an almost accidental gathering of poets
 
    
 
 
Jonathan Swift
 
Corinna
Corinna, pride of Dury-Lane,
For whom no shepherd sighs in vain;
Never did Covent-Garden boast
So bright a battered, strolling toast;
No drunken rake to pick her up,
No cellar where on tick to sup;
Returning at the midnight hour,
Four stories climbing to her bower;
Then, seated on a three-legged chair,
Takes off her artificial hair:
Now picking out a crystal eye,
She wipes it clean, and lays it by.
Her eye-brows from a mouse´s hide,
Stuck on with art on either side,
Pulls off with care, and first displays ´em,
Then in a play-book smoothly lays ´em.
Now dextrously her plumpers draws,
That serve to fill her empty jaws.
Untwists a wire; and from her gums
A set of teeth completely comes.
Pulls out the rags, contrives to prop
Her flabby dugs, and down they drop.
Proceeding on, the lovely goddess
Unlaces next her steel-ribbed bodice;
Which by the operator´s skill,
Press down the lumps, the hollows fill.
Up goes her hand, and off she slips
The bolsters that supply her hips.
Which gentlest touch, she next explores
Her shankers, issues, running sores;
Effects of many a sad disaster,
And then to each applies a plaster.
But must, before she goes to bed,
Rub off the daubs of white and red;
And smooth the furrows in her front,
With greasy paper stuck upon´t.
She takes a bolus e´er she sleeps;
And then between two blankets creeps.
With pains of love tormented lies;
Or, if she chance to close her eyes,
Of Bridewell and the Compter dreams,
And feel the lash, and faintly screams;
Or, by a faithless bully drawn,
At some hedge-tavern lies in pawn.
Or, to Jamaica seems transported,
Alone, and by no planter courted.
Or, near the Fleet-Ditch´s oozy brinks,
Surrounded with a hundred stinks:
Belated, seems on watch to lie,
And snap some cully passing by.

Or, struck with fear, her fancy runs
On watchmen, constables, and duns,
From whom she meets with frequent rubs;
But never from religious clubs;
Whose favour she is sure to find,
Because she pays them all in kind.

Corinna wakes. A dreadful sight!
Behold the ruins of the night!
A wicked rat her plaster stole,
Half eat, half dragged it to his hole.
The crystal eye, alas, was missed;
And Puss had on her plumpers p-st.
A pigeon picked her issue-peas,
And Shock her tresses filled with fleas.
The nymph, though in this mangled plight,
Must every morn her limbs unite;
But, how shall I describe the arts
To recollect the scattered parts?
Or, show the anguish, toil, and pain
Of gathering up herself again.
The bashful muse will never bear
in such a scene to interfere.
Corinna in the morning dizened,
Who sees will spew, who smells, be poisened.
   
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