Poetry & Satire

A satire is a genre which "can be described as the literary art of diminishing or derogating a subject by making it ridiculous and evoking toward it attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn, or indignation". (Abrams: 2012)

A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General

By Jonathan Swift

(1722)

His Grace! impossible! what dead! 

Of old age too, and in his bed! 

And could that mighty warrior fall? 

And so inglorious, after all! 

Well, since he’s gone, no matter how, 

The last loud trump must wake him now: 

And, trust me, as the noise grows stronger, 

He’d wish to sleep a little longer. 

And could he be indeed so old 

As by the newspapers we’re told? 

Threescore, I think, is pretty high; 

’Twas time in conscience he should die 

This world he cumbered long enough; 

He burnt his candle to the snuff; 

And that’s the reason, some folks think, 

He left behind so great a stink. 

Behold his funeral appears, 

Nor widow’s sighs, nor orphan’s tears, 

Wont at such times each heart to pierce, 

Attend the progress of his hearse.

But what of that, his friends may say, 

He had those honours in his day. 

True to his profit and his pride, 

He made them weep before he died. 

Come hither, all ye empty things, 

Ye bubbles raised by breath of kings; 

Who float upon the tide of state, 

Come hither, and behold your fate. 

Let pride be taught by this rebuke, 

How very mean a thing’s a Duke; 

From all his ill-got honours flung, 

Turned to that dirt from whence he sprung.

™Abrams, M. (2012) A Glossary of Literary terms. Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage learning.