Читать книгу Irish Wit and Humor - Unknown - Страница 10
DEAN SWIFT
TO QUILCA
ОглавлениеThis 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.
