Meditations Upon A Broomstick
ACCORDING TO THE STYLE AND MANNER OF THE HON. ROBERT BOYLE'S MEDITATIONS.
THIS single stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that
neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest.
It was full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs; but now in
vain does the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature, by tying
that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk; it is now at
best but the reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside-down, the
branches on the earth, and the root in the air; it is now handled
by every dirty wench, condemned to do her drudgery, and, by a
capricious kind of fate, destined to make other things clean, and
be nasty itself; at length, worn to the stumps in the service of
the maids, it is either thrown out of doors or condemned to the
last use - of kindling a fire. When I behold this I sighed, and
said within myself, "Surely mortal man is a broomstick!" Nature
sent him into the world strong and lusty, in a thriving condition,
wearing his own hair on his head, the proper branches of this
reasoning vegetable, till the axe of intemperance has lopped off
his green boughs, and left him a withered trunk; he then flies to
art, and puts on a periwig, valuing himself upon an unnatural
bundle of hairs, all covered with powder, that never grew on his
head; but now should this our broomstick pretend to enter the
scene, proud of those birchen spoils it never bore, and all covered
with dust, through the sweepings of the finest lady's chamber, we
should be apt to ridicule and despise its vanity. Partial judges
that we are of our own excellencies, and other men's defaults!
But a broomstick, perhaps you will say, is an emblem of a tree
standing on its head; and pray what is a man but a topsy-turvy
creature, his animal faculties perpetually mounted on his rational,
his head where his heels should be, grovelling on the earth? And
yet, with all his faults, he sets up to be a universal reformer and
corrector of abuses, a remover of grievances, rakes into every
slut's corner of nature, bringing hidden corruptions to the light,
and raises a mighty dust where there was none before, sharing
deeply all the while in the very same pollutions he pretends to
sweep away. His last days are spent in slavery to women, and
generally the least deserving; till, worn to the stumps, like his
brother besom, he is either kicked out of doors, or made use of to
kindle flames for others to warm themselves by.
-THE END-
Jonathan Swift: Meditations Upon A Broomstick
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