Ten thousand hands and pens to write
Thy praise, I'd ftudy day and night.
Oh may thy Work for ever live!
(Dear Tom, a friendly zeal forgive)
May no vile mifcreant fawcy Cook
Prefume to tear thy learned Book,
To finge his Fowl for nicer guest,
Or pin it on the Turkey's breaft.
Keep it from pafty bak'd or flying,
From broiling stake, or fritters frying,
From lighting pipe, or making fnuff,
Or cafing up a feather muff,
From all the feveral ways the Grocer
(Who to the learned world's a foe Sir)
Has found in twifting, folding, packing,
His brains and ours at once a racking.
And may it never curl the head,
Of either living block or dead!
Thus, when all dangers they have paft,
Your leaves, like leaves of brass, shall last.
No blast shall from a Critick's breath,
By vile infection, cause their death,
Till they in flames at last expire,
And help to fet the world on fire.
On his Birth-day, Nov. 30, 1721.
ST Patrick's Dean, your country's pride,
My early and my only guide,
Let me among the rest attend,
Your pupil and your humble friend,
To celebrate in female ftrains
The day that paid your mother's pains;
Descend to take that tribute due
In gratitude alone to you.
When men began to call me fair,
You interpos'd your timely care;
You early taught me to defpife
The ogling of a coxcomb's eyes;
Shew'd where my judgment was misplac'd;
Refin'd my fancy and my taste.
Behold that beauty just decay'd,
Invoking art to nature's aid:
Forfook by her admiring train,
She spreads her tatter'd nets in vain ;
Short was her part upon the stage;
Went smoothly on for half a page ;
Her bloom was gone, fhe wanted art,
As the scene chang'd, to change her part;
She, whom no lover could refift,
Before the fecond act was hifs'd.
Such is the fate of female race
With no endowments but a face;
A maid forlorn, or hated wife.
Stella to you, her tutor, owes That she has ne'er resembled those ; Nor was a burden to mankind
With half her course of
years behind.
You taught how I might youth prolong,
By knowing what was right and wrong;
How from my heart to bring fupplies
Of luftre to my fading eyes;
How foon a beauteous mind repairs
The lofs of chang'd or falling hairs;
How wit and virtue from within
Send out a fmoothness o'er the skin:
Your lectures could my fancy fix,
And I can please at thirty-fix.
The fight of Cloe at fifteen
Coquetting, gives not me the fpleen;
The idol now of every fool
Till time fhall make their paffions cook;
Then tumbling down time's steepy hill,
While Stella holds her station ftill.
Oh! turn your precepts into laws,
Redeem the women's ruin'd caufe,
Retrieve loft empire to our fex,
That men may bow their rebel necks.
Long be the day that gave you birth
Sacred to friendship, wit, and mirth;
Late dying may you caft a fhred
Of
your rich mantle o'er my head;
To bear with dignity my forrow,
One day alone, then die to-morrow
ON HER BIRTH-DAY, 1721-2.
WHILE, Stella, to your lasting praise
The Muse her annual tribute pays,
While I affign myself a task
Which you expect, but fcorn to afk;
If I perform this task with pain,
Let me of partial fate complain;
You every year the debt enlarge,
grow lefs equal to the charge:
In you each virtue brighter fhines,
But my poetic vein declines;
My harp will foon in vain be ftrung,
And all your virtues left unfung:
For none among the upftart race
Of Poets dare affume my place;
Your worth will be to them unknown,
They must have Stellas of their own;
And thus, my ftock of wit decay'd,
I dying leave the debt unpaid,
Unless Delany, as my heir,
Will answer for the whole arrear.
great Bottle of Wine, long buried, being that Day dug up:
RESOLV'D my annual verse to pay,
By duty bound, on Stella's day,
Furnish'd with paper, pens, and ink,
I gravely fat me down to think :
I bit my nails, and scratch'd my head,
But found
my wit and fancy fled :
Or, if with more than usual pain,
A thought came slowly from my
It coft me lord knows how much time
To shape it into fenfe and rhyme :
And, what was yet a greater curse,
Long thinking made my fancy worse.
Forfaken by th' inspiring Nine,
I waited at Apollo's fhrine:
I told him what the world would say,
If Stella were unfung to-day :
How I should hide my head for fhame,
When both the Jacks and Robin came ;
How Ford would frown, how Jim would leer,
How Sheridan the rogue would fneer,
And swear it does not always follow,
That femel in anno ridet Apollo.
I have affur'd them twenty times,
That Phoebus help'd me in my ryhmes;
Phoebus infpir'd me from above,
And he and I were hand and glove.
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