Jonathan Swift Poems

From distant regions Fortune sends
An odd triumvirate of friends;
Where Phoebus pays a scanty stipend,
Where never yet a codling ripen'd:
...

Dingley and Brent,
Wherever they went,
Ne'er minded a word that was spoken;
Whatever was said,
...

I am jet black, as you may see,
The son of pitch and gloomy night:
Yet all that know me will agree,
I'm dead except I live in light.
...

When on my bosom thy bright eyes,
Florinda, dart their heavenly beams,
I feel not the least love surprise,
...

APPLES

COME buy my fine wares,
Plums, apples and pears.
...

Charming oysters I cry:
My masters, come buy,
So plump and so fresh,
So sweet is their flesh,
...

Pallas, observing Stella's wit
Was more than for her sex was fit,
And that her beauty, soon or late,
Might breed confusion in the state,
...

The Scottish hinds, too poor to house
In frosty nights their starving cows,
While not a blade of grass or hay
Appears from Michaelmas to May,
...

All travellers at first incline
Where'er they see the fairest sign
And if they find the chambers neat,
And like the liquor and the meat,
...

This day, dear Bec, is thy nativity;
Had Fate a luckier one, she'd give it ye.
She chose a thread of greatest length,
...