No length of time can make you quit Honour and virtue, fenfe and wit : Thus you may still be young to me, While I can better hear than fee. Oh, ne'er may fortune fhew her spight, To make me deaf, and mend my fight! STELLA'S BIRTH-DAY, March 13, 1726. TH HIS 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 fick, and I grown old; Nor think on our approaching ills, And talk of spectacles and pills: To-morrow will be time enough To hear fuch mortifying stuff. Yet, fince from reafon may be brought A better and more pleafing thought, Which can in fpight of all decays Support a few remaining days, From not the graveft of divines Accept for once fome ferious lines. Although we now can form no more Long schemes of life, as heretofore; Yet Yet you, while time is running fast, That 1 That courage, which can make you just For vice in all its glitt'ring dress; ? The nutriment that feeds the mind; fhow Believe me, Stella, when you For For virtue in her daily race, O then, whatever heav'n intends, * TO MRS. MARTHA BLOUNT. Sent on her Birth-Day, June 15, OH, H, be thou bleft with all that heav'n can send, Long health, long youth, long pleafure, and a friend! Not with those toys the female race admire, Riches that vex, and vanities that tire; Not as the world its pretty flaves rewards, A youth of frolicks, an old-age of cards; Fair to no purpose, artful to no end; Young without lovers, old without a friend; A fop their paffion, but their prize a fot; Alive, ridiculous, and dead, forgot! Let joy, or eafe, let affluence, or content, And the gay confcience of a life well spent, Calm ev'ry thought, infpirit ev'ry grace, Glow in thy heart, and fmile upon thy face; Let day improve on day, and year on year, Without a pain, a trouble, or a fear; Till death unfelt that tender frame destroy, In some soft dream, or extafy of joy, Peaceful fleep out the fabbath of the tomb, And wake to raptures in a life to come! Is * SONG. By a Person of Quality. SAID to my heart, between fleeping and waking, Thou wild thing, that always art leaping or aking, What black, brown, or fair, in what clime, in what nation, By turns has not taught thee a pit--a--pat ation ? Thus |