The Poems of Jonathan Swift: -Bouts Rimez

-Bouts Rimez

[1]

ON SIGNORA DOMITILLA

Our schoolmaster may roar i' th' fit,
  Of classic beauty, haec et illa;
Not all his birch inspires such wit
  As th'ogling beams of Domitilla.
Let nobles toast, in bright champaign,
  Nymphs higher born than Domitilla;
I'll drink her health, again, again,
  In Berkeley's tar,[2] or sars'parilla.
At Goodman's Fields I've much admired
  The postures strange of Monsieur Brilla;
But what are they to the soft step,
  The gliding air of Domitilla?
Virgil has eternized in song
  The flying footsteps of Camilla;[3]
Sure, as a prophet, he was wrong;
  He might have dream'd of Domitilla.
Great Theodose condemn'd a town
  For thinking ill of his Placilla:[4]
And deuce take London! if some knight
  O' th' city wed not Domitilla.
Wheeler,[5] Sir George, in travels wise,
  Gives us a medal of Plantilla;
But O! the empress has not eyes,
  Nor lips, nor breast, like Domitilla.
Not all the wealth of plunder'd Italy,
  Piled on the mules of king At-tila,
Is worth one glove (I'll not tell a bit a lie)
  Or garter, snatch'd from Domitilla.
Five years a nymph at certain hamlet,
  Y-cleped Harrow of the Hill, a-
--bused much my heart, and was a damn'd let
  To verse--but now for Domitilla.
Dan Pope consigns Belinda's watch
  To the fair sylphid Momentilla,[6]
And thus I offer up my catch
  To the snow-white hands of Domitilla.

[Footnote 1: Verses to be made upon a given name or word, at the end of a line, and to which rhymes must be found.--W. E. B.]

[Footnote 2: Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, famous, inter alia, for his enthusiasm in urging the use of tar-water for all kinds of complaints. See his Works, edit. Fraser. Fielding mentions it favourably as a remedy for dropsy, in the Introduction to his "Journal of a voyage to Lisbon"; and see Austin Dobson's note to his edition of the "Journal."--W. E. B.]

[Footnote 3: "Aeneid," xi.]

[Footnote 4: Qu. Flaccilla? see Gibbon, iii, chap, xxvii.--W. E. B.]

[Footnote 5: Who lived from 1650 to 1723, and wrote and published several books of travels in Greece and Italy, etc.--W. E. B.]

[Footnote 6: See "The Rape of the Lock."]

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