A Quibbling Elegy On Judge Boat Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCCCCCDDCCEEFFCC CCGGHHIIJKLLMMGC N OEPPGGPPTo mournful ditties Clio change thy note | A |
Since cruel fate has sunk our Justice Boat | A |
Why should he sink where nothing seem'd to press | B |
His lading little and his ballast less | B |
Tost in the waves of this tempestuous world | C |
At length his anchor fix'd and canvass furl'd | C |
To Lazy hill retiring from his court | C |
At his Ring's end he founders in the port | C |
With water fill'd he could no longer float | C |
The common death of many a stronger boat | C |
A post so fill'd on nature's laws entrenches | D |
Benches on boats are placed not boats on benches | D |
And yet our Boat how shall I reconcile it | C |
Was both a Boat and in one sense a pilot | C |
With every wind he sail'd and well could tack | E |
Had many pendants but abhorr'd a Jack | E |
He's gone although his friends began to hope | F |
That he might yet be lifted by a rope | F |
Behold the awful bench on which he sat | C |
He was as hard and ponderous wood as that | C |
Yet when his sand was out we find at last | C |
That death has overset him with a blast | C |
Our Boat is now sail'd to the Stygian ferry | G |
There to supply old Charon's leaky wherry | G |
Charon in him will ferry souls to Hell | H |
A trade our Boat has practised here so well | H |
And Cerberus has ready in his paws | I |
Both pitch and brimstone to fill up his flaws | I |
Yet spite of death and fate I here maintain | J |
We may place Boat in his old post again | K |
The way is thus and well deserves your thanks | L |
Take the three strongest of his broken planks | L |
Fix them on high conspicuous to be seen | M |
Form'd like the triple tree near Stephen's Green | M |
And when we view it thus with thief at end on't | G |
We'll cry look here's our Boat and there's the pendant | C |
- | |
- | |
The Epitaph | N |
- | |
Here lies Judge Boat within a coffin | O |
Pray gentlefolks forbear your scoffing | E |
A Boat a judge yes where's the blunder | P |
A wooden judge is no such wonder | P |
And in his robes you must agree | G |
No boat was better deckt than he | G |
'Tis needless to describe him fuller | P |
In short he was an able sculler | P |
Jonathan Swift
(1)
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