THE DAY OF JUDGMENT[1]

With a whirl of thought oppress’d,
I sunk from reverie to rest. 
An horrid vision seized my head;
I saw the graves give up their dead! 
Jove, arm’d with terrors, bursts the skies,
And thunder roars and lightning flies! 
Amaz’d, confus’d, its fate unknown,
The world stands trembling at his throne! 
While each pale sinner hung his head,
Jove, nodding, shook the heavens, and said: 
“Offending race of human kind,
By nature, reason, learning, blind;
You who, through frailty, stepp’d aside;
And you, who never fell—­through pride: 
You who in different sects were shamm’d,
And come to see each other damn’d;
(So some folk told you, but they knew
No more of Jove’s designs than you;)
—­The world’s mad business now is o’er,
And I resent these pranks no more. 
—­I to such blockheads set my wit! 
I damn such fools!—­Go, go, you’re bit.”

[Footnote 1:  This Poem was sent in a letter from Lord Chesterfield to Voltaire, dated 27th August, 1752, in which he says:  “Je vous envoie ci-jointe une piece par le feu Docteur Swift, laquelle je crois ne vous deplaira pas.  Elle n’a jamais ete imprimee, vous en devinerez bien la raison, roais elle est authentique.  J’en ai l’original, ecrit de sa propre main.”—­W.  E. B.]

JUDAS. 1731

By the just vengeance of incensed skies,
Poor Bishop Judas late repenting dies. 
The Jews engaged him with a paltry bribe,
Amounting hardly to a crown a-tribe;
Which though his conscience forced him to restore,
(And parsons tell us, no man can do more,)
Yet, through despair, of God and man accurst,
He lost his bishopric, and hang’d or burst. 
Those former ages differ’d much from this;
Judas betray’d his master with a kiss: 
But some have kiss’d the gospel fifty times,
Whose perjury’s the least of all their crimes;
Some who can perjure through a two inch-board,
Yet keep their bishoprics, and ’scape the cord: 
Like hemp, which, by a skilful spinster drawn
To slender threads, may sometimes pass for lawn. 
  As ancient Judas by transgression fell,
And burst asunder ere he went to hell;
So could we see a set of new Iscariots
Come headlong tumbling from their mitred chariots;
Each modern Judas perish like the first,
Drop from the tree with all his bowels burst;
Who could forbear, that view’d each guilty face,
To cry, “Lo!  Judas gone to his own place,
His habitation let all men forsake,
And let his bishopric another take!”

AN EPISTLE TO MR. GAY[1] 1731