The Poems of Jonathan Swift

-The Puppet Show

The life of man to represent,

And turn it all to ridicule,

Wit did a puppet-show invent,

Where the chief actor is a fool.

The gods of old were logs of wood,

And worship was to puppets paid;

In antic dress the idol stood,

And priest and people bow'd the head.

No wonder then, if art began

The simple votaries to frame,

To shape in timber foolish man,

And consecrate the block to fame.

From hence poetic fancy learn'd

That trees might rise from human forms;

The body to a trunk be turn'd,

And branches issue from the arms.

Thus Daedalus and Ovid too,

That man's a blockhead, have confest:

Powel and Stretch[1] the hint pursue;

Life is a farce, the world a jest.

The same great truth South Sea has proved

On that famed theatre, the alley;

Where thousands, by directors moved

Are n