Your skilful Hand employ'd to fave Defpairing Wretches from the Grave; And then fupporting, with your Store; An innocent and abfent Friend: That Courage which can make you just; To Merit humbled in the Duft: For Vice in all its glitt'ring Dress: SHALL thefe, like empty Shadows, pass, Or Forms reflected from a Glafs? Or mere Chimæra's in the Mind, That fly and leave no Marks behind? Does not the Body thrive and By Food of Twenty Years grow ago? And, had it not been still supply'd, It must a Thousand Times have dy'd. Then, Then, who with Reason can maintain, The Nutriment that feeds the Mind? BELIEVE me, Stella, when you show Like Janus, bears a double Face; And guide you to a better State, O THEN, whatever Heav'n intends, Take Pity on your pitying Friends; Not Nor let your Ills affect your Mind, To fancy they can be unkind. Me, furely me, you ought to fpare, And think it far beneath your Due; To STELLA, vifiting me in my Sickness. October, 1727. ALLAS, obferving Stella's Wit PALL Shine more than for her Sex was fit; And that her Beauty, foon or late, BUT, (not in Wranglings to engage With fuch a ftupid vicious Age,) If If Honour I would here define, It answers Faith in Things divine. As natʼral Life the Body warms, And, Scholars teach, the Soul informs; So Honour animates the Whole, And is the Spirit of the Soul. THOSE num'rous Virtues which the Tribe Of tedious Moralifts defcribe, And by fuch various Titles call; True Honour comprehends them all. BUT, left we should for Honour take Or on a proud triumphal Car; Or in the Payment of a Debt Keeps punctual to an Affignation; Or Or that on which his Lordship fwears, When vulgar Knaves would lose their Ears A Leffon fhe alone can teach. IN Points of Honour to be try'd, All Paffions must be laid afide : DRIVE all Objections from your Mind, Elfe you relapfe to human Kind: Ambition, Avarice, and Luft, And factious Rage, and Breach of Truft; HEROES and Heroines of old, Among |