Poem of the Day: ‘The Dean’s Manner of Living’
In 1713, as a (disappointing) reward for his work for the government in London, Swift was installed as dean of St. Patrick’s, the Anglican cathedral at Dublin. And it was there he wrote these couplets mocking his own life in Ireland.
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) is one of those authors — Ovid and Benjamin Franklin are others — who wrote with so many layers of irony that readers can never be sure they’ve reached the bottom of it. One is usually better off noting that Swift — or Ovid or Franklin — said something, than claiming that any of them believed the something that they had said. It’s probably impossible, for example, to peel back all the ironies and ironic references that populate the pages of Swift’s convoluted work in “A Tale of a Tub” (1699).
One of the ironic devices he adopted was disparaging himself, mocking those who tried to attack him by doing it better and more wittily. In 1713, as a (disappointing) reward for his work for the government at London, Swift was installed as dean of St. Patrick’s, the Anglican cathedral at Dublin. And it was there he wrote, probably in the early 1730s, “The Dean’s Manner of Living.” For the lighter verse featured on Wednesdays, The New York Sun offers as Poem of the Day these five tetrameter couplets in which Swift mocked his own life in Ireland.
The Dean’s Manner of Living
by Jonathan Swift
On rainy days alone I dine
Upon a chick and pint of wine.
On rainy days I dine alone,
And pick my chicken to the bone:
But this my servants much enrages,
No scraps remain to save board wages.
In weather fine I nothing spend,
But often spunge upon a friend:
Yet, where he’s not so rich as I,
I pay my club, and so good b’ye.
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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.
