Swift To Sheridan, In Reply

Tom, for a goose you keep but base quills, They're fit for nothing else but pasquils. I've often heard it from the wise, That inflammations in the eyes Will quickly fall upon the tongue, And thence, as famed John Bunyan sung, From out the pen will presently On paper dribble daintily. Suppose I call'd you goose, it is hard One word should stick thus in your gizzard. You're my goose, and no other man's; And you know, all my geese are swans: Only one scurvy thing I find, Swans sing when dying, geese when blind. But now I smoke where lies the slander,-- I call'd you goose instead of gander; For that, dear Tom, ne'er fret and vex, I'm sure you cackle like the sex. I know the gander always goes With a quill stuck across his nose: So your eternal pen is still Or in your claw, or in your bill. But whether you can tread or hatch, I've something else to do than watch. As for your writing I am dead, I leave it for the second head.

Deanery-House, Oct. 27, 1718.