A Description of a City Shower (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Jonathan Swift
- First Published: 1710
- Type of Work: Mock pastoral
- Genres: Poetry, Mock-heroic poetry
- Subjects: England or English people, Eighteenth century, City life, London, Cities or towns, Weather, Rain
The Poem
Jonathan Swift’s “A Description of a City Shower” is a sixty-three-line poem written in thirty-one of the end-rhymed iambic pentameter couplets still known as “heroic couplets,” with the final line of iambic hexameter creating a closing triplet. (The heroic couplet was the most popular verse form of Swift’s day and takes its name from its frequent use in English translations of classical epic—or, as it was then termed, “heroic”—poetry.) Swift’s title is somewhat ironically misleading: Although he certainly provides a vivid enough description of a...
[The entire page is 1468 words long]
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