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B - Commendatory Verses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2021

David Womersley
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

On 17 February 1727 Alexander Pope wrote to Swift as follows: ‘You receiv’d, I hope, some commendatory verses from a Horse and a Lilliputian, to Gulliver; and an heroic Epistle of Mrs. Gulliver. The Bookseller would fain have printed ‘em before the second Edition of the Book, but I would not permit it without your approbation; nor do I much like them.’ This clearly refers to the fourth, first and fifth of the poems reprinted below, which were published inMotte's ‘Second Edition’ of Gulliver's Travels in May 1727, and virtually simultaneously in The Post Boy and The St James's Evening-Post. Some copies of Motte's ‘Second Edition’ contain four poems, others five: ‘The Words of the King of Brobdingnag’ is occasionally absent, and when present is tipped in.

The authorship of the poems has been reviewed by Norman Ault in his volume of Pope's minor poems in the Twickenham edition, where he concludes that they are all by Pope, with the possible and partial exception of ‘The Lamentation of Glumdalclitch’, where John Gay may have made a contribution.

The texts reprinted here are taken from Motte's ‘Second Edition’ of Gulliver's Travels (1727), as the earliest publication and the one possessing the closest link with Gulliver's Travels.

IN amaze

Lost, I gaze!

Can our Eyes

Reach thy Size?

May my Lays

Swell with Praise

Worthy thee!

Worthy me!

Muse inspire,

All thy Fire!

Bards of old

Of him told,

When they said

Atlas Head

Propt the Skies:

See! and believe your Eyes!

See him stride

Vallies wide:

Over Woods,

Over Floods.

When he treads,

Mountains Heads

Groan and shake;

Armies quake,

Lest his Spurn

Overturn

Man and Steed:

Troops take heed!

Left and Right,

Speed your Flight!

Lest an Host

Beneath his Foot be lost.

Turn’d aside

From his Hide,

Safe from Wound

Darts rebound.

From his Nose

Clouds he blows;

When he speaks,

Thunder breaks!

When he eats,

Famine threats;

When he drinks,

Neptune shrinks!

Nigh thy Ear,

In Mid Air,

On thy Hand

Let me stand,

So shall I,

Lofty Poet, touch the Sky.

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Chapter
Information
Gulliver's Travels , pp. 573 - 588
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

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