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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DEATH AND DAPHNE by JONATHAN SWIFT

First Line: DEATH WENT UPON A SOLEMN DAY
Last Line: AND LEAVES MY LADY IN THE SUDS.
Subject(s): DEATH; DEAD, THE;
Death went upon a solemn day,
At Pluto's hall, his court to pay:
The phantom, having humbly kissed
His grisly monarch's sooty fist,
Presented him the weekly bills
Of doctors, fevers, plagues, and pills.
Pluto observing, since the Peace,
The burial article decrease;
And, vexed to see affairs miscarry,
Declared in council, Death must marry:
Vowed, he no longer could support
Old bachelors about his court:
The interest of his realm had need
That Death should get a numerous breed;
Young Deathlings, who, by practice made
Proficients in their father's trade,
With colonies might stock around
His large dominions underground.
A consult of coquettes below
Was called, to rig him out a beau:
From her own head, Megaera takes
A periwig of twisted snakes;
Which in the nicest fashion curled,
Like toupets of this upper world;
(With flour of sulphur powdered well,
That graceful on his shoulders fell)
An adder of the sable kind,
In line direct, hung down behind.
The owl, the raven, and the bat,
Clubbed for a feather to his hat;
His coat, an usurer's velvet pall,
Bequeathed to Pluto, corpse and all.
But, loath his person to expose
Bare, like a carcass picked by crows,
A lawyer o'er his hands and face,
Stuck artfully a parchment case.
No new-fluxed rake showed fairer skin;
Not Phyllis after lying-in.
With snuff was filled his ebon box,
Of shin-bones rotted by the pox.
Nine spirits of blaspheming fops,
With aconite anoint his chops:
And give him words of dreadful sounds,
'God damn his blood', and 'Blood and wounds.'
Thus furnished out, he sent his train
To take a house in Warwick Lane;
The Faculty, his humble friends,
A complimental message sends:
Their president, in scarlet gown,
Harangued, and welcomed him to town.
But, Death had business to dispatch:
His mind was running on his match.
And, hearing much of Daphne's fame,
His Majesty of terrors came,
Fine as a colonel of the Guards,
To visit where she sat at cards:
She, as he came into the room,
Thought him Adonis in his bloom.
And now her heart with pleasure jumps,
She scarce remembers what is trumps.
For, such a shape of skin and bone
Was never seen, except her own:
Charmed with his eyes and chin and snout,
Her pocket-glass drew slily out;
And, grew enamoured with her phiz,
As just the counterpart of his.
She darted many a private glance,
And freely made the first advance:
Was of her beauty grown so vain,
She doubted not to win the swain.
Nothing she thought could sooner gain him,
Than with her wit to entertain him.
She asked about her friends below;
This meagre fop, that battered beau:
Whether some late departed toasts
Had got gallants among the ghosts?
If Chloe were a sharper still,
As great as ever, at quadrille?
(The ladies there must needs be rooks,
For, cards we know, are Pluto's books.)
If Florimel had found her love
For whom she hanged herself above?
How oft a week was kept a ball
By Proserpine, at Pluto's hall?
She fancied, those Elysian shades
The sweetest place for masquerades:
How pleasant on the banks of Styx,
To troll it in a coach and six!
What pride a female heart inflames!
How endless are ambition's aims!
Cease haughty nymph; the fates decree
Death must not be a spouse for thee:
For, when by chance the meagre shade
Upon thy hand his finger laid;
Thy hand as dry and cold as lead,
His matrimonial spirit fled;
He felt about his heart a damp,
That quite extinguished Cupid's lamp:
Away the frighted spectre scuds,
And leaves my Lady in the suds.



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