WRITTEN ON THE DAY OF HER BIRTH, MARCH 13, 1723-4.
But not on the subject, when I was sick in bed.
TORMENTED with incessant pains,
Can I devise poetic strains?
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 every word I speak,
She with soft speech my anguish cheers,
Or melts my passions down with tears;
Although '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?
IIer 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,
Though I continue still a brute.
But, when I once am out of pain,
I promise to be good again;
Meantime, your other juster friends
Shall for my follies make amends;
So may we long continue thus,
Admiring you, you pitying us.
TO AN AGREEABLE YOUNG LADY, BUT EXTREMELY LEAN. 1730.
DEATH went upon a solemn day
At Pluto's hall his court to pay;
The phantom having humbly kiss'd
Presented him the weekly bills
Of doctors, fevers, plagues, and pills.
Pluto, observing since the peace
The burial article decrease,
And vex'd to see affairs miscarry,
Declared in council Death must marry;
Vow'd he no longer could support
Old bachelors about his court;
The interest of his realm had need
That death should get a numerous breed;
Young deathlings, who by practice made
Proficient in their father's trade,
With colonies might stock around
His large dominions under ground.
A consult of coquettes below
Was call'd, to rig him out a beau;
From her own head Megara takes
A periwig of twisted snakes:
Which in the nicest fashion curl'd,
(Like toupets of this upper world,)
With flour of sulphur powder'd well,
That graceful on his shoulders fell;
An adder of the sable kind
In line direct hung down behind;
The owl, the raven, and the bat,
Clubb'd for a feather to his hat:
His coat, a usurer's velvet pall,
Bequeathed to Pluto, corpse and all.
But, loth his person to expose
Bare, like a carcase pick'd by crows,
A lawyer, o'er his hands and face
Stuck artfully a parchment case.
No new-flux'd rake show'd fairer skin;
Nor Phyllis after lying in.
With snuff was fill'd his ebon box,
Of shin-bones rotted by the pox.
Nine spirits of blaspheming fops,
With aconite anoint his chops;
And give him words of dreadful sounds,
G-d d-n his blood! and b-d and w-ds!
Thus furnish'd out, he sent his train
To take a house in Warwick-lane: 2
The faculty, his humble friends,
A complimental message sends:
Their president in scarlet gown
Harangued, and welcomed him to town.
But Death had business to despatch;
Ilis mind was running on his match.
And hearing much of Daphne's fame,
His majesty of terrors came,
Fine as a colonel of the guards,
To visit where she sat at cards;
She, as he came into the room,
Thought him Adonis in his bloom.
And now her heart with pleasure jumps,
She scarce remembers what is trumps;
For such a shape of skin and bone
Was never seen except her own.
Charm'd with his eyes, and chin, and snout,
Her pocket-glass drew slily out;
And grew enamor'd with her phiz,
As just the counterpart of his.
She darted many a private glance,
And freely made the first advance;
Was of her beauty grown so vain,
She doubted not to win the swain;
Nothing she thought could sooner gain him,
Than with her wit to entertain him.
She ask'd about her friends below;
This meagre fop, that batter'd beau;
Whether some late departed toasts
Had got gallants among the ghosts?
If Chloe were a sharper still,
As great as ever at quadrille?
(The ladies there must needs be rooks,
For cards, we know, are Pluto's books.)
If Florimel had found her love,
For whom she hang'd herself above?
How oft a-week was kept a ball
By Proserpine at Pluto's hall?
She fancied these Elysian shades
The sweetest place for masquerades:
How pleasant on the banks of Styx,
To troll it in a coach-and-six!
What pride a female heart inflames!
How endless are ambition's aims:
Cease, haughty nymph; the Fates decree
Death must not be a spouse for thee;
For when by chance the meagre shade
Upon thy hand his finger laid,
Thy hand as dry and cold as lead,
His matrimonial spirit fled;
He felt about his heart a damp,
That quite extinguish'd Cupid's lamp;
Away the frighted spectre scuds,
And leaves my lady in the suds.
DAPHNE knows, with equal ease,
How to vex and how to please;
But the folly of her sex
Never woman more devised
Surer ways to be despised;
Paradoxes weakly wielding,
Always conquer'd, never yielding.
To dispute, her chief delight,
With not one opinion right:
Thick her arguments she lays on,
And with cavils combats reason;
Answers in decisive way,
Never hears what you can say;
Still her odd perverseness shows
Chiefly where she nothing knows;
And, where she is most familiar,
Always peevisher and sillier;
All her spirits in a flame
When she knows she's most to blame.
Send me hence ten thousand miles
From face that always smiles:
None could ever act that part
But a fury in her heart.
Ye who hate such inconsistence,
To be easy, keep your distance:
Or in folly still befriend her,
But have no concern to mend her;
Lose no time to contradict her,
Nor endeavor to convict her.
Never take it in your thought
That she'll own or cure a fault.
Into contradiction warm her,
Then perhaps you may reform her:
Only take this rule along,
Always to advise her wrong;
And reprove her when she's right;
She may then grow wise for spite.
No that scheme will ne'er succeed,
She has better learnt her creed;
She's too cunning and too skilful,
When to yield, and when be wilful.
Nature holds her forth two mirrors,
One for truth and one for errors:
That looks hideous, fierce, and frightful;
This is flattering and delightful:
That she throws away as foul;
Sits by this to dress her soul.
Thus you have the case in view, Daphne, 'twixt the dean and you: Heaven forbid he should despise thee, But will never more advise thee.
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, styled 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 deelining 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;
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