Stella's Birth-Day. 1724-5

As when a beauteous nymph decays,     We say she's past her dancing days;     So poets lose their feet by time,     And can no longer dance in rhyme.     Your annual bard had rather chose     To celebrate your birth in prose:     Yet merry folks, who want by chance     A pair to make a country dance,     Call the old housekeeper, and get her     To fill a place for want of better:     While Sheridan is off the hooks,     And friend Delany at his books,     That Stella may avoid disgrace,     Once more the Dean supplies their place.         Beauty and wit, too sad a truth!     Have always been confined to youth;     The god of wit and beauty's queen,     He twenty-one and she fifteen,     No poet ever sweetly sung,     Unless he were, like Phoebus, young;     Nor ever nymph inspired to rhyme,     Unless, like Venus, in her prime.     At fifty-six, if this be true,     Am I a poet fit for you?     Or, at the age of forty-three,     Are you a subject fit for me?     Adieu! bright wit, and radiant eyes!     You must be grave and I be wise.     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 turn'd to gray?     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.     O ne'er may Fortune show her spite,     To make me deaf, and mend my sight![1]