Poetry analysis
A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General
By Jonathan Swift
His Grace! impossible! whatdead!
Of old age too, and in his bed!
And could that mighty warrior fall?
And so inglorious, after all!
Well, since he’s gone, no matter how,
The last loud trump must wake him now:
And, trust me, as the noise grows stronger,
He’d wish to sleep a little longer.
And could he be indeed so old
As by the newspapers we’re told?
Threescore, I think, is pretty high;
’Twas time in conscience he should die
This world he cumbered long enough;
He burnt his candle to the snuff;
And that’s the reason, some folks think,
He left behind so great a stink.
Behold his funeral appears,
Nor widow’s sighs, nor orphan’s tears,
Wont at such times each heart to pierce,
Attend the progress of his hearse.
But what of that, his friends may say,
He had those honours in his day.
True to his profit and his pride,
He made them weep before he died.
Come hither, all ye empty things,
Ye bubbles raised by breath of kings;
Who float upon the tide of state,
Come hither, and behold your fate.
Let pride be taught by this rebuke,
How very mean a thing’s a Duke;
From all his ill-got honours flung,
Turned to that dirt from whence he sprung.
In the poem A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General by Jonathan Swift the poem goes straight to the point; the general had died of old age in his sleep. The poem then goes onto a funeral speech-like setting, most likely the late general’s. The narrator then addresses the king and the nobility personally, stating how the general had done more than they ever had, while they sat on their asses all day. He had earned his stripes while they had it handed to them. In this story, the narrator is the speaker, as it is a narrative poem; however, there is no name for the narrator. The setting is around the Middle Ages, when everyone was on the monarchy bandwagon, while the poem itself is in a funeral.
From my interpretation, the storyhas a shocked-like tone to it in the start, cutting to a saddened, somber sort of tone through the middle of the first stanza, and into an angered, resentful manner of speaking in the last stanza. The words that helped set the tone of the story were actually a sentence, it was ‘Come hither, all ye empty things’, and I can’t help but feel that it would best be said the way I described above. As far as the actual poem structure goes, I had trouble finding the metrical pattern, and the line averages at about seven words per line. The poem itself is 214 words long, 54 of which are in the last stanza, the other 160 are in the first stanza. The poem’s rhyme scheme is an AA, BB, CC pattern, and is consistent throughout the poem, and the poem’s form is closed.
The poem has allusions, such as the people crying for him, but not much worth mentioning, and as far as some of the other poetic devices go, there are none that I can see. As stated above (in the second paragraph, first and second lines), the poem is read in more of an astonished tone, swiftly going to a somber tone, and as such there’s only punctuation in the first few lines, and as far as titles go, I have nothing better. I have nothingfor the last section, except that it did make me more aware about one thing; the higher ups, the one who have never been in combat before, always take credit for the victories made by the soldiers. Never once have I seen a name belonging to a soldier, or a squad, or even anything that was part of the attack, only generals, commanders, and officers are known in history books it seems, never the grunts.