To the Rev. Dr. Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's, a Birth-Day Poem. Nov. 30, 1736

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 painWhat 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 findOne 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 becomeThe 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 GayPresume 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 contentWithout some grateful compliment,If not the poet, sure the friendMust 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 onAssisted by some friendly demon.I slept, and dream'd that I should meetA birth-day poem in the street;So, after all my care and rout,You see, dear Dean, my dream is out.