A Description of a City Shower

As noted in the poem’s analysis, “A Description of a City Shower” operates under a materialist, rather than spiritual, worldview. In Swift’s poem, one’s experience of the rain does not rely on one’s spiritual or emotional framework, as it would in a sentimental Classical pastoral, but on the “careful observ[ation]” (Line 1) of events. The signs of the coming rain are presented as mechanical: The cat stops her “frolics” (Line 4), the nose is “offended […] with double stink” (Line 6), and “Old achès throb” (Line 10). Whether it be through sight, smell, or touch, all of these signs are empirically registered. Even “Dulman” (Line 11) at the “coffee-house” (Line 11) “damns the climate” (Line 12) and sees it as having a material influence over his “spleen” (Line 2).

This foregrounding of materiality is perhaps most obvious in the last three lines, which present the “Filths of all hues and odours” (Line 55) as they run through the streets. This catalog, including “dung […] Dead cats and turnip-tops” (Lines 61, 63), suggests that the flow of rainwater has real, material interactions with the waste and refuse of society. Far from inspiring lofty thoughts, imagined tranquil landscapes, and moments of reflection, the rainfall in Swift’s city results in surfacing filth, polluted streets, and people so bombarded with sensory experience that they seek shelter.