A Description of a City Shower

Jonathan Swift is definitely rated as my personal favorite poet from the eighteenth century. So what if he didn't think he accomplished much, he did an excellent job capturing what real life was like during the Restoration Period through his works of literature. "A Description of a City Shower" is funny. While he discusses the nastiness of a rain shower in London. While most would think rain provides an excellent cleansing of the city, in London this is not the case. He warns everyone not to go far when the rain begins because it was not wise to be stuck trying to wade through the "mud." Then the storm comes. Sewage, dead animals, pollution, and garbage flood the streets as the Thames River and the drainage ditches back up into the city. This beatiful rain shower has turned into a nasty mess. Swift mocks a beau stuck in the middle of the street in his box chair and not able to get out of the mud without getting dirty. He also mocks the Whigs and the Tories, who should be arguing about politics, but instead are working together to save their whigs. At the end of the poem and rain storm, when the sun should be shining, instead there is all sorts of gross items just laying in the street to either be left or to be moved back into the river.

This poem fits so perfectly into the eighteenth century with its satirical way of describing a rain shower in London. Swift's works were most often satires that critiqued society in one way or another. This one not only critiques the cleanliness of the city but also how social status was so important. The beau was being carried around in a chair on a couple guys shoulders but when the muck came out he was no better than the guys that were carrying him, in fact he was worse off. What a great poem!