Stella’s Birthday, March 13, 1726
This day, whate’er the Fates decree,Shall still be kept with joy by me;This day, then, let us not be toldThat you are sick, and I grown old,Nor think on our approaching ills,And talk of spectacles and pills;To-morrow will be time enoughTo hear such mortifying stuff.Yet, since from reason may be broughtA better and more pleasing thought,Which can, in spite of all decays,Support a few remaining days:From not the gravest of divinesAccept for once some serious lines.
Although we now can form no moreLong schemes of life, as heretofore;Yet you, while time is running fast,Can look with joy on what is past.
Were future happiness and painA 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 hardThat virtue, styled its own reward,And by all sages understoodTo be the chief of human good,Should acting, die, or leave behindSome lasting pleasure in the mind.Which by remembrance will assuageGrief, 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 saveDespairing 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,You generous boldness to defendAn innocent and absent friend;That courage which can make you just,To merit humbled in the dust;The detestation you expressFor vice in all its glittering dress:That patience under to torturing pain,Where stubborn stoics would complain.
Must these like empty shadows pass,Or forms reflected from a glass?Or mere chimaeras in the mind,That fly, and leave no marks behind?Does not the body thrive and growBy food of twenty years ago?And, had it not been still supplied,It must a thousand times have died.Then, who with reason can maintainThat no effects of food remain?And, is not virtue in mankindThe nutriment that feeds the mind?Upheld by each good action past,And still continued by the last:Then, who with reason can pretendThat all effects of virtue end?
Believe me, Stella, when you showThat true contempt for things below,Nor prize your life for other endsThan 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.Look 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 sufferings share;Or give my scrap of life to you,And think it far beneath your due;You to whose care so oft I oweThat I’m alive to tell you so.
To Stella,
Visiting me in my sickness, October, 1727.
Pallas, observing Stella’s witWas more than for her sex was fit;And that her beauty, soon or late,Might breed confusion in the state;In high concern for human kind,Fixed honour in her infant mind.
But (not in wranglings to engageWith such a stupid vicious age),If honour I would here define,It answers faith in things divine.As natural life the body warms,And, scholars teach, the soul informs;So honour animates the whole,And is the spirit of the soul.
Those numerous virtues which the tribeOf tedious moralists describe,And by such various titles call,True honour comprehends them all.Let melancholy rule supreme,Choler preside, or blood, or phlegm.It makes no difference in the case.Nor is complexion honour’s place.
But, lest we should for honour takeThe drunken quarrels of a rake,Or think it seated in a scar,Or on a proud triumphal car,Or in the payment of a debt,We lose with sharpers at piquet;Or, when a whore in her vocation,Keeps punctual to an assignation;Or that on which his lordship swears,When vulgar knaves would lose their ears:Let Stella’s fair example preachA lesson she alone can teach.
In points of honour to be tried,All passions must be laid aside;Ask no advice, but think alone,Suppose the question not your own;How shall I act? is not the case,But how would Brutus in my place;In such a cause would Cato bleed;And how would Socrates proceed?
Drive all objections from your mind,Else you relapse to human kind;Ambition, avarice, and lust,And factious rage, and breach of trust,And flattery tipped with nauseous fleer,And guilt and shame, and servile fear,Envy, and cruelty, and pride,Will in your tainted heart preside.
Heroes and heroines of old,By honour only were enrolledAmong their brethren in the skies,To which (though late) shall Stella rise.Ten thousand oaths upon recordAre not so sacred as her word;The world shall in its atoms endEre Stella can deceive a friend.By honour seated in her breast,She still determines what is best;What indignation in her mind,Against enslavers of mankind!Base kings and ministers of state,Eternal objects of her hate.
She thinks that Nature ne’er designed,Courage to man alone confined;Can cowardice her sex adorn,Which most exposes ours to scorn;She wonders where the charm appearsIn Florimel’s affected fears;For Stella never learned the artAt proper times to scream and start;Nor calls up all the house at night,And swears she saw a thing in white.Doll never flies to cut her lace,Or throw cold water in her face,Because she heard a sudden drum,Or found an earwig in a plum.
Her hearers are amazed from whenceProceeds that fund of wit and sense;Which, though her modesty would shroud,Breaks like the sun behind a cloud,While gracefulness its art conceals,And yet through every motion steals.
Say, Stella, was Prometheus blind,And forming you, mistook your kind?No; ’twas for you alone he stoleThe fire that forms a manly soul;Then, to complete it every way,He moulded it with female clay,To that you owe the nobler flame,To this, the beauty of your frame.
How would ingratitude delight?And how would censure glut her spite?If I should Stella’s kindness hideIn silence, or forget with pride,When on my sickly couch I lay,Impatient both of night and day,Lamenting in unmanly strains,Called every power to ease my pains,Then Stella ran to my reliefWith cheerful face and inward grief;And though by Heaven’s severe decreeShe suffers hourly more than me,No cruel master could require,From slaves employed for daily hire,What Stella by her friendship warmed,With vigour and delight performed.My sinking spirits now suppliesWith cordials in her hands and eyes,Now with a soft and silent tread,Unheard she moves about my bed.I see her taste each nauseous draught,And so obligingly am caught:I bless the hand from whence they came,Nor dare distort my face for shame.
Best pattern of true friends beware,You pay too dearly for your care;If while your tenderness securesMy life, it must endanger yours.For such a fool was never found,Who pulled a palace to the ground,Only to have the ruins madeMaterials for a house decayed.
While Dr. Swift was at Sir William Temple’s, after he left the University of Dublin, he contracted a friendship with two of Sir William’s relations, Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Dingley, which continued to their deaths. The former of these was the amiable Stella, so much celebrated in his works. In the year 1727, being in England, he received the melancholy news of her last sickness, Mrs. Dingley having been dead before. He hastened into Ireland, where he visited her, not only as a friend, but a clergyman. No set form of prayer could express the sense of his heart on that occasion. He drew up the following, here printed from his own handwriting. She died Jan. 28, 1727.