A Description of a City Shower

“A Description of a City Shower” is one of Jonathan Swift’s earlier published works. According to Swift’s correspondence, the poem was one of his favorites. Swift began the poem October 10, 1710, and it was published in Richard Steele’s Tatler seven days later. Though Swift wrote poetry throughout his life, “A Description of a City Shower,” along with “The Lady’s Dressing Room” (1732) and “Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift” (1739) are his few poetic works that compete with his prose masterpieces like Gulliver’s Travels (1726) and A Modest Proposal (1729). Gulliver’s Travels, in particular, is one of the most influential works of English literature ever written.

“A Description of a City Shower” takes the form of an urban pastoral, a type of mock pastoral that takes traditional rural scenes and transplants them to the city. The disconnect between the speaker’s heightened Neoclassical vocabulary and his choice of grotesque, bawdy imagery leaves the poem’s reader at an ironic distance. While the poem can be read as a straightforward description of rain in a contemporary English city, the poem’s particular images and diction work with the dramatic irony to complicate that surface-level interpretation.

Poet Biography

Jonathan Swift is one of the best-known post-restoration English writers. Swift is particularly notable for his dead-pan satires that blend earnest argumentation with absurd premises. Though he is best remembered for prose satires such as A Modest Proposal and Gulliver’s Travels, Swift is also well-regarded for his argumentative essays, political pamphlets, religious sermons, and poetry.

Swift was born 30 November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland. He was the second child of Johnathan Swift and Abigail Erick. Swift’s father (and namesake) was originally from Herefordshire but moved to Ireland with his brother, Godwin, to practice law. Seven months after Swift was born, his father died of syphilis. Swift was left to the care of his uncle Godwin at the age of three.

From the ages of 6 to 15, Swift attended Kilkenny College. Swift then, financed by Godwin’s son, attended Trinity College, Dublin where he studied logic and philosophy. After graduation, Swift worked for Sir William Temple, an English Diplomat and essayist. Upon Temple’s death in 1699, Swift returned to Dublin and worked as a chaplain and secretary. For much of the rest of his life, Swift was employed as a churchman.

Though Swift did not publish prior to 1704, he started writing poetry as early as 1691. It was not until Swift turned to writing prose satires such as 1704’s The Battle of the Books that he gained success and reputation in literary circles. Other than his sermons, Swift published most of his works under pseudonyms. Despite Swift’s best attempts, the authorship of his early works was identified by their stylistic similarities to Temple, and that of his later works were often leaked by publishers or acquaintances shortly after publication. Swift’s satires still grabbed hold of the public consciousness, and many of his political satires, such as 1729’s A Modest Proposal, influenced policy.

Swift’s work grew cynical and embittered as he aged and dealt with anxieties about his mental health. Despite this cynicism, Swift was one of the strongest and most influential allies of the Irish people during this time and fought to defend them against the English oppressors. By 1738, Swift began to show signs of serious mental illness, and in 1741 he was unable to care for himself. He died four years later, in 1745, at the age of 77.

Poem Text

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’ll spend in coach hire more than save in wine.

A coming shower your shooting corns presage,

Old achès throb, your hollow tooth will rage.

Sauntering in coffeehouse is Dulman seen;

He damns the climate and complains of spleen.

Meanwhile the South, rising with dabbled wings,

A sable cloud athwart the welkin flings,

That swilled more liquor than it could contain,

And, 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

Flirts 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,

And 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

Erects the nap, and leaves a mingled 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.

The Templar spruce, while every spout’s abroach,

Stays till ’tis fair, yet seems to call a coach.

The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides,

While seams run down her oiled umbrella’s sides.

Here various kinds, by various fortunes led,

Commence 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,

And 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,

Instead of paying chairmen, run them through),

Laocoön 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:

Filth of all hues and odors seem to tell

What street they sailed from, by their sight and smell.

They, as each torrent drives with rapid force,

From Smithfield or St. Pulchre’s shape their course,

And in huge confluence joined at Snow Hill ridge,

Fall 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 turnip tops, come tumbling down the flood.

Swift, Jonathan. “A Description of a City Shower.” 1710. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

“A Description of a City Shower,” as the poem’s title suggests, describes the event of a rain shower in a contemporary English city. The speaker starts by making a hypothetical claim that “Careful observers” (Line 1) know “when to dread a shower” (Line 2), then goes on to describe how “the pensive cat” (Line 3) stops playing and how “corns” (Line 9) and “Old achès throb” (Line 10) when rain is imminent. Once the rain has come, the “double stink” (Line 6) of the sewers, or “sink” (Line 5), hangs in the air, and one individual in a coffee shop “damns the climate” (Line 12) and blames his melancholy on the weather.

The second stanza drops the first stanza’s hypothesis and, with the word “[m]eanwhile” (Line 13), actualizes the shower. The rain is no longer predicted, but “A sable cloud athwart the [sky] flings” (Line 14). Lines 15-16 establish a metaphorical relationship between rain and vomit or urine that is sustained throughout the poem. The speaker then goes on to present “Brisk Susan” (Line 17) taking her clothes from the clothesline before clarifying the previous extended metaphor by juxtaposing “not so clean” (Line 20) rainwater with water from “some careless quean[’s]” (Line 19) mop. The shower also brings a “violent gust” (Line 25) that lifts dust into the air. The second stanza concludes with the speaker observing that the dust and rain together have stained his coat.

The rainfall is promoted to a “flood” (Line 31) in the third stanza. The speaker describes women running into shops and “templar[s]” (Line 35), or law students, trying to wait out the storm. Even politicians of opposing parties unite in order “to save their wigs” (Line 42). The stanza ends with a comparison between an impatient lover hiding in a hired sedan-chair and “Those bully Greeks” (Line 49) who invaded Troy by hiding in the Trojan horse.

The final stanza returns to the grotesque imagery of the sewer’s “double stink” (Line 6). Now, after the rain has come, “all parts of the swelling [sewers] flow, / And bear their trophies,” or waste (Lines 53-54). The rainfall has flooded the city’s sewer system, and so “Filths of all hues and odours” (Line 55) run through the streets. Lines 57-60 describe the particular route that the filth takes through the city and where it collects. The last three lines of the work itemize the things that can be found among the washed-up filth.