Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Ireland: Vol. V. 1876–79.

Drapier’s Hill

Drapier’s Hill

By Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)

The Dean gave this name to a farm called Drumlack, which he took of Sir Arthur Acheson, whose seat lay between that and Market Hill, and intended to build a house upon it, but afterwards changed his mind.

WE give the world to understand

Our thriving Dean has purchased land;

A purchase which will bring him clear

Above his rent four pounds a year,

Provided, to improve the ground,

He will but add two hundred pound,

And from his endless hoarded store,

To build a house, five hundred more.

Sir Arthur, too, shall have his will,

And call the mansion Drapier’s Hill;

That, when a nation, long enslaved,

Forgets by whom it once was saved,

When none the Drapier’s praise shall sing,

His signs aloft no longer swing,

His medals and his prints forgotten,

And all his handkerchiefs are rotten,

His famous letters made waste paper,

This hill may keep the name of Drapier;

In spite of envy, flourish still,

And Drapier’s vie with Cooper’s Hill.