Began a thousand faults to spy;
The ceiling hardly six feet high;
The smutty wainscot full of cracks,
And half the chairs with broken backs:
Her quarter's out at Lady Day,
She vows she will no longer stay
In lodgings, like a poor grizette,
While there are lodgings to be let.
Howe'er, to keep her spirits up,
She sent for company to sup,
When all the while you might remark
She strove in vain to ape Wood Park.
Two bottles call'd for, (half her store,
The cupboard could contain but four)
A supper worthy of herself,
Five nothings in five plates of delf.
Thus for a week the farce went on,
When, all her country savings gone,
She fell into her former scene,
Small beer, a herring, and the Dean.
Thus far in jest; though now, I fear,
You think my jesting too severe;
But poets, when a hint is new,
Regard not whether false or true:
Yet raillery gives no offence
Where truth has not the least pretence,
Nor can be more securely plac'd,
Than on a nymph of Stella's taste.
I must confess your wine and vittle
I was too hard upon a little;
Your table neat, your linen fine,
And, though in miniature, you shine;
Yet when you sigh to leave Wood Park,
The scene, the welcome, and the spark,
To languish in this odious town,
And pull your haughty stomach down,
We think you quite mistake the case;
The virtue lies not in the place;
For though my raillery were true,
A cottage is Wood Park with you.
STELLA'S BIRTH-DAY, 1724.
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 Phœbus, 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 gray?--
I'll ne'er believe a word thy say.
'Tis true, but let it not be known,
My eyes are somewhat dimish 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 show her spite,
To make me deaf and mend my sight!
STELLA'S BIRTH-DAY,
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 spite of all decays,
Support a few remaining days,
From not the gravest of divines
Accept, for once, some serious lines.
Although 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.
Were future happiness and pain
A mere contrivance of the brain,
As Atheists 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 through 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?
So Providence on mortals waits,
Preserving what it first creates.
Your generous boldness to defend
An innocent and absent friend;
That courage which can make you just
To merit humbled in the dust;
The detestation you express
For vice, in all its glittering dress;
That patience under torturing pain,
Where stubborn stoics would complain;
Must these like empty shadows pass,
Or forms reflected from a glass?
Or mere chimeras in the mind,
That fly, and leave no marks behind?
Does not the body thrive and grow
By food of twenty years ago?
And had it not been still supplied,
It must a thousand times have died.
Then who with reason can maintain
That no effects of food remain?
And is not virtue in mankind
The nutriment that feeds the mind,
Upheld by each good action past,
And still continued, by the last?
Then who with reason can pretend
That all effects of virtue end?
Believe me, Stella, when you show
That true contempt for things below,
Nor prize your life for other ends
Than merely to oblige your friends,
Your former actions claim their part,
And join to fortify your heart:
For Virtue in her daily race,
Like Janus, bears a double face,
Looks back with joy where she has gone,
And therefore goes with courage on:
She at your sickly couch will wait,
And guide you to a better state.
O then, whatever Heav'n intends,
Take pity on your pitying friends;
Nor let your ills affect your mind,
To fancy they can be unkind.
Me, surely me, you ought to spare,
Who gladly would your sufferings share,
Or give my scrap of life to you,
And think it far beneath your due;
You to whose care so oft I owe
That I'm alive to tell you so.
Visiting me in my Sickness, October 1727.
PALLAS, observing Stella's wit
Was more than for her sex was fit,
And that her beauty, soon or late,
Might breed confusion in the state,
In high concern for human-kind,
Fix'd honour in her infant mind.
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