Sid's sceptre, full of juice, did shoot
In golden boughs, and golden fruit;
And he, the dragon never sleeping,
Guarded each fair Hesperian Pippin.
No hobby-horse, with gorgeous top,
The dearest in Charles Mather's[7] shop,
Or glittering tinsel of May Fair,
Could with this rod of Sid compare.[8]
Dear Sid, then why wert thou so mad
To break thy rod like naughty lad?[9]
You should have kiss'd it in your distress,
And then return'd it to your mistress;
Or made it a Newmarket switch,[10]
And not a rod for thine own breech.
But since old Sid has broken this,
His next may be a rod in piss.
[Footnote 1: Cid Hamet Ben Eng'li, the supposed inspirer of Cervantes.
See "Don Quixote," last chapter.--_W. E. B._]
[Footnote 2: When Swift came to London, in 1710, about the time the
ministry was changed, his reception from Lord Treasurer Godolphin was, as
he wrote to Archbishop King, 9th Sept., "altogether different from what
he ever received from any great man in his life, altogether short, dry,
and morose." To Stella he writes that this coldness had "enraged him so
that he was almost vowing revenge." On the Treasurer's enforced
retirement, Swift's resentment took effect in the above "lampoon" which
was read at Harley's, on the 15th October, 1710, and "ran prodigiously,"
but was not then "suspected for Swift's.
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