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 turned 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 undistinguished pass,
For I'm ashamed 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:
MARCH 13, 1726-27.
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 of 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 declining part.
Say, Stella, feel you no content
Reflecting on a life well spent?
Your skilful hand employed to save
Despairing wretches from the grave,
And then supporting with your store
Those whom you dragged 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.
Oh, then, whatever Heaven 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 suffering 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.
USED BY THE DEAN FOR STELLA
IN HER LAST SICKNESS, 1727.
ALMIGHTY and most gracious Lord God, extend, we beseech
Thee, Thy pity and compassion toward this Thy languishing servant; teach her to place her hope and confidence entirely in Thee; give her a true sense of the emptiness and vanity of all earthly things; make her truly sensible of all the infirmities of her life past, and grant to her such a true sincere repentance as is not to be repented of. Preserve her, O Lord, in a sound mind and understanding during this Thy visitation; keep her from both the sad extremes of presumption and despair. If Thou shalt please to restore her to her former health, give her grace to be ever mindful of that mercy, and to keep those good resolutions she now makes in her sickness, so that no length of time nor prosperity may entice her to forget them. Let no thought of her misfortunes distract her mind, and prevent the means toward her recovery, or disturb her in her preparations for a better life. We beseech thee also, O Lord, of Thy infinite goodness, to remember the good actions of this Thy servant; that the naked she hath clothed, the hungry she hath fed, the sick and the fatherless whom she hath relieved, may be reckoned according to Thy gracious promise, as if they had been done unto Thee. Hearken, O Lord, to the prayers offered up by the friends of this Thy servant in her behalf, and especially those now made by us unto thee. Give Thy blessing
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