Читать книгу Irish Wit and Humor - Anonymous - Страница 13

This was a country house of Dr. Sheridan's, where Swift and some of his friends spent a summer in the year 1725, and being in very bad repair, Swift wrote the following lines on the occasion:—

Let me thy properties explain;

A rotten cabin dropping rain:

Chimneys with scorn rejecting smoke:

Stools, tables, chairs and bedsteads broke.

Here elements have lost their uses,

Air ripens not, nor earth produces:

In vain we make poor Shelah toil,

Fire will not roast, nor water boil.

Through all the valleys, hills, and plains,

The goddess Want in triumph reigns; And her chief officers of state; Sloth, Dirt, and Theft, around her wait.