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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,
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 profelytes for vice,
(The only comfort they propose,
To have companions in their woes:)
Grant this the cafe; yet fure 'tis hard
That virtue, ftil'd its own reward,
And by all fages understood
To be the chief of human good,
Shou'd acting die, nor leave behind
Some lafting pleasure in the mind,
Which by remembrance will affuage
Grief, fickness, poverty, and age,
And strongly shoot a radiant dart
To fhine through life's declining part.
Say, Stella, feel you no content,
Reflecting on a life well spent?
Your skilful hand employ'd to fave
Despairing wretches from the grave;
And then fupporting with your ftore
Those whom you dragg'd from death before:
So Providence on mortals waits,
Preferving what it first creates :
Your gen'rous boldness to defend
An innocent and abfent friend;

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That

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That courage, which can make you just
To merit humbled in the dust ;
The deteftation you exprefs

For vice in all its glitt'ring dress;
That patience under tort'ring pain,
Where stubborn ftoicks wou'd complain :
Must these like empty fhadows pafs,
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 supply'd,
It must a thousand times have dy'd.
Then who with reafon 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 paft,
And still continu'd by the last?
Then, who with reafon can pretend
That all effects of virtue end?

fhow

Believe me, Stella, when you
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

For virtue in her daily race,
Like Janus, bears a double face;
Looks back with joy where he has gone,
And therefore goes with courage on.
She at your fickly 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, furely me, you ought to spare,
Who gladly wou'd your fuff'rings fhare;
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 fo.

* 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;

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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

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