Stella's Birthday March 13, 1727

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 gen'rous 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 glitt'ring 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 chimæras 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 suff'rings 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.