Wednesday, May 05, 2010
With Sacrilegious Hand
From June 1728 to February 1729 Jonathan Swift was a guest at the home of Sir Arthur Acheson (1688-1749) and his wife Anne (died 1737) at Market Hill, County Armagh, Ireland. While there, Swift supervised the felling of a hawthorn tree. He wrote a comic poem On Cutting Down the Old Thorn at Market Hill:
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At Market Hill, as well appearsThe text above comes from from Jonathan Swift, The Complete Poems, ed. Pat Rogers (London: Penguin, 1983), pp. 353-356 (with notes on pp. 782-783). Rogers (p. 782) dates the poem September 14, 1728. See also Carole Fabricant, "The Garden as City: Swift's Landscape of Alienation," English Literary History 42.4 (Winter 1975) 531-555 (at 541-542). I haven't seen the following:
By chronicle of ancient date
There stood for many a hundred years
A spacious thorn before the gate.
Hither came every village maid
And on the boughs her garland hung,
And here, beneath the spreading shade,
Secure from satyrs sat and sung.
Sir Archibald, that valorous knight,
Then lord of all the fruitful plain, 10
Would come to listen with delight,
For he was fond of rural strain.
(Sir Archibald whose favourite name
Shall stand for ages on record,
By Scottish bards of highest fame,
Wise Hawthornden and Stirling's lord.)
But time with iron teeth I ween
Has cankered all its branches round;
No fruit or blossom to be seen,
Its head reclining towards the ground. 20
This aged, sickly, sapless thorn
Which must alas no longer stand;
Behold! the cruel Dean in scorn
Cuts down with sacrilegious hand.
Dame Nature, when she saw the blow,
Astonished gave a dreadful shriek;
And Mother Tellus trembled so
She scarce recovered in a week.
The sylvan powers with fear perplexed
In prudence and compassion sent 30
(For none could tell whose turn was next)
Sad omens of the dire event.
The magpie, lighting on the stock,
Stood chattering with incessant din;
And with her beak gave many a knock
To rouse and warn the nymph within.
The owl foresaw in pensive mood
The ruin of her ancient seat;
And fled in haste with all her brood,
To seek a more secure retreat. 40
Last trotted forth the gentle swine
To ease her itch against the stump,
And dismally was heard to whine
All as she scrubbed her measly rump.
The nymph who dwells in every tree,
(If all be true that poets chant)
Condemned by Fate's supreme decree,
Must die with her expiring plant.
Thus, when the gentle Spina found
The thorn committed to her care, 50
Receive its last and deadly wound,
She fled and vanished into air.
But from the root a dismal groan
First issuing, struck the murderer's ears;
And in a shrill revengeful tone,
This prophecy he trembling hears.
'Thou chief contriver of my fall,
Relentless Dean! to mischief born,
My kindred oft thine hide shall gall;
Thy gown and cassock oft be torn. 60
'And thy confederate dame, who brags
That she condemned me to the fire,
Shall rent her petticoats to rags,
And wound her legs with every briar.
'Nor thou, Lord Arthur, shalt escape:
To thee I often called in vain,
Against that assassin in crape,
Yet thou couldst tamely see me slain.
'Nor, when I felt the dreadful blow,
Or chid the Dean, or pinched thy spouse. 70
Since you could see me treated so,
An old retainer to your house,
'May that fell Dean, by whose command
Was formed this Machiavellian plot,
Not leave a thistle on thy land;
Then who will own thee for a Scot?
'Pigs and fanatics, cows, and Teagues
Through all thy empire I foresee,
To tear thy hedges join in leagues,
Sworn to revenge my thorn and me. 80
'And thou, the wretch ordained by Fate,
Neal Gahagan, Hibernian clown,
With hatchet blunter than thy pate
To hack my hallowed timber down;
'When thou, suspended high in air,
Diest on a more ignoble tree,
(For thou shalt steal thy landlord's mare)
Then bloody caitiff think on me.'
- J.G. Simms, "Dean Swift and County Armagh," Seanchas Ardmhacha: Journal of the Armagh Diocesan Historical Society 6.1 (1971) 131-140
- Nora Jaffe, The Poet Swift (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1977), pp. 132-134
Labels: arboricide
