Exercise: Commentary Analysis

Please read Jonathan Swift’s mock-epic “A Description of a City Shower” (1710)

which is in your poetry selection package in Unit 1 Study Guides on Student Share. After
you have read the mock-epic please complete the following questions and bring (on a
memory stick) to the next class on Commentary Analysis.

Instructions:

1. Using coloured markers, identify patterns in the poem: patterns of the senses, of
words, and of ideas. This includes archetypal patterns studied in class. Colour code and
underline.

2. Divide the poem into meaningful parts (is there a sense of progression, change or
tension?).

3. Title each part (identifying the overall topic/theme). Identify themes and topics that
echo the classic epic.

4. Identify and make a claim about the most important lines in the passage, and
demonstrate how they relate to the parts of the poem in which they are found. Here you
would also discuss style and use and effect of literary devices.

5. What key questions are raised as you read these most important lines? What key
questions or tension remain?

The next step would be to write a draft of a Commentary. If you write a draft I would be
happy to review it in class.

Swift, in “A Description of a City Shower” suggests that modern London is a city of

refuse. He offers us an epic list of the garbage that takes on a life of its own as the rain
falls; the ugliness of the scene is intensified by the elegance of the epic language and the
beauty of its conventional images. The juxtaposition is jarring; for example, he describes
the “sable cloud athwart the welkin” (the rain cloud traversing the sky) as a “drunkard”
about to vomit. How unlike the eternal cities of the ancients, Swift seems to rail, is dirty
and decaying London. As the poem ends, its filth is literally being washed away in a rain
storm to reveal . . . nothing else.

Jonathan Swift

A Description of a City Shower (1710)

Careful observers may foretell the hour
(By sure prognostics) when to dread a shower:
While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er
Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.
Returning home at night, you'll find the sink
Strike your offended sense with double stink.
If you be wise, then go not far to dine,
You spend in coach-hire more than save in wine.
A coming shower your shooting corns presage,
Old aches throb, your hollow tooth will rage.
Sauntering in coffee-house is Dulman seen;
12He damns the climate, and complains of spleen.

13Mean while the South rising with dabbled wings,

14A sable cloud a-thwart the welkin flings,
15That swilled more liquor than it could contain,
16And like a drunkard gives it up again.
Brisk Susan whips her linen from the rope,
While the first drizzling shower is born aslope,
Such is that sprinkling which some careless quean
20Flirts on you from her mop, but not so clean.
You fly, invoke the gods; then turning, stop
To rail; she singing, still whirls on her mop.
Not yet, the dust had shunned the unequal strife,
But aided by the wind, fought still for life;
25And wafted with its foe by violent gust,
'Twas doubtful which was rain, and which was dust.
Ah! where must needy poet seek for Aid,
When dust and rain at once his coat invade;
Sole coat, where dust cemented by the rain,
30Erects the nap, and leaves a cloudy stain.

Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down,

Threatening with deluge this devoted town.
To shops in crowds the daggled females fly,
Pretend to cheapen Goods, but nothing buy.
35The Templar spruce, while every spout's a-broach,
Stays till 'tis fair, yet seems to call a coach.
The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides,
While streams run down her oiled umbrella's sides.
Here various kinds by various fortunes led,
40Commence acquaintance underneath a shed.
Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs,
Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
Boxed in a chair the beau impatient sits,
While spouts run clattering o'er the roof by fits;
45And ever and anon with frightful din
The leather sounds, he trembles from within.
So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed,
Pregnant with Greeks, impatient to be freed,
(Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do,
50Instead of paying chairmen, run them through.)
Laocoon struck the outside with his spear,
And each imprisoned hero quaked for fear.

Now from all Parts the swelling kennels flow,

And bear their Trophies with them as they go:
55Filth of all hues and odours seem to tell
What streets they sailed from, by the sight and smell.
They, as each Torrent drives, with rapid force
From Smithfield, or St. Pulchre's shape their course,
And in huge confluent join at Snow-Hill ridge,
60Fall from the conduit prone to Holborn-Bridge.
Sweepings from butchers stalls, dung, guts, and blood,
Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud,
Dead cats and turnips-tops come tumbling down the flood.