your children's head!
For you (ah! did I think I e'er should live to see
  The fatal time when that could be!)
  Have even increased their pride and cruelty.
  Woman seems now above all vanity grown,
  Still boasting of her great unknown
Platonic champions, gain'd without one female wile,
    Or the vast charges of a smile;
  Which 'tis a shame to see how much of late
  You've taught the covetous wretches to o'errate,
And which they've now the consciences to weigh
    In the same balance with our tears,
  And with such scanty wages pay
  The bondage and the slavery of years.
Let the vain sex dream on; the empire comes from us;
      And had they common generosity,
        They would not use us thus.
    Well—though you've raised her to this high degree,
    Ourselves are raised as well as she;
  And, spite of all that they or you can do,
'Tis pride and happiness enough to me,
Still to be of the same exalted sex with you.

XI

    Alas, how fleeting and how vain
Is even the nobler man, our learning and our wit!
        I sigh whene'er I think of it:
      As at the closing an unhappy scene
      Of some great king and conqueror's death,
    When the sad melancholy Muse
Stays but to catch his utmost breath.
I grieve, this nobler work, most happily begun,
So quickly and so wonderfully carried on,
May fall at last to interest, folly, and abuse.
      There is a noontide in our lives,
      Which still the sooner it arrives,
Although we boast our winter sun looks bright,
And foolishly are glad to see it at its height,
Yet so much sooner comes the long and gloomy night.
    No conquest ever yet begun,
And by one mighty hero carried to its height,
E'er flourished under a successor or a son;
It lost some mighty pieces through all hands it pass'd,
And vanish'd to an empty title in the last.
  For, when the animating mind is fled,
    (Which nature never can retain,
      Nor e'er call back again,)
The body, though gigantic, lies all cold and dead.

XII

    And thus undoubtedly 'twill fare
    With what unhappy men shall dare
  To be successors to these great unknown,
    On learning's high-establish'd throne.
    Censure, and Pedantry, and Pride,
Numberless nations, stretching far and wide,
Shall (I foresee it) soon with Gothic swarms come forth
    From Ignorance's universal North,
And with blind rage break all this peaceful government:
Yet shall the traces of your wit remain,
  Like a just map, to tell the vast extent
  Of conquest in your short and happy reign:
    And to all future mankind shew
    How strange a paradox is true,
  That men who lived and died without a name
Are the chief heroes in the sacred lists of fame.

[Footnote 1: "I have been told, that Dryden having perused these verses, said, 'Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet;' and that this denunciation was the motive of Swift's perpetual malevolence to Dryden."—Johnson in his "Life of Swift."—W. E. B.