Where fruitful matter chiefly swims. 
And here the father often gains
That title by another’s pains. 
  Hither, though much against his grain
The Dean has carried Lady Jane. 
He, for a while, would not consent,
But vow’d his money all was spent: 
Was ever such a clownish reason! 
And must my lady slip her season? 
The doctor, with a double fee,
Was bribed to make the Dean agree. 
  Here, all diversions of the place
Are proper in my lady’s case: 
With which she patiently complies,
Merely because her friends advise;
His money and her time employs
In music, raffling-rooms, and toys;
Or in the Cross-bath[7] seeks an heir,
Since others oft have found one there;
Where if the Dean by chance appears,
It shames his cassock and his years. 
He keeps his distance in the gallery,
Till banish’d by some coxcomb’s raillery;
For ’twould his character expose,
To bathe among the belles and beaux. 
  So have I seen, within a pen,
Young ducklings foster’d by a hen;
But, when let out, they run and muddle,
As instinct leads them, in a puddle;
The sober hen, not born to swim,
With mournful note clucks round the brim.[8]
  The Dean, with all his best endeavour,
Gets not an heir, but gets a fever. 
A victim to the last essays
Of vigour in declining days,
He dies, and leaves his mourning mate
(What could he less?)[9] his whole estate. 
  The widow goes through all her forms: 
New lovers now will come in swarms. 
O, may I see her soon dispensing
Her favours to some broken ensign! 
Him let her marry for his face,
And only coat of tarnish’d lace;
To turn her naked out of doors,
And spend her jointure on his whores;
But, for a parting present, leave her
A rooted pox to last for ever!

[Footnote 1:  Collated with Swift’s original MS. in my possession, dated January, 1721-2.—­Forster.]

[Footnote 2: 
  “A rich divine began to woo,”
  “A grave divine resolved to woo,”
are Swift’s successive changes of this line.—­Forster.]

[Footnote 3:  “Philippa, daughter to an Earl,” is the original text, but he changed it on changing the lady’s name to Jane.—­Forster.]

[Footnote 4:  Scott prints “her.”—­Forster.]

[Footnote 5:  Swift has writ in the margin: 
  “If by a more than usual grace
  She lends him in her chariot place,
  Her hoop is hoist above his nose
  For fear his gown should soil her clothes.”—­Forster.]

[Footnote 6:  For this fable, see Ovid, “Metam.,” lib. ix.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 7:  So named from a very curious cross or pillar which was erected in it in 1687 by John, Earl of Melfort, Secretary of State to James the Second, in honour of the King’s second wife, Mary Beatrice of Modena, having conceived after bathing there.—­Collinson’s “History of Somersetshire.”—­W.  E. B.]