Their journey long, their money short;
The loving couple well bemir’d;
The horse and both the riders tir’d: 
Their victuals bad, their lodgings worse;
Phyl cried! and John began to curse: 
Phyl wish’d that she had strain’d a limb,
When first she ventured out with him;
John wish’d that he had broke a leg,
When first for her he quitted Peg. 
  But what adventures more befell ’em,
The Muse hath now no time to tell ’em;
How Johnny wheedled, threaten’d, fawn’d,
Till Phyllis all her trinkets pawn’d: 
How oft she broke her marriage vows,
In kindness to maintain her spouse,
Till swains unwholesome spoil’d the trade;
For now the surgeon must be paid,
To whom those perquisites are gone,
In Christian justice due to John. 
  When food and raiment now grew scarce,
Fate put a period to the farce,
And with exact poetic justice;
For John was landlord, Phyllis hostess;
They keep, at Stains, the Old Blue Boar,
Are cat and dog, and rogue and whore.

[Footnote 1:  A tradesman’s phrase.—­Swift.]

HORACE, BOOK IV, ODE IX ADDRESSED TO ARCHBISHOP KING,[1] 1718

Virtue conceal’d within our breast
Is inactivity at best: 
But never shall the Muse endure
To let your virtues lie obscure;
Or suffer Envy to conceal
Your labours for the public weal. 
Within your breast all wisdom lies,
Either to govern or advise;
Your steady soul preserves her frame,
In good and evil times, the same. 
Pale Avarice and lurking Fraud,
Stand in your sacred presence awed;
Your hand alone from gold abstains,
Which drags the slavish world in chains. 
  Him for a happy man I own,
Whose fortune is not overgrown;[2]
And happy he who wisely knows
To use the gifts that Heaven bestows;
Or, if it please the powers divine,
Can suffer want and not repine. 
The man who infamy to shun
Into the arms of death would run;
That man is ready to defend,
With life, his country or his friend.

[Footnote 1:  With whom Swift was in constant correspondence, more or less friendly.  See Journal to Stella, “Prose Works,” vol. ii, passim; and an account of King, vol. iii, p. 241, note.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 2: 
  “Non possidentem multa vocaveris
  recte beatum:  rectius occupat
    nomen beati, qui deorum
      muneribus sapienter uti
  duramque callet pauperiem pati,
  pejusque leto flagitium timet.”]

TO MR. DELANY,[1]

OCT. 10, 1718 NINE IN THE MORNING