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Bouts Rimez[1]
By Jonathan Swift
ON SIGNORA DOMITILLA
Our schoolmaster may roar i' th' fit,
Of classic beauty, haec et illa;
Not all his birch inspires such wit
As th'ogling beams of Domitilla.
Let nobles toast, in bright champaign,
Nymphs higher born than Domitilla;
I'll drink her health, again, again,
In Berkeley's tar,[2] or sars'parilla.
At Goodman's Fields I've much admired
The postures strange of Monsieur Brilla;
But what are they to the soft step,
The gliding air of Domitilla?
Virgil has eternized in song
The flying footsteps of Camilla;[3]
Sure, as a prophet, he was wrong;
He might have dream'd of Domitilla.
Great Theodose condemn'd a town
For thinking ill of his Placilla:[4]
And deuce take London! if some knight
O' th' city wed not Domitilla.
Wheeler,[5] Sir George, in travels wise,
Gives us a medal of Plantilla;
But O! the empress has not eyes,
Nor lips, nor breast, like Domitilla.
Not all the wealth of plunder'd Italy,
Piled on the mules of king At-tila,
Is worth one glove (I'll not tell a bit a lie)
Or garter, snatch'd from Domitilla.
Five years a nymph at certain hamlet,
Y-cleped Harrow of the Hill, a-
- bused much my heart, and was a damn'd let
To verse - but now for Domitilla.
Dan Pope consigns Belinda's watch
To the fair sylphid Momentilla,[6]
And thus I offer up my catch
To the snow-white hands of Domitilla.
Extra Info:
[Footnote 1: Verses to be made upon a given name or word, at the end of a line, and to which rhymes must be found.]
[Footnote 2: Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, famous, inter alia, for his enthusiasm in urging the use of tar-water for all kinds of complaints.
See his Works, edit. Fraser. Fielding mentions it favourably as a remedy for dropsy, in the Introduction to his "Journal of a voyage to Lisbon"; and see Austin Dobson's note to his edition of the "Journal."]
[Footnote 3: "Aeneid," xi.]
[Footnote 4: Qu. Flaccilla? see Gibbon, iii, chap, xxvii.]
[Footnote 5: Who lived from 1650 to 1723, and wrote and published several books of travels in Greece and Italy, etc.]
[Footnote 6: See "The Rape of the Lock."]
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