ABSTRACT
Swift's poems, after long neglect, have become a growth industry. For a long time, the only adequate introduction to them in book form was Maurice Johnson's The Sin of Wit. Writing poems was no small part of Swift's activity. Swift's poems are his most personal works, if by 'personal' one means something like 'confessional' or 'autobiographical'. Parody of the idealisations of conventional love-poetry carried less risk of 'a Figure scurvy', because Swift was less likely to betray a residual attachment to the derided original. This chapter explores some aspects of Swift's poetic treatment of cities, and of those typical inhabitants of cities, the whore and the fine lady. Over the years, Swift became one of the masters in a great English tradition of serious light verse which includes Skelton, Butler, Prior, Byron and Auden. Byron said, Swift 'beats us all hollow, his rhymes are wonderful'.
