To you, my true and faithful friend, These tributary lines I send, Which every 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 forced to think and pause; How long I dwell upon a proem, 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 complimental thought sublime, Reduced by favourite Pope to rhyme, And those by you to Oxford writ, With true simplicity and wit. Yet after all I cannot find One panegyric to my mind. Now I begin to fret and blot, Something I schemed, but quite forgot; My fancy turns a thousand ways, Through 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 choose 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'd, 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, so I'm forced to quit it. Again I try--I'll sing the man-- Ay do, says Phoebus, if you can; I wish with all my heart you would not; Were Horace now alive he could not: And will you venture to pursue, What none alive or dead could do? Pray see, did ever Pope or Gay Presume to write on his birth-day; Though 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 could not be content Without some grateful compliment, If not the poet, sure the friend Must something on your birth-day send. I scratch'd, and rubb'd my head once more: "Let every 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 on 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. EPIGRAMS OCCASIONED BY DR. SWIFT'S INTENDED HOSPITAL FOR IDIOTS AND LUNATICS I The Dean must die--our idiots to maintain! Perish, ye idiots! and long live the Dean! II