Time was when I could yearly pay
My verse on Stella's native day;
But now, unable grown to write,
I grieve she ever saw the light;
Ungrateful, since to her I owe
That I these pains can undergo.
She tends me like an humble slave,
And when indecently I rave,
When out my brutish passions break,
With gall in ev'ry word I speak,
She with soft speech my anguish cheers,
Or melts my passions down with tears;
Altho' 'tis easy to descry
She wants assistance more than I,
Yet seems to feel my pains alone,
And is a Stoic in her own.
When among scholars can we find
So soft and yet so firm a mind?
All accidents of life conspire
To raise up Stella's virtue higher';
Or else to introduce the rest
Which had been latent in her breast.
Her firmness who could e'er have known,
Had she not evils of her own?
Her kindness who could ever guess,
Had not her friends been in distress?
Whatever base returns you find
From me, Dear Stella! still be kind.
In your own heart you'll reap the fruit,
Tho' I continue still a brute.
But when I once am out of pain,
I promise to be good again :.
Mean-time your other juster friends
Shall for my follies make amends:
So may we long continue thus,
Admiring you, you pitying us.
STELLA'S BIRTHDAY, 1724.
As when a beauteous nymph decays,
We say she's past her dancing-days,
So poets lose their feet by time,
And can no longer dance in rhyme.
Your annual bard had rather chose
To celebrate your birth in prose;
Yet merry folks, who want by chance
A pair to make a country-dance,
Call the old housekeeper, and get her
To fill a place for want of better.
While Sheridan is off the hooks,
And friend Delany at his books,
That Stella may avoid disgrace,
Once more the Dean supplies their place.
Beauty and wit, too sad a truth!
Have always been confin'd to youth;
The god of Wit and Beauty's queen,
He twenty-one, and she fifteen.
No poet ever sweetly sung,
Unless he were, like Phoebus, young ;
Nor ever nymph inspir'd to rhyme,
Unless, like Venus, in her prime,
At fifty-six, if this be true,
Am I a poet fit for you?
Or, at the age of forty-three,
Are you a subject fit for me?
Adieu! bright wit, and radiant eyes;
You must be grave, and I be wise.
Our fate in vain we would oppose;
But I'll be still your friend in prose:
Esteem and friendship to express
Will not require poetic dress,
And if the Muse deny her aid
To have them sung, they may be said.
But, Stella, say, what evil tongue
Reports you are no longer young?
That Time sits with his scythe to mow
Where erst sat Cupid with his bow?
That half your locks are turn'd to grey ?
I'll ne'er believe a word they say.
'Tis true, but let it not be known,
My eyes are somewhat dimmish grown ;
For Nature, always in the right,
To your decays adapts my sight,
And wrinkles undistinguish'd pass,
For I'm asham'd to use a glass;
And till I see them with these eyes,
Whoever says you have them, lies.
No length of time can make you quit
Honour and virtue, sense and wit;
Thus you may still be young to me,
While I can better hear than see.
Oh, ne'er may Fortune shew her spight,
To make me deaf and mend my sight!
STELLA'S BIRTHDAY,
MARCH 13. 1726.
THIS day, whate'er the Fates decree,
Shall still be kept with joy by me :
This day, then, let us not be told
That you are sick and I grown old,
Nor think on our approaching ills,
And talk of spectacles and pills:
To-morrow will be time enough
To hear such mortifying stuff.
Yet since from reason may be brought
A better and more pleasing thought,
Which can, in spight of all decays,
Support a few remaining days,
From not the gravest of divines
Accept for once some serious lines.
Altho' we now can form no more
Long schemes of life, as heretofore,
Yet
you, while time is running fast,
Can look with joy on what is past,
Where future happiness and pain,
A mere contrivance of the brain,
As Athiests argue, to entice
And fit their proselytes for vice
(The only comfort they propose,
To have companions in their woes).
Grant this the case; yet sure 'tis hard
That virtue, styl'd its own reward,
And by all sages understood
To be the chief of human good,
Should acting die, nor leave behind
Some lasting pleasure in the mind,
Which by remembrance will assuage
Grief, sickness, poverty, and age,
And strongly shoot a radiant dart
To shine thro' life's declining part.
Say, Stella, feel you no content,
Reflecting on a life well spent?
Your skilful hand employ'd to save
Despairing wretches from the grave,
And then supporting with your store
Those whom you dragg'd from death before? 40
So Providence on mortals waits,
Preserving what it first creates.
Your gen'rous boldness to defend
An innocent and absent friend;
which can make you just
courage
To merit humbled in the dust;
The detestation you express
For vice in all its glitt'ring dress;
That patience under tort'ring pain,
Where stubborn Stoics would complain;
Must these like empty shadows pass,
Or forms reflected from a glass ?
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