’d piece,
Take twenty gods of Rome or Greece,
Whose godships are in chief request,
And fit your present subject best;
And, should it be your hero’s case,
To have both male and female race,
Your business must be to provide
A score of goddesses beside.
Some call their monarchs sons of Saturn, For which they bring a modern pattern; Because they might have heard of one, Who often long’d to eat his son; But this I think will not go down, For here the father kept his crown.
The Logicians Refuted
Logicians have but ill defined
As rational, the human kind;
Reason, they say, belongs to man,
But let them prove it if they can.
Wise Aristotle and Smiglesius,
By ratiocinations specious,
Have strove to prove, with great precision,
With definition and division,
Homo est ratione praeditum;
But for my soul I cannot credit ‘em,
And must, in spite of them, maintain,
That man and all his ways are vain;
And that this boasted lord of nature
Is both a weak and erring creature;
That instinct is a surer guide
Than reason, boasting mortals’ pride;
