Series of contests between a number of competitors who compete for an overall prize, noun

Hich line in this excerpt from jonathan swift's "a modest proposal" uses the rhetorical device of irony? and secondly, (there being a round million of creatures in humane figure throughout this kingdom, whose whole subsistence put into a common stock, would leave them in debt two million of pounds sterling), adding those who are beggars by profession, to the bulk of farmers, cottagers and labourers, with their wives and children, who are beggars in effect; i desire those politicians who dislike my overture, and may perhaps be so bold to attempt an answer, that they will first ask the parents of these mortals, whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been sold for food at a year old, in the manner i prescribe, and thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes, as (they have since gone through, by the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor cloaths to cover them from the inclemencies of the weather,) and the most inevitable prospect of intailing the like, or greater miseries, upon their breed for ever. i profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that( i have not the least personal interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the publick good of my country,) by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich.( i have no children, by which i can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing. reset next)

"the only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. they were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house."

In me thou seest the twilight of such day, as after sunset fadeth in the west, which by and by black night doth take away, death's second self that seals up all in rest. —"sonnet 73," william shakespeare read the second quatrain of “sonnet 73,” and then answer the questions. what is the best paraphrase of these lines? what is the central idea of these lines?